For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for January 22, 2023

yeah, El, pay attention to April’s fuss

It’s just not worth doing if your audience goes away !

Good way to handle it Elly.

Give her something to do.

Give her something to cry about my dad use to say.

A good performance is wasted without a good audience.

So funny! – the peppy little bounce in her step when she’s in the hallway, near the staircase.

Ahh! It looks like none of that laundry has any buttons on there for April to swallow. Guess she will just have to make do with that one button in her stomach.

Saw a video on AFV years ago of a kid that did the same thing – the parents taped it (yes it was that long ago) and won $100,000 for it!!

Somebody needs a nap !

Poor April! It’s kind of hard to find your audience when it keeps going from room to room to room.

Brat needs the wooden spoon across the butt.

Try a bucket of water.

My daughter. One time I just stood there and applauded – she had no idea what to do. But she stopped doing it after that.

You can tell this isn’t Elly’s first experience of motherhood!

When my niece was a little girl our family dog was running around, collided with her, and hit her in such a way that she rode up onto his back, stayed on it for a second or two, then fell off. The rest of us immediately rushed to her aid, but she got up on her own and was perfectly fine — until she saw all the attention, at which point she laid back down and started to cry (and a not particularly convincing cry at that).

A friend’s cat was mad at him and turned her back. When he left the room, she followed him so she could sit down and turn her back on him again!

A performance is only good if it has an audience. Have done funerals with no one showing up.

Apo just learned the first lesson of a performer: It’s not worth it without an audience.

When the audience leaves, the performance stops.The only thing that would stop my sisters tantrums was when mom left the room.

Yeah, we got the ’I’ll give you something to cry about’ (when we were about 4 yrs old) comment and mom would follow through.It’s what her generation knew.(Although when she was growing up (1930’s), if she was acting up she got beat with a hot poker and she has the scars to prove it.)

It taught us she meant it when she told us we were crying about nothing and get yourself under control pretty darn quick with the first warning to cut it out.

While we never did this with our son, just telling him about how grandma use to do this was enough for him to learn to get himself together.

Get attention when you can.

Keep it up, April, and you’ll be in a time out.

Spoiled?

If you look up the word Diva in the dictionary it says: Noun: for complete definition see toddler

We had one do this to us in the remote past. He unfortunately for him decided to throw his tantrum in the kitchen and I was at the sink. I filled a glass of cold water and then calmly turned to him and emptied the glass on his sweet little head. He suddenly quit crying. And you know he never did that again. LOL!

Fits don’t work if there’s no one around to see them…

Calvin did something similar:

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/05/14

Same thing applies to adults also….

Make a video. Then when she’s a teenager you can threaten to put it on youtube.

Truth!

Our doctor gave the same advice. Ignore the tantrums and they will quit throwing them. I had to pull my wife away a few times, but they did quit.

When my young kids accompanied me to the grocery store and saw another child melting down, they’d loudly say, “Look! That kid is having a tantrum.” It always stopped the tantrum-thrower in their tracks. There’s something powerful about having another child (as opposed to an adult) pointing out inappropriate behavior.

Just as I always suspected

LOL True, so true!

April strikes her first blows against the tyrannical idiot!

Tantrum the sequel coming to a parent near you.

I think I saw this on Funniest Home Videos.

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April is learning quickly to manipulate adults.

When my granddaughter was 2 I had to make her leave a room and I shut the door so she would be where I could keep an eye on her. She laid down on the floor, didn’t make a sound. I asked her if she was having a temper tantrum, then said, “well, come find me when you are finished”. Then I walked away. She had a look on her face like that’s now how it’s supposed to work. Her little sister at about the same age did the same thing with a similar result. They had both started attending a mommy’s day out at that age. BTW – my husband and I had raised 3 boys.

Ear plugs are amazing.

Spare the rod, spoil the child…

Another good reason not to have any.

Needs an audience, or why bother…

Just keep ignoring her until she realizes her tantrum accomplishments nothing.

To be fair, April may be reacting to all the castor oil, prune juice, and milk of magnesia she was given to get the button out.

Hah! A temper tantrum is no good without an audience. ;-)

As t hey say in the real estate business—LOCATION<LOCATION!!

My bro-in-law tried that once. He had been talking to a friend about getting what they want from their parents. The friend said he would throw a fit just to embarrass his parents. My BIL did that right in the middle of a grocery store. The worst part was that he was 11 yo at the time. My MIL knew what he was doing and just walked away. No more fits.

Kids going through the terrible 2’s really just don’t want to be terrible they just want or like to be not ignored, it’s not about the attention it’s about the love.