tantrums

The Smiley Kids once said: Turn your frown upside down, Make your lips go round and round.

How do you turn your child's mood from sour to sunny so that they are ready to move past the negativity? One of the most effective ways I have found is with what I like to call 'The Art Of Misdirection' (from now on referred to as TAOM). I'm sure you've all done it before, and grandparents seem to be especially good at TAOM.

Your child decides that today is the day that he or she is going to be unhappy. In a fit of rage, the child stomps off. However, in the effort to put on a show of displeasure, the child trips and crashes headlong into the wall. Immediately the scream is heard, followed by uncontrollable sobbing. That's when the TAOM expert swoops in with a pocket full of jellybeans, and the conversation goes something like this:

Hey, did you scrape your knee? Oh yeah? Well, jellybeans are really good. Would you like one or two?

Almost instantly, the tears dry up, and the wailing stops, as the sugary goodness finds it's way to the child's mouth. Some may call this bribing, I call it misdirection.

The sun is shining, birds are chirping, and it's a beautiful day to be outside playing. But when asked if he or she wants to go to the park, ride bikes, or some other enjoyable activity, the child refuses to participate. The conversation goes something like this:

Did you see that squirrel outside? I bet he likes to collect nuts. Do you like to eat peanuts? Oh yeah, well did you know that that thing on the end of a screw is called a nut? I bet there are some nuts on your bike. Man, that bike looks cool; I bet you would look super fly sitting on that bike…

Before you know it you're enjoying the outdoors, and the child doesn't even remember what the fuss was about in the first place.

If you liked this post, you may also like 'Stop Feeding The Monster.' Also be sure to check out fatherhood friday at dad-blogs.com

The little one has recently been in the habit of crying about anything, or nothing in particular. This action has reaffirmed to me that crying kids are indeed annoying. Is it wrong of me to say this about my own child? No. If I, or my wife, didn't think it was annoying perhaps it would just lull us back to sleep while the kid lies awake starving. Or maybe the little one slams her finger in a drawer, and the yelp she makes seems 'cute' and 'adorable.'

All kidding aside, how do you change the behavior of a nine month old who screams whenever she has to play by herself for more than a minute? It's hard to resist the sirens call that is a baby's cry. It lures you in, and before you know it you've picked the child up and began to make ridiculous cooing noises to calm him or her down.

I've found that if I can resist for ten minutes, the problem usually goes away… at least for bedtime. However, I haven't yet found the way to break her during the times she's awake. When she's awake, it seems that she has the energy to cry for hours, only to be soothed by mommy picking her up.

Luckily we do have one ace up our sleeve, which can be brought out during tough times. The little one thinks that the three year old is the funniest person in the world. If you put the two girls in the same room giggles are soon to follow. Hopefully this will by some time so I can figure out what's really going on!

People close to me claim that I rarely become angry. I can say without a doubt that this observation is untrue. There are plenty of things that set me off, and for reasons unknown to me, children have a way of finding those things quickly. One thing that gets me going is whining and crying and tugging on my leg (which will henceforth be referred to as Wac-A-Toml). Fortunately my wife has finally stopped doing this when I crush her dreams of a new wardrobe. Unfortunately, the three year old is just getting started.

Recently Wac-A-Toml has been the tactic of choice. What angers me even more is that it is simply her attempt at manipulating the situation to achieve her desired outcome. If the three year old had any amount of true emotion behind her feelings, I may be a little more sympathetic, but that is not the case. How do I know there is no emotion? Well… after realizing she's been found out, the waterworks immediately stop. This is where the insanity comes in (stay with me… I promise this will might make sense soon).

As Albert Einstein once said, Insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." So is my daughter insane? Yes. I think my psychology minor gives me the expertise to say without a doubt that she is insane. There has been no precedent set for her to think that Wac-A-Toml will in fact get her what she wants. Usually the results are quite the opposite, and she ends up spending some quality time in the naughty chair. So how do I get her to stop Wac-A-Toml? At this point perseverance and consistency is the only option that comes to mind, because I have no experience treating this kind of mental illness.

However, it could be that she is really a genius, who is training me for something that I, in my limited capacity, could never comprehend.