Re: Tips on handling situations?

Ericka Kammerer (eek@xxxxxxxxxxx) writes:
Ongoing beastly
behavior, however, likely means that I'm not going
to accede to any "gimmes" while it's still going on.

That sounds reasonable to me; however, one can also
distinguish different categories of things; and one
can delay the discussion.

For example, if the child demands something the
child has a right to demand, e.g. "don't touch me!"
when the parent has no over-riding reason to touch
the child, then I think it's good to comply, even
if the child is rather loud about it. (Especially
if the child is rather loud about it??)

If the child requests something that the parent
has a right to decide about, e.g. some ice
cream now: well, if the child has been yelling
but then asks nicely for the ice cream, maybe
it's fine to go for it. If the parent decides
to say no, what is the child going to think the
reason is? The parent could say no, because ice
cream isn't healthy, so we don't have it every
time we go past. That would be a good reason.
The child might realize that that isn't the only
reason and that really it's a form of punishment.

If the child loudly demands ice cream, it might
be good to just say no, not this time, no discussion;
or it might be good to say I need 5 minutes to
recover from the yelling before I listen to any
requests, so you can ask again later. But then
the child might think it's unfair if 5 minutes
later the reason given for no ice cream is that
we're no longer near that store. Maybe that's OK
even if the child thinks it's unfair.

Anyway, I think there are a number of complications.
Some of these issues may be important for some
families/some children and some may not. Each
parent works out a strategy that seems to work
well for them.

One problem with saying no to everything when the
child is in a bad mood is that the bad mood may
go on and on and on. It's like punishing a child
for being sad.

I guess what I tend to do is to try to give the
same answers I would if the child weren't having
a tantrum, unless I think the child will jump
to the conclusion that I'm giving in because of
the tantrum. And I may delay the answer until
the child is able to ask again calmly.
.

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