Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to get some advice on how to deal with a VERY INTENSE toddler. My daughter (now almost 13) was maybe a little more intense as a toddler than most kids, but son is a whole different story and we're running out of sanity around here.

He's almost 2. He can speak in sentences, but generally chooses not to talk. Not sure if there are perfectionist issues going on there or not. When he does talk his pronunciation is starting to get somewhat more understandable, so I think his hearing is okay.

99% of his communication is done through pointing and grunting and then a lot of high-pitched screaming if he can't get what he wants.

He's started hyperventilating when he doesn't get what he wants now. We don't give in (often because it's something dangerous, so we couldn't if we wanted to), but he just keeps escalating his reactions anyway. We try not to pay too much attention to a temper tantrum, but at the point of hyperventilating, it's more that he's extremely upset than being manipulative (I think), so we do try to comfort him.

We have a very open house - he can play with almost anything in it except for things like knives and items on a hot stove, so it's not like we say "no" a lot. However, there are situations where we'll say "no" all day -- for instance if he keeps asking to make a smoothie (he loves helping with the blender). He might ask 20 times a day to make one. I've tried to do pretend smoothies with him and he'll do that once, but it won't work again for the rest of the day. We eventually close the kitchen door which leads to hyperventilating. It's not always smoothies that lead to the meltdowns, obviously, though that's been a particular issue for the past few days.

We try distracting, but he is completely focused on the one item that he has to have and can't be distracted.

I've also tried the "I wish you could," thing - which doesn't seem to work much. I've tried giving him a specific timeframe ("we can <do this item> after we eat dinner <or some other timeframe>.") ... That doesn't seem to work. We've tried removing the item from his view, that only works sometimes and it's working less and less now.

Any other suggestions?

I'm open to reading some books about this, but finding time between dealing with him and my work pretty much takes me to bedtime as it is, so I'm not sure when I'll fit that in. Feel free to make suggestions on those though anyway. I already have intentions on getting "Transforming the Difficult Child."

Considering your own history I expect he has been screened for ASD already, right?

In general, kids practice temper tantrums first as a raw emotional reaction, but as they escalate, it's because the child has found that sometimes, tantrums are an effective measure to get what they want. So then the kid resorts to the tantrum again, the results have changed, and they're confused. So they experiment with a bigger tantrum, and they find that this also works at times. They really don't understand the inconsistencies, but it's always worth a try.

And the solution is to eliminate all that uncertainty and take the entire reward system out of play. A tantrum can never result in achieving the desired end. This requires consistency from everyone who is responsible for providing care for him.

Unfortunately, even the "comforting" is, in itself, a form of reward for this behavior.

In the case of my DD, if she wanted something she couldn't have, we'd tell her no, and we'd try to redirect her attention to something else. If she refused to be redirected and threw a fit, we'd tell her no tantrums, to give her an opportunity to get herself in check. And if she continued on from there, she'd find herself in her crib, all the toys and other items removed except for her blankie, until she got her emotions under control. Sometimes that would be pretty quick, and sometimes it took forever, with a few different visits in between. If her behavior continued to escalate, we would warn her of the loss of a privilege, and then the next step was we'd inform her that she'd just lost said privilege. We had to figure out which privileges motivated her, though... after some experimentation we found that taking away bedtime stories worked the most effectively (and still does, six years later). Eventually she'd settle down and we might have a perfectly good day for the rest of the day, but there can't be any idle threats, so once she has been informed that she lost her bedtime stories, she lost her bedtime stories, end of discussion. That might send her into another mini-meltdown at the end of the day, but it also sent a strong message that we mean what we say.

My wife and I were on board with this same plan, and when my wife started taking classes and my mom was watching her in the mornings, we brought her on board, too. Because of the consistency, she got it, and we gradually started dealing with this behavior less and less, until it practically disappeared. The exceptions were when she'd see something inconsistent... my mother-in-law would reward her when she got fussy, and so after visiting with her other grandma, she'd come home and experiment with us again. Then we'd be in the store and she'd see some little kid throwing a tantrum and the parents ignoring it, and she'd wonder why someone wasn't putting that kid on timeout, so she'd experiment with us again. As long as the results stayed consistent, though, the experiments never lasted very long.

