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?
Terrible twos behavior. Of course it could be many things, though.
Generally speaking if everything is otherwise okay at home then they will benefit from consistency and explanations. Assuming there's good reason for them not to have something, it should be removed from them, the reason explained, and then they should be allowed to cry about it, possibly in a separate room. Kids don't know how to fully process their emotions but they will adapt over time to "can't have that thing I want" (most of the time).
It is possible that it is a learned behavior. When parents capitulate for bad reasons they teach the kid that getting upset is rewarded with the item.
It's really really hard to say anything definitive from afar. Kids may display "inappropriate" behaviors that are actually reasonable for their age, or they might be a learned bad behavior, it might be that they are neurodivergent in some way that should be accommodated, or, sometimes, they mean the kid is facing some form of abuse and is acting up because of it. It's very very difficult to give concrete suggestions with confidence from so far away.
He is too young to be explained anything. Still can only speak bisyllabic words.
Sometimes kids can pick up on tone and emotional content as well. Obviously in no way perfectly but the exercise really can work even if they don't understand the words.
Also don't sleep on distraction. It works fantastically well on a lot of kids. Kid falls down? Tell them they cracked the floor! They'll focus on that. Acknowledging that this kid barely knows words yet, placing focus onto something else might still work.
Do you see any patterns to what they grab on to? Or what catches their attention? A large part of handling kids is figuring out what grabs their attention. No need to actually answer, just food for thought.
It's mostly containers with stuff in them that also act as dispensers. I told another user here about tubes like moisturiser and toothpaste. He also likes talcum powder bottles. Bottles like that of baby oil. At times I feel the more he shouldn't have something the more he wants it.
His pattern of usage is something like this. He will spill whatever is in the container a little bit. Smear it around. Maybe eat a little bit. If he wasn't eating all this it would have been much more manageable.
You are right about the tone thing. He has begun to understand tones. It is more of a problem of that he doesn't like taking no for an answer. This can get better with age or worse. I hope it is the former.
You are also right about the distraction thing. I have noticed it too.