Ana Lia and Eliam are only 15 months apart, so they went through much of their toddler years together, and even though we certainly had hard days, I generally thought that these years were fun. I didn’t really understand why people called them the “terrible twos” because most of their tantrums had reasonable explanations, and we could ride the waves of those big emotions and come out relatively unscathed on the other side. I thought I was doing pretty well at this whole motherhood thing. Then Fin came along. It ended up that I wasn’t actually some amazing mother to my two toddlers – I just had really easy toddlers the first two times.
Finiasi broke every mold we had built. He was a terrible sleeper; to be fair, Ana Lia had been too…but it was easier to handle hard nights when she was the only child. It was harder when there were two other children who had slept well and still expected breakfast in the mornings. He was also a ball of solid energy during the day. He would go at the highest speed setting until it was nap time, and he would still fight sleep with every muscle in his body. He was a destructive force, especially to his older sister who loved to set up creations all around the house. Most of the time it was not out of anger or malice; he was an active toddler who had no impulse control.
He was also sensory seeking. He wanted to be the fastest, highest, loudest. He gave me more than one bloody lip trying to give me hugs, and the other kids would regularly brace themselves when he got near them – he lived at level 10 all the time.
Because that’s the plane he existed on, his tantrums were also level 10. We went through a period where he would have six or seven a day, and they could last 45 minutes. No one in the house was riding those waves and coming out unscathed. He would scream uncontrollably and there were no conventional methods that would help. I tried everything from “holding space” to comforting him to talking him out of it to losing my temper. There were many times when nothing seemed to break the wall he put up during these outbursts. It came to the point where everyone in the house walked on eggshells because we “didn’t want to upset Fin.” That was a hard way to live, especially because there were so many of us in such a small space at the time.
When none of the conventional methods worked, we started trying some unconventional ones. The most reliable time that Fin would have a tantrum was when he woke up. He hated to wake up in bed alone. He wanted someone to lay with him the whole time he took a nap, which wasn’t possible considering he took two hour naps. When he woke up alone, it would set off some of his longest, most intense tantrums. Solution: we woke up the sleeping baby. I laid Fin down for a nap and then set a one hour timer. When the timer went off, I laid beside him and woke him up. He would be upset that I woke him from his nap, but we could cuddle and have him up and playing in 10-15 minutes, significantly shorter than the 45 minutes sagas to which we were accustomed. There were still days when he would wake before the timer, and we would revert to previous methods, but this made many days flow more smoothly than they had in months.
There were other unconventional methods that tended to work at the height of his tantrums. None of them worked all of the time, but I learned to cycle through them to see what he needed on that day. Sometimes, methods that worked perfectly the previous day only intensified his anger the next; so it was always trial and error to see what we could do to help him calm down. One was to envelope him in something, almost like parents swaddle newborns. If we got under a blanket together, that could reduce the external stimulation enough for him to breathe. It was never sufficient to put him under a blanket by himself. Afa or I had to be there with him. The same principle worked if we had built a fort earlier in the day. We had to get in with him and not allow anyone else in, but there were times when that was enough to refocus his mind.
Getting outside was another reliable method that we employed. Because Fin slept so badly, some of his tantrums happened in the middle of the night. While I was willing to simply ignore him and sleep beside him while he screamed, Afa would get him up and take him outside into the cool California air (not entirely sure how our neighbors felt about this…), but he would bring him back in and lay him down to sleep between us, calmer and able to sleep the rest of the night. During some of his tantrums during the day, I would have Ana Lia and Eliam get completely dressed to go play outside then tell Fin during the throes of a tantrum that we were going out. He would generally refuse, but I would wrestle clothes and shoes on him despite deep protestations. Once we got outside, he was sometimes instantly distracted by something and calmed immediately. Other times, he took his time before he was ready to get down and explore, although it was usually a while before he was ready to play with the other kids.
There were a variety of other methods that we would use too. We would regularly put him in the shower. He loved to sit in the bathtub with warm water raining down on him. There were days he would stay there for 30 minutes, just sitting in the water. Everyone in the house was grateful for 30 minutes of tranquility. My mom bought us an indoor swing, and this became a go-to method. The combination of enveloping him and gently rocking him sometimes helped him regulate. Other distractions could help – his favorite book or game. Finding heavy work that interested him would allow him space to get out some of his aggression, so we would have nails in boards that he could hammer or shovels he could use in the dirt. No two days were the same so we had to use some creativity.
And of course, there were days when nothing helped, and we had to ride the emotional wave to its natural conclusion of exhausted quietude. These were the hardest days, especially when it happened multiple times in one day and overnight as well. But we made it through all the days – even the hard ones.
His tantrums improved greatly when we moved from our apartment to our house. I think part of it was that he was outgrowing some of the worst of it, and another part was that he had so much more space that he could play, both indoors and outdoors that he could release all the pent up energy. They didn’t disappear completely, but they became far more manageable. While moving to a bigger house is not a viable solution in almost any case, it helped me understand that meeting the underlying needs before the tantrums began may have helped avoid some of them. Not all of them, I would imagine, but some of them. It would have taken creativity due to our living situation, but it may have helped in the long term.
Fin is only three, so we still have tantrums, although thankfully fewer these days. I still wake him from naps and keep these tools handy in the toolbox because we never know when we are going to need them.