We started this when DD was only a few months old, and we never had what people refer to as the "terrible twos." She was a delight to take out into public at that age. Before she was three, she started to develop a talent for negotiation instead, and many times my wife and I were quite pleasantly surprised at the solutions she would propose where we could both get what we wanted.

Of course, it's still an ongoing, daily-adapting process. But the basic theory doesn't change. Just be consistent, and take away the rewards for negative behavior. Because the thing to remember is that every time you have an interaction with a child that young, the child is learning something from it. The question you have to ask yourself every time is, "What did I just teach him?"

This can apply to any negative behavior, not just the tantrums. For instance, the constant re-asking of the same questions:

1) "No."
2) "I said no, and this discussion is over, my answer is final, do not ask again."
3) Warning: "Next time you ask me this, you'll be on timeout."
4) Timeout.

LOL.

Negotiation reminds me of this thread.

Mr W now has some more tactics he has picked up since I posted this.

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/104600/2.html

I agree with this, but I will mention that I have learned to read my daughter fairly well. If I can tell that a "No" response will lead us down a path I don't want to go down, and if I can accommodate her much more easily, then I often pick the path of least resistance right from the beginning. I'll never contradict my initial answer, but I'll agree to things I don't really like sometimes, just to placate her. (I obviously wont agree to anything dangerous though.)

Another thing I would like to mention is that different people react differently to children crying. I personally can't stand it. It really drives me insane. I have to use something to drown it out, or else I think I'd break down in tears myself. My wife doesn't seem too bothered by it, though. On the other hand, I don't mind so much when my daughter wastes food, but that drives my wife up the wall.

So in some ways, the question isn't necessarily restricted to what to do with your child, but what to do with yourself that will allow you to do the right thing with your child.

Have you discussed this with your pediatrician?

Also, have you considered teaching your son sign language? We stopped using it once my daughter's spoken vocabulary took off, but there was a while there where she would use signs during times when she was too upset to speak. (Strange people and places can still make her go mute... but it's rare now, and she's forgotten all her signs.)

annette: I think you may have misunderstood my post. When I discussed consistency and discipline, I limited it to just those two applications: tantrums, and incessant asking for the same thing. They're two sides of the same coin, which is negative behaviors in order to get what the child wants.

I agree that empathy has its place, and we always try to be generous with it when appropriate. The trick with toddlers is trying to figure out when it's appropriate. You might think she's bawling because you moved the sharp object out of her reach and she wants it, and you might have missed that she whacked her hand on the edge of the table when she reached for it.

In the place of negative behaviors, the empathy comes AFTER the tantrum has subsided to a reasonable degree. Because not only do you not want to reward the negative behavior, but the child also has to learn to self-soothe.

This topic here is particularly relevant to gifted kids, because they generally experience emotions with far more intensity. It was just last year my daughter started crying her eyes out while watching some movie or other with puppies, because, "They're so cuuuuuuuute!"

SiaSL - No - but we do expect that he lies somewhere on the spectrum. It's just too hard to tell at this age how much. It's also hard to tell if what he has right now constitutes as a language delay for HFA. He is super sensitive to sensory issues - both hypo and hyper, and he's already showing some social issues with other kids, but part of that could be because he's a toddler. I don't believe he has shown any signs of regressive forms of autism - he's more in the Aspie/HFA line.


Dude - thank you for the suggestions. I agree that the comforting can be a form of reward, but not comforting when he's beyond upset would go too far against my own personal parenting philosophy. I hope that I've found enough of a middle ground to only comfort him when he's past the point of being manipulative. But you're right in that it could lead to larger issues. I'll have to keep a close eye on myself and critically evaluate the reaction I'm having each time.

