The Terrible Two's are Upon Us...

Well this past week the tantrums from #4 - 22 months old - have been increasing in frequency and intensity. We've created a monster, I'm afraid... I have two girl friends with daughters close to the same age (one a couple of months older, and the other a couple of months younger...). Their daughters talk, quite clearly. Mine does not. She doesn't have to... With three older siblings all she has to do is squeak the least bit of a noise and any of the three will jump and run to get whatever it is she is wanting. The goal of #'s 1, 2 and 3 is to simply keep her quiet and happy. Sounds good on the surface, right?... hhhmmm... well, I have to say, it's worked for me... so far... but I'm beginning to think we need to re-think our strategy... When the simple request of asking her to "say 'please'" turns in to a tantrum, well...

#3 is our older daughter, who is 6. #4 has decided that she not only doesn't want #3 in the same room with us, the parents, when she's around, but she has taken to pulling her hair, hitting and screaming and pushing her away. Last night we decided that this just wasn't going to work anymore and so we told her "no" when she started her hitting and screaming. You would have thought that we had cut her right leg off the way she screamed... and screamed... and screamed and cried and threw herself on the floor kicking and screaming some more. She started her usual banging her fore-head on the floor, and when I told her to stop that, she got up and went to the wall, where she proceeded to bang her head again. After about 10 minutes of this, hubby tried to pick her up off the floor and calm her down, when she threw her head back and almost out of his arms, screaming and kicking some more. He put her in her crib where she screamed and sobbed another 10 or 15 minutes. The kids, in the mean time are going nuts, because they just don't want to hear her screaming anymore (like we do?...) and are willing to do ANYTHING to make her stop...

After she finally calmed down, tantrum #2 came when she discovered #3 now was reading a book that she had decided was "hers". Once again she started with the hitting and screaming at her sissy trying to grab away the book. Once again we told her "no" and off she went, in to full melt down... parenting isn't for sissies... After another 15 minutes or so, and encouraging everyone to do their best just to ignore her screaming and let her calm down she decided that she was done... She let me clean her face with some cool water, she got some reassuring hugs from daddy and sissy decided that she was done with the book and let her baby sister have it. These aren't easy lessons, for sure... but I figure that with another baby arriving soon, she's going to have to learn sometime. Now if we can just get her to talk! : ) Communication would be SO MUCH EASIER!!