We’ve had running water for a couple of days now, but we can’t drink it, even if it’s boiled. So, although we can flush the loo and wash our clothes we still have to go to collect bottled water and fill up our carriers from the bowsers. Bit of a pain but nothing to really complain about.
What I really wanted to post about was a reply to a post on a parenting forum about toddlers having tantrums. It’s made me so angry but I can’t reply on the board as I’ll just get shot down in flames, I should think! She said that if the mother doesn’t stick to her guns, his tantrums will get worse. She said she used to pick up her child, take him away from wherever he was tantrumming and put them down. Or she’d “just laugh at him and humiliate him” so he wasn’t getting the reaction he wanted and she’d tell him she was going to “tell his friends how silly he looked and then take a pic”. All this is justified by the fact that if you don’t “let him know who is boss” he will try to control his mother. If the mother shows “him she means business now”, no matter how harsh she feels, it will make for a better homelife.
She didn’t mention that it would also mean a child learning to bury his feelings and emotions because he’s learnt that they are unimportant and ’silly’; a child who can’t trust that his mother will help him to cope with big feelings; a child who might worry for the rest of his life that expressing his emotions will lead to humiliation. Of all the ways to deal with tantrums, this has to be the worst I’ve ever heard of! Apart from smacking, of course.
Edited to add: Just to clarify, it wasn’t the taking the child to a different place that I took issue with (which I actually think is fairly sensible in some circumstances, particularly as I’ve noticed my own children lose their temper, get embarrassed that they’ve done it and that makes them lose it even more! Taking them somewhere private to help them calm down can really help.), but the deliberate humiliation tactic. I also am not flaming anyone for heat-of-the-moment reactions to distressing meltdowns - I know more than anyone that mothers often behave in ways they regret when in extreme situations! It’s the fact that this mother saw nothing wrong in doing this to her child :-( I do things all the time I *know* are wrong and I instantly regret them and try to change things so that I don’t do it again. I probably have even laughed at my own children by mistake when they’ve had a tantrum in an amusing way *but* I haven’t done it intentionally to humiliate them and I don’t think it is helpful - in fact I think it’s harmful and I would try not to do it IYSWIM.
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7:53 pm
“just laugh at him and humiliate him”
That is just awful! I have to say I’m struggling with Miles at the moment and he’s not even two yet but hopefully I won’t ever resort to anythng like that - how damaging!
Hermione never had tantrums so I feel totally inexperienced in this respect. I just try to ease his frustrations and reassure him that I’m there for him - and hope that it passes quickly. I sometimes wish they did come with instructions
Written by someone with simialr parenting views of course 
I hope you get your water sorted soon.
11:09 pm
Eeuuww. I am not surprised your blood started boiling. I can’t hang out on non-AP parenting boards for precisely that reason… I like my radical tribe!
My 2yo only rarely chucks tantrums but they are becoming more impressive when she does. Provided I’m in a happy mummy space at the time (which does mostly happen) I just reflect and validate and let her work it out. The rest of the time I tend to slam out of the room swearing, which I don’t consider as much of a parenting failure as I did before reading that woman’s take on what she does as a matter of policy… Yuck.
11:24 pm
That is horrible! I think humiliation may even be WORSE than a calm smack - not that I advocate smacking either!
The bottom line for me is to never do anything that is manipulative or dishonest. If I can’t handle their tantrum calmly, I make an “I statement” about how I feel and leave if possible. And if I also “lose it”, I try to be honest about why that happened and how I’m sorry I couldn’t stay totally calm. But to actually LAUGH at a child under those circumstances is so immature and mean! And if it’s fake laughing, it’s showing a lack of honest communication. Ugh.
7:50 am
Lyddie had a tantrum in the supermarket yesterday because I wouldn’t spend £20 (£20!) on a computer game she wanted. I kept explaining that we couldn’t afford to buy the food we needed if we got the computer game, but her reasoning brain had switched off, because she’s only 4. I did hug her to comfort her, but for once I couldn’t yeild to what she wanted. Some of the other shoppers looked alarmed and I could tell some of them wondered if she was being treated unfairly. Because of this I had to keep saying, quite loudly: “We can’t afford our food if I buy the game you want.” I still think some of them weren’t convinced. Sometimes, as mothers, ’society’ deems us bad, whatever we do.
And I’m in my late 30s, with 5 children. I remember being in my early 20s, with my first and feeling absolutely dreadful in such situations. But no, I never laughed at them or took pics (!) or picked them up and took them elsewhere. Oh wait, I may have done that last one once or twice, but only when I had to - i.e., we were being asked to leave or something.
I hope you get your water back soon!
7:51 am
Gah. I can spell yield, honest!
7:26 pm
I have and would pick my children up and take them elsewhere because I cannot cope with being humiliated myself by the comments and looks from other passersby. I don’t see this as a failure, should I? If tantrums happen at home, I might remove the child, or I might remove myself, once the tantrum is over, then we’ll talk about how we could have handled the situation better.
Guess this is another reason why I’m just not TCS or particularly AP, but I’m a world away from the parents I had who would have stopped a tantrum with a quick backhander, so I view my way as an improvement from what sometimes I do admit to longing to do - it seems sometimes that it would be so much easier although of course objectively I know it doesn’t actually work, let alone being a less than loving way to deal with your offspring.
7:27 pm
yeek - were you editing that as I was commenting???
1:56 am
LOL - must have been! I’ve only just read your comment and it’s quite a few hours since I edited it!
Clare
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