it's not your job to stop the tantrums, but rather support her through them. reflect feelings to her like "oh, i see you're mad, you REALLY wanted to climb on the couch." let her express herself and work through it and she will gain confidence in herself and trust in you.

there's an article in this back issue of API's Journal that you may find helpful. it's called Decoding Tantrums: here.

thank you for that! it was a really good article!

These are a few of my favorite tantrum reads!

Struggles are OK
by Patty Wipfler Cry for Connection: A Fresh Approach to Tantrums

Can you let her safely play on the couch with you holding her or standing close by? Does she know how to climb off the couch safely feet first with her stomach against the couch? If not you could teach her. My LO just turned one as well and we go through the same thing. He mostly wants to play with things he can't have. He also likes to climb up on the table if we leave a chair out. I let him play on the table with me holding on to him and that seems to work most of the time. I think letting them explore with supervision is the best solution whenever possible. That's how they learn about the world.

Amy

so i've been trying a lot of different ways to help her through her temper tantrums. Yesterday however she shocked me. Yesterday i noticed my dd had a dirty diaper and i was taking her to the change table to change her. She really didn't want to have her diaper changed. She lost it and started screaming, clawing at my face a bit me several times when i tried to move her hands away from my face. I tried saying. I understand that you don't want your diaper changed right now and that your angry but you can't have a dirty diaper", and "no biting biting hurts". I was astounded that my precious little girl could turn into this person! she's normal such a happy go lucky girl. But ever since then it seems that she escalates to this faster everytime. I'm not sure what to do. Some mom's tell me she needs a time out. But at 13 months how much of that will she process. I tried to give her a hug (kinda pining her arms down so she couldn't claw at my face) while talking to talk camly/soothingly to her but she bit my neck! Any suggestions on how to deal with this much emotion coming from such a young babe? Does Dr. Sears's postive discipline deal with this young of a person?? any links that you can think of that may have some information about when a toddler bites??

When DS was 15 mos, he would flail and drop to the ground if he didn't get his way. Screaming all the while. I felt frustrated and completely ill-equipped to deal with him. I found that through literally stopping everything we were doing and sitting at his level talking calmly to him (sometimes for 10 minutes straight) he was able to calm down enough for me to acknowledge what was bothering him. I would say things like, "are you frustrated about ___________" or "did you want to play with _____________?" Trying to find the connection to his feelings.

99% of the time it worked. For the 1% it did not, I would give him a hug and a kiss and tell him, "mommy loves you" and stay in the room until things calmed down.

As far as the biting, he did bite once in a while; usually when he was over-stimulated or he sensed upset in the room (either from another person, or *hard to admit* me), or if he was upset about something and didn't know how to express himself. What worked for us was to immediately say, "ouch" and "that hurts". Then I would put him down, step about two steps away, count to 5 then pick him up again, telling him that I love him and then continuing on our original task. I must say, sometimes that routine needed repeating several times in the same situation.

When my daughter had her first and only temper tantrum she was about 18 months or so. She got down on the ground and started to kick and scream. I picked her up and told her that she could cry but kicking and screaming was not allowed. I put her in her crib with the door open and she got a 1 minute time out. No warning nothing, just straight to her room. After that she nursed and cuddled for a while and I got her calmed down. I think the shock probably solved the problem (she would normally get 2 or 3 tries before the time out) because she never did it again. For the next while I just kept telling her that she can be mad, she can cry but it's not okay to kick and scream. Problem solved, she has never tried it again to this day and she's 6 now. That said if she had tried it again she would have gotten another time out with the same message.
I've continually reinforced the idea that being mad and crying is perfectly okay but having a fit, throwing things, that kind of stuff is simply not acceptable. She uses her words now and will actually say "I'm mad at you Mommy." and then we can have a conversation about why.

Laura

Here's a great article from Mothering that offers a different perspective:
Cry for Connection: A Fresh Approach to Tantrums