I will say that your daughter sounds a lot like mine at that age. I did set limits and was consistent in my approach with her, but she also didn't feel the emotions as intensely. I don't know if this is a "different kids need different approaches" situation or if I am really being too inconsistent with him. I'd like to think it's the former, but wouldn't we all?


Austin - that's a great thread and reminds me of my daughter at this age. She's always been my little lawyer.


Dad22 - We haven't discussed with our pediatrician, but I don't really like our pediatrician. I think I need to find a new one. We did consider sign language, but when he said his first sentence at 6 months, we decided not to go there. Now 18 months later, he still barely talks. (Not in a regressive way - when he does talk, he shows a lot of language skills). It almost feels too late, but I think it would help with a lot of the frustration. I'm going to look into it.

You're right that a lot of it is about what we're willing to do and how far we're willing to go. There has been a lot of compromise lately to avoid meltdowns. "We can't make a smoothie yet, but you can help me clean the broccoli and put it in the steamer." I think for him, he just wants to be involved in something - I'm not sure he cares what it is. But the broccoli incident had me watching very careful for his small fingers around a big knife. So it was an uncomfortable moment.


Annette - thank you for your very valuable feedback. I really like this approach - it gels well with my parenting philosophy. I'm going to give it a try and see how it works over the next few weeks. I noticed that he responds more when I get really close to him and speak very softly to him. And it couldn't hurt to give him more empathy skills since he's on the spectrum somewhere (though it's important to add that I don't believe autism necessarily equates to a lack of empathy.)

Mr W is very intense.

We remind him to "use his words" and he will get more of what he wants.

We've had a lot of success with acting out his tantrums using his stuffed toys and dinosaurs as well to show him how silly it is.

He is getting better and better with his meltdowns limited to less than one a day.

We also use the empathy track. Back when he was less than a year old, he had a horrible melt down while I was on the freeway. He had already agreed to go with me to the bookstore but changed his mind. He could not speak well then but understood me when I talked about how his tantrums hurt people's feelings. I had taken the day off to spend with him and all the stuff I'd planned he did not want to do and he was hurting my feelings. it worked pretty good.

I wonder about this:
I hope that I've found enough of a middle ground to only comfort him when he's past the point of being manipulative.
could be backfiring? If he doesn't have the skills to calm himself down when he's upset, could it be that the realisation that you're not going to help until or unless he's extremely upset is itself part of what's getting him upset, in that moment? I should say that I'm coming from DS-now-7 having been a really rather reasonable toddler, with only a fairly brief period of getting very upset over incomprehensibly tiny things, so take it fwiw, but: it seems to me that it's not only possible but wise to separate out whether you allow yourself to be forced into changing your mind by a child being upset (I agree that one shouldn't, unless one has actually made a mistake in which case it's good to admit it) and whether you are sympathetic to the child's upset. I think you can be sympathetic to the upsetness without any suggestion of giving in over the decision, and that there's no need to wait until the upsetness is clearly out of control. It's only manipulation if you're manipulated by it :-)

I think "We can't make a smoothie yet, but you can help me clean the broccoli and put it in the steamer." is great and did a lot of that kind of thing. Another kind of thing that worked well for us was more like "Tomorrow we'll have a smoothie, but today we haven't got [time before the next meal/the ingredients/whatever the reason is]. What do you think the best smoothie in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE would have in it?"

I'll agree with this. I'm pretty sure I have a negative EQ, which causes me all sorts of problems.

I'm slowly coming to the realization that there is an entire emotional management skillset that it's best to develop in children early in life. I think when you have intense children, they need extra help in managing the intensity. The intensity has to go somewhere, and when there is nothing productive to do with it, and you're a child who's already upset and getting more upset by the minute...

I still deal with massive scream-a-thons at age 6 with my son, fortunately, most of them are at home rather than in public. Public presentations result in us leaving the public area.

The part about asking 20 times for the smoothie sounds like a toddler with AS; a brain that is stuck on one idea and can't be dissuaded from thinking about it even though being stuck on it is not getting him anywhere. (And you are right to make the stuck-ness not get rewarded; it just makes it worse.)

