Hello everyone,

I'm new here, and I'm hoping some of you will be able to help. My cousin is a faculty member at Davidson and he's told me all about the place, so I thought it (and this forum) might be a good place to start.

I have a 9-month-old daughter. I don't know nearly enough to determine whether or not she's gifted at such a young age, but my wife and I do have reason to suspect that she's at least "advanced." That being said, she's presenting us with some unique problems, and we're completely at a loss as to how to deal with them.

One problem in particular is tantrums. Over the last couple of months, it's become clear to us that she has learned to manipulate us with screeching, flailing, and generally complaining and being obnoxious. The issue we face is that she's apparently old enough to use a tantrum to get her way, but she isn't old enough for us to explain (in words, anyway) why this behavior isn't okay. In the past, we've been quick to change her environment somehow - e.g., new toy, different interaction, food, change of position, change of location - but we're thinking that that might be a mistake on our parts. By catering to her negative behavior, we feel we're only reinforcing it.

But she's so young! We know that we shouldn't reinforce the tantrums, but at the same time, we know we should be giving her lots of attention and changes of pace (and we do!). We don't want to teach her that tantrums earn her what she wants, but we don't want to teach her that we're ignoring or abandoning her, either.

We've tried time-out, but she's just so young. She does seem to understand that she's being corrected somehow, but she has so little control over her emotions that she becomes frantic if we leave her in time-out for too long, and she forgets why she's there.

We just don't know what to do about this, so we come to you kind folks. Have any of you experienced similar behaviors with your own children when they were very young? If so, how did you learn to effectively handle it?

Any help you offer will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!