Reply to Anyone else’s 3.5 year old girl have possessed by the devil tantrums?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DD has epic tantrums. She was a colicky infant and a fussy baby. She started having tantrums at about 20 months. Definitely got worse and seemed to level off around 3.5 and has slowly gotten better. Our strategy was when she would start screaming I would tell her, as calmly as I could, that I understood she was upset because she had to brush her teeth (or pick up the food she threw or whatever it was) was that it was fine for her to be upset but if she was going to scream she needed to go to her room. This was often said as I was carrying her like a football, to avoid a flailing elbow to the eye, to her room. It usually took her about 45 minutes to calm down. Then when she was calm I would go in and sit with her and reassure her that I loved her and was not angry with her and that now we were going to go brush her teeth or pick up the food etc. At the peak this was happening 3-4 times a day. It was utterly exhausting. As she got older we worked on teaching her to recognize when she was starting to feel overwhelmed and to removed herself from the situation.

She’s six now and has maybe 1-2 a week and can calm herself with ten minutes. We recently had a party at our home with what ended up being almost her entire class. She did great for the first hour then stated to get overwhelmed. From across the room I could see she was in a situation where she looked like she was going to blow. Before I could interview she walked over to me and said, “I need to go be alone in my room for a while.” Twenty minutes later she came out and was fine the rest of the party. I cried that night I was so proud of her and the progress that she has made. There is hope OP! Hang in there and be consistent.

And to the snarky people who think I am a terrible mom for leaving her alone in her room. we tried multiple other approaches over the years and they only made the situation worse. [/quote]

PP, this sounds like my 3.5 year old. I’m starting to see signs that she is really just overwhelmed when this happens, and once the switch flips, it takes at least 15-20 minutes to calm down, and that’s assuming nothing else (for example, someone yelling at her) happens during that time.  When she did this, how did you keep her in her room?  We have tried getting our daughter to cry it out (or scream and throw things!) in her room in these situations but she just comes back out and does so throughout the house. [/quote]

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