I think you've mentioned neurodiversity, so you might not want to go there... but from my point of view, if you think he's on the spectrum, getting professional help might be really useful in improving his coping skills, and getting him to be more able to move on from being stuck (very important skill).

We got a late start (dx at 5; I would have loved to have had help at the toddler stage) but we have done very well with an eclectic, non-rigid form of ABA therapy. It also incidentally trained us to be the kind of parents DS needed. Speech therapy for pragmatic language can also be really useful at this age; it's harder to catch up these skills later.

If your DS is on the spectrum, a lot of things that everybody else seems to use in their parenting will probably *not* work for him. For my kid, time-outs were a total disaster and 1-2-3 Magic even worse. He didn't have the self-calming skills that most kids have. Those skills needed to be taught and reinforced first. So from my perspective, advice for general intense toddlers may not work that well for an intense toddler with AS.


I wouldn't call that a compromise, but rather skilled redirection. As long as you're not giving him what he's melting down over, I think there's a place for this strategy in your arsenal.

Maybe the most consistent rule in my house is "if you scream or whine for something, you won't get it." But if I can help DS not think about the thing he's after, what he's learning is that his brain is more flexible than he thought, and he can make his brain think about something else. That seems a pretty positive lesson.

DeeDee

Hi Adhoc! ((Waving Wildly!!) Great to see you. This is definitely a gifted issue! Perhaps gifted + personality, or gifted + twice exceptionality - but yes, you've come to the right place!

I'm glad to hear that you are considering sign language - this seems to be what's comfortable for him right now, so it seems an excellent place to start.

I would teach him a sign that roughly means 'I'm proud of myself for doing a good job managing myself" or 'I Waited!' or "I relaxed me!"

Perhaps the palms facing each other, held at head or heart level. That way you can praise him and use the sign at the slightest self mastery he demonstrates. So when he chooses to clean the Broccoli, you and he get to celebrate his flexibility! But think smaller. Anytime he responds positively to ANY small request, do the happy dance.

The next thing to figure out is 'is it dangerous to him to hyperventilate?'
Search the Internet, find a Physician you trust, but as heartbreaking as it is to you, be at least clear in your mind if the hyperventilating is dangerous to him in any way. My mom used to hold her breath and turn blue as a 1 year old if my Grandmother didn't shovel the food in fast enough. She would get into a rage, and then hold her breath. She wasn't spectrumy, but I do suspect ADHD to some degree. My Grandma did what anyone would do: shovel faster!

Isn't natural to be 'conditioned' by out children to shovel faster. I pretty sure that my Mom didn't hold her breath and turn blue to 'punish' or 'manipulate' my Grandmother, but it did set a leader/follower tone to their relationship.

So I think that saying 'distress vs. manipulation' is too simplistic a model for our intense kids.

I think it's possible for 'unhelpful' behavior, such as hyperventilation or turning blue to be 'reinforced' by 'shoveling faster' or even negative attention. I think learning to 'meditate under pressure' is about the only non-reinforcing response. One doesn't have to do this perfectly, and in fact, if it's difficult to do but one persists, that's all to the better! What you want to achieve isn't 'freezing a kid out' but 'getting your own emotions out of the way' and giving the child the gift of self-learning. My mom did eventually learn to channel her intensity into productive channels, at least until the new and more stressful challenges were born.

Weirdly enough, I think that I'm 'showing faith' in my son when I let him muddle around in his negative feelings as long as he needs to as long as he isn't hurting or 'wet blanketing' anyone else. Boys are funny. As a Female, I love the give and take of asking for help. Most Males I know truly find it difficult to maintain their self-respect while receiving help. I set out to prove that this was nurture, and not nature - and count myself in the failure column. This isn't to say that some boys have personalities where this would have worked, but to remind us that some boys don't.

I do think that professional help/evaluation is worth seeking. It's not your job to have a diagnosis before you get on the evaluation train - although I totally get WHY it feels that way. You had me thinking that way right here:
The high-pitched screaming thing would be enough to jolt me out of any kind of leadership position as a Parent, and pop me right into 'learning mode' like a lab rat in a cage. I wouldn't trust myself not to 'shovel faster' in those conditions.

