Unknown tantrum follows dry diaper night
Our oldest is about 90% potty trained. This really hasn’t been too much of an issue lately as we go through the day fine and I am not really expecting a three year old to wake up from a dead sleep to go to the potty.
Perhaps I’m expecting too little, but it’s not been an issue and we have enough diapers for the 3yo for several more months of one diaper a day.
Yesterday she woke up and the diaper was clean. She seemed happy about that and excited to go to school. She had a fun day at school and was not exhausted when we left.
I took her to the mall as a treat where we went up and down escalators over and over and over again finally stopping at a toy store.
We laughed, played, had discussions about songs that were on, then things started getting a bit weird. She had a minor accident while playing with a toy which wiped out a several day clean underwear streak, then when eating ate a bite or two of food and started getting in a bad mood.
She was having trouble getting a hard boiled egg piece separated from another piece and I just put my fork on it and helped. Wrong step. She decided she was done, left the table and stormed off her her room where she grunted and stomped.
At one point she was saying she didn’t want to go to bed and we informed her that nobody said she had to. This lead to yelling loudly and more stomping to which I ended up closing her door and telling her she could come out when she was quieter.
Baby went down and at this point Maggie was yelling up a storm. Baby was concerned, but overly tired and seemed to wave me away to handle the grump. baby would go about drinking bottle and let me handle the raging beast.
Yelling and stomping continued so I moved the nuclear option to the back yard where she continued to scream at the top of her lungs for about 20 minutes while I ignored the display and handled my own thing (which was mostly not listening to her screaming at the top of her lungs for no reason).
When the opportunity presented itself and there seemed to be a hint of rational toddler again I scooped her up and started talking about the moon and the stars.
About an hour after it started it had ended. She doesn’t know what triggered it. I don’t either.
It’s a different day today. She remembers being mad and keeps saying she is sorry. I told her to not worry about it. She’s got a punishment of not being able to play with a couple of toys that’s in effect for today but to deal with it and move on. Last night’s dry diaper was not repeated.
Punishment is for a couple of the things she did during the screaming, not for being mad. I made sure she knew that. Being mad one thing, yelling because you’re mad one thing, throwing stuff and disrespecting everything around you while trying to break stuff, that’s punishment time.
Overall it was weird. I felt like she was stuck in the need to finish this screaming fit and at times just stuck in a rollercoaster of emotions that was simultaneously scaring her and driving her to more and more anger.
I was annoyed initially but most of the time I was out on the porch with her I was just watching my little baby and making sure she could get out whatever ick was in her.
I let her know in the car today I wasn’t mad and told her to save being sorry and just figure out if there was something that triggered it.
