The rollercoaster of a toddler meltdown – Mummascribbles

I will state here that not all toddlers are the same and you parents will experience different variations of tantrums. We don’t have a hugely tantrumming child; he’s always been a very placid, sweet natured little boy. BUT. This sweet natured little thing can and does have the mother of all meltdowns. The funny thing is, I’m always prepared for them, I know exactly when one is going to occur.

Take last night for example. We get home from nursery, it’s 6.15pm, I ask him if he wants to watch some TV and he chooses Sooty. All fine you say?! Then I ask him if he wants to take his coat and shoes off.

When his answer is ‘no’ – that’s it. That is the moment I know we are going to have a tantrum of some kind. That is when I start preparing myself for what is to come.

In order for me to delay the inevitable tantrum, I leave him in his coat, tell him to sit down and go and get him his pancake and cup of milk and he sits watching Sooty (this is his first favourite DVD), quiet and peaceful and VERY VERY tired!! Can you see just how tired he is in this photo?

Yep, this photo is another sure sign that we were going to have a tantrum. That tiredness right there, along with he fact that he needs a bath. Those two things are going to cause a boom!

So, in this instance, and because I know the other half is going to be home just before seven; I delay the bath for that time in order for there to be two of us to get him out of his coat, shoes and rest of his clothes.

The other half arrives home, Zach acts happy! It’s deceiving! I inform other half that the coat has had to stay on and therefore there’s probably going to be ‘issues’. The bath is run and ready and so it’s an immediate case of clothe extraction. This is when tantrum begins. At this point it is minimal but it takes the two of us to wrestle undress him and then he is placed in the bath, much to his annoyance. He always calms down after a minute or so, after he’s stamped his feet a few times, turned in a circle and somehow not slipped over and smashed his head open. Then the rest of bath time is fun.

Until we have to get him out!

Then it all goes wrong.

Last night, unfortunately I had to brush his teeth. We usually give him a chance to attempt to do it himself but as he was already crying, I knew it wasn’t even worth it but equally, I knew his teeth needed brushing. Cue daddy holding his arms down, mummy attacking him with the toothbrush, Zach screaming and thrashing in protest and the neighbours questioning whether they should be calling social services.

After successfully brushing his teeth as best I could with him biting down on the toothbrush to try and stop me, I picked him up and walked down the hall to the front room. This right here…this is where said meltdown happened!

Oh my he went into one, before we’d even got to the front room he was thrashing about in my arms. I stood him on the floor and all hell broke loose. We had screaming sobs (you know the ones), we had foot stamping (you know the fast kind that is only really necessary when doing one of those legs and booty exercise classes), and we had a little boy who was tired, emotional, wailing the house down.

He wanted his towel on but he didn’t want me to put it on him, he wanted to get up on the sofa but his little body that was dealing with this meltdown (ie he’d gone jelly like), couldn’t get up on the sofa but he didn’t want me to help him.

Of course, I know at this point to just leave him, to allow him to scream and cry and to work out that actually this is all very silly and that he should just stop crying. I’ve tried numerous times to sooth him, to cuddle him, to talk to him.

It just doesn’t work.

It makes him worse and simply prolongs the meltdown!

The only thing that does work is to leave him to ride it out while making sure he’s not at risk of any harm and to try and hide the laughter that is accumulating within when this gorgeous little placid two year old has turned into Hulk (totally failed at this bit last night…it was hilarious!)

For some reason, the other half still hasn’t quite worked this out and will every so often attempt to resolve the situation. Of course at this point I moan at him to just leave him alone to deal with it. He does, although I can see he finds it very hard to sit through without intervening. I however just use the opportunity to check my Twitter!

And then?

Then something will cause this wailing, screaming child to stop. It will be like a switch has been flicked off and that this full on meltdown never really happened. Peace is resumed.

Last night, it was a glimpse of the fish tank. He suddenly decided that he absolutely needed to play with the little magnetic cleaner thing, suddenly stopped wailing, walked over to the fish tank and happily tried cleaning the glass.

Meltdown had stopped, he was happy again, I got a cuddle and we successfully managed to get him moisturised and into his pyjamas. We successfully managed to get him up to his bedroom, into bed (after our nightly game of hide and seek!), and after not long, he fell into a snoring sleep.

And this lovely people, is what happens in a Zach meltdown. This is exactly what happens every time he has one. Sometimes he has ones that aren’t as meltdownish as others, but if he’s going to go for it full pelt, this is it. I like that it’s always the same, I like that it’s easy to spot the signs, know what’s coming and know exactly how to deal with it (ie do nothing!). Of course I’d rather they just didn’t happen but when a tired little man doesn’t know how to deal with this feeling of the world (or his parents), being against him (we’re not of course, we just want to get him to bed!), there are no other ways for him to deal with it. And I think it’s so important to remember that when any child has a meltdown, it really is because they just don’t know how to deal with this explosion of emotions.

Me and you? We’d probably have an argument with whoever is pissing us off, but toddlers can’t do this and we wouldn’t want them to. That would be far worse than any meltdown. All they can do is show us exactly how they are feeling. And that’s by doing this…

 Note: This photo was taken a while ago. Whilst I wish that I could have taken one last night, the meltdown was bad enough that I didn’t think it would be fair to shove a phone camera in his face and potentially lengthening the meltdown! 

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