Help! Terrible Twos Have Come...

[TinkerbellSwt]

What do I do??? I wasnt prepared for this and when I signed on the dotted line, no one told me that they are sooo bad. All Colin does is whine all day and cry. I know he is teething still, but this isnt that.. I hate to say it, but it is grating on my nerves. There have been times I just want to run away. I cant stop him from whining.. I play with him, color with him, keep him busy, he just loses interest and starts whining. He just walks around.. whining and crying!!

Help moms out there.. should I just ignore the whining? I dont want him to think whining is the answer, but I feel bad leaving him alone with it. The crying too, when I know it isnt a distress cry, its trying to get my attention, then he gets it and he doesnt seem to want it.

I dont know, maybe today is just a bad day. We are saying goodbye to a family pet today. The Old Man has to be put to sleep. He is a ferret. He outlived his life expectancy.. he is completely bald now, they say its cancer. That is how most ferrets go.. they are my b/f's really, we really havent played with them since Colin came along. We still have Tsunami, but he is losing weight rapidly (he was always heavy). Tsunami is only 3 and has never lived without the Old Man, I dont know how he is going to take it. I feel bad for him too. I feel like he is going to be looking for the Old Man and be confused on where he is.

Sorry, two different things in the same thread..

[CarlaB]

Stephanie, be there for him when he needs you. You can't spoil a kid with too much love.

That being said, he can't whine to get what he wants. He needs to learn there are other ways, like talking. If he's upset, hold him. If he's mad, hold him. But don't just give him whatever he wants because he's crying about it, then you're just reinforcing the crying. Be sure he still gets naps, even if it's not daily. When my kids got particularly whiney, I put them to bed ...at least then they knew that if they whined, I thought they were telling me they're tired.

To this day, NOT ONE of them will tell me they're BORED! LOL If anyone's bored, I say, "Great, the kitchen was needing to be mopped, please get a bucket of water and mop it for me!" And I do follow through and make them mop!

Give them appropriate consequences to form their behavior. Crying = tired. Bored = chores.

At least two year olds are just whiney. Three year olds are two year olds with INTENT! Get prepared!!

And, I do think you are less able to handle it today with losing your pet. Sorry to hear about that. Colin will be upset about it, too, but won't be able to verbalize it.

[TinkerbellSwt]

Thanks Carla, I needed to hear words of reassurance. I know its tough for Colin not being able to talk yet, they wont give us speech therapy yet, he doesnt do enough imitation stuff for that. He has early intervention for OT, PT, and DT. just not speech yet, so he cant verbalize what he wants.. I will continue to try what I am doing. thanks

And thanks for the words about losing my pet.. its hard.. I never realized how much I care for the little buggers! He will be missed.....

[Fiddle-Faddle]

Great advice from Carla! That woman has EXPERIENCE (and wisdom)!!!

I just wanted to add that there are two things you may need to do, and they are totally at odds with each other.

1) You may need to scream your head off with frustration! Or at least, find an outlet or safe place to vent, let off steam, punch pillows, run up and down the stairs, etc...

2) You will have way better results with Colin if you are calm (which sounds impossible when you feel like punching something).

Since he is probably just as frustrated as you are, since he doesn't understand a whole lot, and is able to make himself understood even less, PREPARATION is a biggie. Tell him what to expect before it happens, and tell him over and over again. ("After breakfast, we are going to the grocery store, and after that we will play outside, and after that we will eat lunch, and after lunch we lie down,etc" If you are repeating a lot, you can even stop short of saying the last word, and see if he can fill it in.

If you are not home, and he is getting hungry, make sure you have packed some nibbles and a water bottle for him. 2-year-olds cannot deal well with hunger (it's a survival instinct), and that, along with being tired, is a huge Whine Causer, especially at a grocery store, where there are delicious foods and aromas everywhere.

Unfortunately, you can't bring instant naps with you, but you can pack distractions. My oldest son loved those books with the push-buttons that made noises, and my youngest loved wind-up music boxes (like the kind that are attached to over-the-crib-mobiles). As long as I kept winding it for her, she was happy. My middle one loved to count the most ridiculous things--like dumpsters we passed while driving. And they all loved sing-along- C D's, and were happy to sing those songs with me when we were stuck on line at the grocery, etc.

Not to imply that you would be doing this, but a huge percentage of the whiny kids I see are with moms who have cell-phones glued to one ear. Multi-tasking is a must for most moms, but cell-phone conversations do not go with parenting a 2-or-3-year-old; they just need too much one-on-one attention.

