Mini Tantrum Fun!

Will they ever stop?

Alex's mini tantrums can go from 1 a day, to 20 a day! I'm really starting to feel bad about them, and wondering if there is something more that I could be doing. My 2 main beliefs at this time are:

1. Never pick him up and give him cuddles in the middle of a tantrum.

2. Try to distract him, rather then just telling him "no", whenever possible.

There have been a few times that I have sat down near him, and played very loudly to help him snap out of the tantrum. Once he is back to happy Alex, I will give him a kiss and tell him I love him. Sometimes Joe has a hard time with this one, and will try to pick him up in the middle of a tanrum, and I remind him to walk away. The little girls have tried to hug him, in the middle of one, too, but I remind them to just let him cry it out. The funny thing is, he would not let you hold him, anyway. Last night he fell while trying to climb on a chair where Joe was sitting and eating chips. He did bump his head and started crying. I tried to hold him and make him feel better, but all he wanted to do was cry and try to get back to the chair to try to get a chip!

As for telling Alex "no", we might as well skip that word all together! Telling Alex "no" only makes him do it, more, louder, faster, and harder. Last night Alex was getting Joe's DVD's out and from the couch Joe said "no". So Alex pulled out a bunch more. Then Joe told him "no" when he was banging the cases together. So Alex banged the cases even harder. Then Joe told him "no" when he was shaking a case that had a loose DVD inside of it, so Alex shook it even harder. At that point I cracked up laughing. I know I should not have, but those two were cracking me up! Joe was clearly having a "lazy parent" night, which we all have from time to time, and Alex was taking full advantage of it. If it had been me, or something of mine, I would have gotten up and removed Alex from the item, and then tried to distract him with something he could play with. I ended up making a comment to Joe, that I wasn't laughing at Alex being naughty, but at the fact that he just kept sitting on the couch saying "no". After about 3 minutes of watching Alex try to put the DVDs away, and me giving him a ton of praise whenever he would kind of put one back, I told Joe to help him put them away. So Joe got of the couch, and helped Alex put each of them back. Alex didn't care, and I think he even liked seeing how to make them fit.

I've been trying not to tell Alex "no', unless for some reason I can't get over to him right at that minute. Like a few nights ago when I was cooking. I could hear Alex banging the remote on the front of the TV screen, which we have talked to him about many times. So I yelled out "no", to try to distract him until I could leave the kitchen for a minute. Of course this only made him hit the TV even harder. Then when I did get to him, and get the remote away, he started poking the TV with his finger as hard as he could! So I had to remove him all together, and I am sure it ended with him crying on the floor.

I try my best to not set Alex up for failure, but there are some things that I can't do anything about! The main things that he has a fit about is:

1. Going in our room. I don't like to have him in there because it's not "Alex proof". So if we go in there and close the door he cries, and if he slips in behind us, and we have to bring him back out he gets really mad.

2. The electronics in the living room. When Joe got a big check at the start of the year and got his new TV, I said the ONE thing we had to have was an entertainment center with glass doors on it. Well, he went out and bought one with out doors, and now he is all upset that Alex won't leave his game systems alone! On top of that Alex loves to change the setting on the cable box and turn it on and off! Alex has loved touching the electronics in the TV stand since he could roll over to them! The remotes have also been a struggle.
3. The kitchen. We gate off the kitchen when we are cooking, or the dogs are eating and Alex hates it. Alex LOVES dog food, and he eats it at every chance he gets. Even if the gate is left open for a second, and the dog food is down, you will find Alex eating dog food. He also LOVES to dump the dogs water over. I have tried to think of a way to fix this problem, but I still have nothing. I just try to remember to put the dogs stuff up, or keep the gate closed. When we cook, I am working on putting him in his booster with a small snack. If I don't he will just sit next to the gate and cry.
That's about it at our house, but at work it's a whole other story. They never baby proofed their house, and it's about 4 times as big as ours, which means 10 times the stuff to get in to!