I am looking for information and anecdotes about children that are about 20 months old and their tendency to throw tantrums.
My nephew has started to become belligerent when it comes to throwing tantrums. For example, he gets a hold of something that we would not like him to hold, then refuse to give it back. Usually we would try to distract him with some other attractive object and sneak the former object while he is not looking. If we even try to gently wrest the object from his grasp, he starts crying really badly. Like really badly. It is a bit terrifying.
Part of me thinks that this behaviour is learnt. He must have noticed this strategy working for him in the past so he has begun to do it more.
On the other hand, children do be throwing tantrums. I also don't want to baselessly entertain the notion of stricter parenting. As a cold, heartless individual I try to be skeptical of approaches like this to counterbalance my biases.
Thoughts and experiences?
I have a 21 month old daughter and she does this rarely, but it happens time to time. Distracting still works with here. It really depends a lot on, how she has slept, eaten, how much anger there was between siblings earlier, stuff like that.
If it absolutely does not make sense giving her what she wants, we usually will not give it to her, like she wanted to take a suitcase with here when we went to the playground. She started to cry and I had to carry her for 10 minutes while trying to make her happy again. If it happens allll the time and it works for him, like he gets what he wants. Im pretty sure its learned.
Yeah the child's mood is an important factor too. Which is why I asked for anecdotes rather than concrete advice because there are a million small factors that I cannot lay out. Thank you.