Apparently making her stop playing to get ready for bed (15 minutes past the normal time I might add) is worth loathing of the highest degree. Threenagers.
Apparently making her stop playing to get ready for bed (15 minutes past the normal time I might add) is worth loathing of the highest degree. Threenagers.
We seem to have dodged that phrase so far. At three, her goto was “you’re not my favourite!!!”. The hardest thing was taking their feelings seriously, without laughing at the cuteness.
If it helps, training them to negotiate helps a lot. It lets them get a “win” while doing what you want. It also requires higher level thought, which seems to help suppress emotional tantrums. Finally, it encourages them to make known what is actually important to them.
We used to do a lot of choices to ease transitions (“do you want to brush your teeth first or get on pajamas”) but currently she’s in a “none of them” phase. Sometimes we can get her with a “special toy to play with when you wake up tomorrow” (or to take in the car or whatever) but a lot of times there’s no winning and we just grit our teeth and trudge through the routine.
We get a lot of “that’s not my favorite” and “I’m not playing with you because you’re not nice to me”.
Outside of the moment she’s really good at expressing everything “I was frustrated when I was all done because I wanted to play more” and we have a good conversation about it. We’re just working on appropriate reactions in the moment.
The false choice trick either works really well, or they clock it quickly and leave you for dust. Our minion caught on far too quickly.
Powering through the tantrums is sometimes all you can do. My record was about 30 minutes or so. By the end I was more wowed by their stamina than stressing. Once they realise that tantrums don’t work well, they move on to other tactics (for better or for worse).