I love that you are thinking about parenting each child as they need to be parented. Of course I prefer a parenting style where a slightly raised eyebrow stops the unwanted behavior and a hug is soon to follow. That what I wished I had gotten. But that isn't the child I was given. Actually that is the child I have now, but boy-o-boy-o it took some wild determination for me to get into the driver's seat and give something the felt very unnatural to me to get there.

So glad you had the greatness to come on and ask, and so glad you've already gotten some great feedback.
What does DH think of all this?

Love and More Love,
Grinity

This thread is really helpful for me too. DD (21mo) is very very verbal and speaking in complete long sentences but will STILL get fixated, just like you were describing, on one thing and just not let it go.

This AM she threw a fit for 1 1/2 hours (screaming/kicking/demanding/trying to bargain because she wanted to take her pacifier outside of her crib (we do not let her but DH forgot and let her bring it into our bed this AM... I had to then go back and try to get her to put them back in the crib). I am so tempted to just throw them all away because they cause so many issues but DD just potty trained a month ago and I am worried that if I take them away now it will be too much change in a short amount of time.

She will throw full-fledge fits like this (usually not lasting as long, usually 15-30min or so) at least once a week. Whether it is not wanting to get in her carseat, wanting a fruit snack, ect. She has very high-pitched screaming, and always has from the day she came home from hospital. She has also ALWAYS been just as demanding/intense as she is now. If once, just once, there is an exception (like today when DH let her take the pacis out of her crib) she will loose it if we try to go back on it then test it out for at least a week after. She doesn't forget! I am dreading this week and the paci issue... Poor DH didn't even know what went wrong!

Lot's more feedback. Thank you all for the great advice.

Austin - we did a lot of "use your words" with my daughter, but she was a lot more verbally expressive. It's not that I don't do it with my son, just that I don't do it with any expectation that it will result in a sentence. I wish I had thought of acting out meltdowns with her. That was a struggle for us for many years. Not sure it would've helped, but one more tool in the arsenal couldn't have hurt.


Colinsmum - that's great feedback. Thank you for it. It also fits well with my parenting philosophy for him, so it was very helpful.


Annette - thank you for the book recommendations. I'll definitely look into them and see what I think will work. I see a trip to the library coming up for me.

I've already begun trying the empathy thing you mentioned. It's hard to tell how well it's working in such a short time, but so far so good. I just need to think of it quicker now. I think it does help, even with the spectrum issues. I'm catching it while he can still think logically, before he becomes pure emotion.


JonLaw - I think I have some problems there as well. I've gotten better over the years, but it's been a long road. Maybe using some of this great advice with my son, will help me handle my own emotions as well.


DeeDee - I really appreciate you posting here. I hope I don't scare off anyone with my "neurodiversity" ramblings. I'm interested in hearing more about the form of ABA therapy you're using with your son. I'm not opposed to therapy as long as it doesn't drive all the good parts of Autism out of a person. I'll understand if you don't want to share it - or if you've posted somewhere else, maybe you could just provide a link. But I think one of the challenges I've had with coming to a decision on whether or not to get him evaluated now is with wondering what the resulting therapy would look like. So it would be great to get an idea of what is working for another family.

I do know of a good psychologist in the area who specializes in AS, and we're fairly close to the UC Davis MIND Institute, so there's probably some options for us that I haven't explored yet. I think I need to find a new pediatrician so I can start down this path.

Also - I like your term of "skilled redirection." I've been doing even more of that lately. Adorably, this resulted in him wanting to help butter every slice of toast this morning. Not so adorably, that resulted in a pile of butter on the floor. But one step at a time.


Grinity - HI!! Waving back at you! I never really left. I'm just quiet-ish.

It is probably not dangerous for him to hyperventilate. He did do the turning blue and passing out thing for a couple of months when he was younger and, as scary as it was, it wasn't dangerous. I had to convince my husband of this so he would stop yelling at him to "BREATH!" I'm sure the yelling didn't help him calm down.