You can find a book to support pretty much any style of parenting. There are several I like by a husband-and-wife team named William and Martha Sears. He is a pediatrician, she is a nurse/lactation consultant, and they have 8 children. Their approach is very positive, very flexible (apparently their first 3 children were textbook-normal, and their 4th broke every rule in the parenting textbooks), and tends to center on understanding.

They have a really good website: www.askdrsears.com. I hope it helps!

[CarlaB]

Great advice from Carla! That woman has EXPERIENCE (and wisdom)!!!

1) You may need to scream your head off with frustration! Or at least, find an outlet or safe place to vent, let off steam, punch pillows, run up and down the stairs, etc...

Thank you.

I've always vacuumed ... with kids the house always needs it, and if you need to blow off steam, at least it's getting something done at the same time! LOL Plus, you can't effectively talk with anyone when the vacuum cleaner is running, so you get some time alone.

Good advice from Fiddle-Faddle, too.

[TinkerbellSwt]

Thanks to both of you.. I am not a parent with a cell phone in one ear.. I see those women and wonder how they do it?? Maybe I am just a bad mom?? The worst I do is come on here to read the boards when he is just whining.. after I have tried everything I can think of. Maybe I can find something, somewhere like you said Fiddle, a toy of his that will distract him too.

He also has a case of the blahs too. He is bored with all his toys, intervention comes and we are up and at em.. (two of them bring great big bags of toys, educational stuff) He also hasnt been to the sitter in over a week, where all the kids are his age and there is only about 4 of them and he loves the socializing and playing with all the different toys.. she is on vacation in Spain.. ahhh, she is back this week... how nice for us!

Thanks for all the kind words of encouragement. I just need to know sometimes that I am not a bad mom, this is just how a two year old reacts... I feel so bad sometimes...

[Fiddle-Faddle]

Good advice from Fiddle-Faddle, too.

Thanks!

I was also thinking--at age 2, he might need lots of outside, run-around, playground-type time (say, an hour every morning). THat can be a total sanity saver for you--he can blow off steam, and theyn he'll take a nice nap for you after lunch!

I was also thinking that just because they aren't giving him speech therapy doesn't mean you can't. You can learn a lot just by searching on the web. Youcan also do what a friend of mine did and if you ever need a babysitter, contact your local college and see if one of the special-ed majors or speech-therapy majors is interested in babysitting.

[Fiddle-Faddle]

YOU ARE NOT A BAD MOM!!!!!!!

[girlfromclare]

I know that this is meant to be the 'anything but celiac' space but just a thought, is he celiac or is that you or some other member of the family that is celiac since you are in this website? Cause my son is a celiac and his main symptom was constact whining... im talking all day every day about every little thing!!! You could barely say hello and he would start to cry. it was very frustrating and i often spent days crying myself until we realised the problem was celiac... if he is already on a gluten-free diet perhaps it is cross contamination? Sounds like any child who does that much crying is feeling frustrated for some reason that they cant explain i.e. pain... or discomfort. It drove my little boy mad from age 1 upwards... thank god he is a different child off the gluten but if he has even a tiny bit, the crying comes back!!! the terrible twos is one thing - but one can normally tell if it is a temper tantrum or just constant unexplainable crying...

good luck... oh and you arent a bad mom... i thought i was for three years until i found out, when my boy was four, that he was suffering all the time and it wasnt my parenting skills... or lack of...

liz

[TinkerbellSwt]

Colin is gluten free and has been since birth, by choice. We are having the genetic tests done in June, but even then he will live a gluten free existance, as gluten in any form is not allowed in my house. But thanks for the info. If he was getting CC, I would be sick too, we eat the same things and share most of our food...

[girlfromclare]

Colin is gluten free and has been since birth, by choice. We are having the genetic tests done in June, but even then he will live a gluten free existance, as gluten in any form is not allowed in my house. But thanks for the info. If he was getting CC, I would be sick too, we eat the same things and share most of our food...

oh well that explains that then! Well the terribe twos are fairly hard work at the best of times. i find with my daughter who is just going through them herself, that ignoring the crying and starting to look at something else or pointing out something to distract her is working quite well. i used to do all of those things with my son but they never worked as he would just keep crying anyway. Dairy is a huge mood swinger with my son too and we had to take him off it completely!

By the way a handy trick is to have things they like at hand - but good treats like raisins or strawberries or whatever you think is nice but without being goodies because then it becomes bribary and theyre so clever that they would start doing it just to get the goodies!! But some fruit or something like that, that they like is brilliant to lighten the mood...

[TinkerbellSwt]

Thats a good idea too. We just took Colin off of dairy a few weeks ago, due to constipation problems. And since soy milk, voila... problem solved.. that makes a difference too. Thanks for all ideas and suggestions.. I will just keep plowing away.. at least I know I am not alone in this!! Thanks everyone!