And I'm not as worried about hyperventilation from the physical standpoint as much as I am from the emotional standpoint. I'm hoping that by catching the tantrum earlier though, I can provide the emotional support he needs as a building block for self soothing. I think self soothing is going to be an issue right now for him, so I guess I'm just a bit conflicted because I'm not sure how much of that has to come from within him, without me providing that building block. And I'm trying to decide what is right for him as an individual. I've always felt like he is a very independent person, but when he needs support and help, he really needs it. Maybe I should just go with that as my gut feeling and give him the building blocks right now. We're very much attachment parents, so we tend to proscribe to the thought that self-soothing comes over time through strong emotional bonds. I guess I have my answer. Sorry for this rambling paragraph, but I think it was important for me to write it out.

I think my daughter is like your son in terms of asking for help. I don't know if it's a self-respect thing for her though. Maybe more of an independence thing. I get the sense that she is exceptionally independent for her age. It's hard to say since I don't have a lot to compare to, but I get the sense that if she had to live on her own tomorrow, she could make it work. So if she's having negative emotions, I need to let her muddle through it. But this is a much more recent development for us. And I'm sure I've made a lot of mistakes getting to this point.

You're right that it isn't my job to have the dx before I go for an evaluation. It's just so hard not to since I know so much about ASDs already. I'm trying to be objective, but man oh man, it's hard! This kid is basically me as a boy, with a slight bit of my husband thrown in the soup. So I know where a lot of this stuff is coming from.

What does my husband think of all this? Well - I'm going to show him this thread tomorrow and see what he says. He's very open to new suggestions and thoughts, so I think he'll get a lot out of this. He's our son's primary caregiver right now as a SAHD. I think that has it's advantages and disadvantages. Since my son is so much like me, it's probably best that he is the primary caregiver though. But I also think he doesn't have as much patience as I do to deal with the intensity we're facing, so he's had a lot of frustrated moments lately. I tend to be the more level headed one when my son is screeching or hyperventilating... he reacts much stronger to it and it is hard for him to watch it play out. I think some of the "meditating under pressure" advice may help with this.

He adores the little man though and it's wonderful to see them together. I hear lots of peals of laughter between mixed with vacuum sounds (that's my son's other obsession at the moment - and one we can do more often). I think he's open and ready to try anything that we think will help, which is about all anyone can possibly ask for.


GHS - Thanks for posting. It's always nice to hear that you're not alone. It's probably too early for this for you guys, but I thought I'd mention for when your DD gets a bit older. My daughter used pacifiers until about 3.5. She had them hidden all around the house. I finally got her to give them up by using the "Pacifier Fairy." Like the Tooth Fairy, but with pacifiers.

As for the intense screaming, hopefully some of the great advice people provided here can help you as well.

Adhoc, sent you a PM...

DeeDee

LOL... I was the stuffed toy.

http://www.devpsy.org/teaching/parent/baumrind_styles.html

I've been re-reading Super Freakonomics and Outliers, the latter of which is probably my all-time favorite book.

Thanks La Texican.


Jack'smom - did you mean to post to a different thread?

I got that link from googling the second bad review from "Kids, parents, and power struggles" which is by the same author as "raising your spirited children". �That reviewer listed the three people that labeled the parenting style spectrum that all the other books paraphrase from. �
I'm searching to define for me what "parenting" is (also what "education" is). �Because I'm not going to read every parenting book out there, but Amazon reviews gives a good cliff's note anyway.

I wanted to add something about the age, but I couldn't remember where I read it. �It was about child development, not gifted child research. �I just had a chance to find it. �It's Eric Erickson's �theory of personality. �It says something like you need to provide one year olds security, answer them immediately. �Two year olds should encourage independence. �Three to five years need rules and boundaries. �I can't pretend to know much about it but it stuck in my mind. �Scroll down past the Piaget stuff. �It's on this page.
http://www.alleydog.com/topics/child-psychology.php