Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
The toddler years are commonly associated with being a challenging period for parents, as your child begins to display more and more challenging behaviours. “Toddler tantrums”, “Terrible two’s”, there are plenty of phrases that are thrown around for children of this age.
However, it is actually a normal part of your toddlers’ development, to start displaying more challenging behaviour. You tend to see similar types/themes of behaviour from most toddlers. Despite knowing this, it does not make it any easier for a parent to deal with these behaviours.
Therefore, to support any parent who is struggling with their toddler’s behaviour, I wanted to discuss some of the common behaviours you will see from your toddler, as well as some hints, tips and pieces of advice of how you can manage these behaviours.
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5 Common Toddler Behaviours:
1. Hitting/Biting/Spitting
Many toddlers have difficulty regulating their emotions and understanding how they feel. Being such little people, these big emotions can have a significant impact on how they respond to any given situation.
These overwhelming feelings/emotions are what can lead to your toddler suddenly lashing out through hitting, biting or even spitting. I currently have a two year old who has gone through all of these behaviours (and still does from time to time). For parents, you can be left feeling anywhere from frustrated to infuriated, especially when your toddler has had a complete meltdown and smacks you in the face…I have been there!
Whilst it is correct and appropriate to challenge these behaviours, it is also important to understand that toddlers cannot always help behaving this way. Often these actions are reactive responses and not necessarily conscious choices. Therefore, it can be a slower process for your toddler to learn how to change this behaviour.
How to manage this behaviour?
If you find these situations very difficult to deal with, you are not alone. They test your patience and ability to remain calm, usually whilst you are either wiping the spit off your face or assessing your bite mark or injury!
However, there are some steps you can take to manage these situations. If your toddler has begun to lash out at you, it is important to get yourselves to a quiet and calm environment and clearly and calmly explain why that behaviour is not ok. Sometimes your child will just need a quiet space to calm down.
If required, you can also utilise a small consequence for the behaviour to reinforce your point. I tend to use a “time in” consequence, which is where my little girl has to sit next to me, with no toys, TV or stimulation for a set time (usually 5 minutes or so). It is an alternative to the “time out” which is commonly used also, where you sit your child somewhere on their own.
Even though you are likely feeling angry or frustrated yourself, it is important to remain calm throughout. Raising your own emotional level will only prompt further emotional responses from your toddler. The goal of remaining calm is to role model a more calm response and de-escalate the situation.
This is not being dismissive of the behaviour, as your tone of voice can be just as impactful as your volume. If you want your toddler to hear and understand your message, it must be delivered in a way that will allow them to do so. Therefore, shouting is unlikely to prove effective.
The emotional behaviour routine is an excellent example of how you can respond to these situations. Please read the post below for further information on this:
Related post: 5 Steps to Deal With Your Child’s Emotional Behaviour
2. Tantrums
These toddler tantrums can occur sometimes without warning, other times you can see it brewing! Usually, it will not take too much to cause your toddler to have a tantrum. However, typical causes can be your toddler not understanding a situation, not agreeing with something, your toddler being overtired, overwhelmed or what can be the most frustrating, when there is the the tiniest little issue and it turns into World War 3!
Ultimately, toddler tantrums are going to happen. It would be an incredibly ambitious goal as a parent to try and eradicate them completely. However, there are ways to limit the triggers, frequency and severity of these tantrums. This requires parents to be patient, understanding and be able to remain calm at all times.
How to manage this behaviour?
To effectively respond to a toddler tantrum, you need to first of all understand the trigger for it. For example, your toddler could be over tired/over stimulated, could not understand a situation or something has happened that they do not like or agree with.
Each different cause is going to require a different response. There is no one way of handling all toddler tantrums once they have started. However, there are some preventative steps you can take.
Try getting into the habit of calmly explaining plans, decisions or situations to your toddler. Educate them. Help them understand the world around them, what you are going to do, what is happening and try to ease any anxiety, worry or distress they have. When you repeatedly do this over time, your toddler will begin to understand situations and accept what is happening a lot more readily.
Related Post: Why is it Important to Find the Root Cause of Your Child’s Behaviour?
3. Defiance
As your toddler learns and grows, you will undoubtedly begin to see their thirst for independence grow alongside it! Almost overnight, your toddler will decide they can do everything themselves. No matter what the task, parents are no longer required!
As a result, you may start to see your toddler become more and more defiant, often with one simple word…”No!”
My daughter is right in the middle of this stage at the moment. Everything I ask her to do, she will say no. “Hold my hand whilst we cross the road. NO!”. “Can you tidy up your toys? No!”. “Let’s go upstairs it is bed time. No!”
It can be a battle.
How to manage this behaviour?
Your toddler saying no is their way of expressing their independence, testing boundaries or a way of avoiding something undesirable. Whilst is can be frustrating to deal with as a parent, there are ways of limiting the challenge behind these behaviours, whilst also still allowing space for your child’s independence skills to grow.
First of all, try to avoid phrasing commands as questions. If you ask your toddler a question, you have to be prepared for the answer either way. For example, if you ask your toddler if they are ready to go to bed, when you know for a fact they are and you are about to take them to bed regardless. Don’t phrase it as question. If your child says no in response to that question, that leaves you in a position where you are going to ignore their answer anyway, paving the way to more defiance. Instead, make a statement like, “I can see you are tired now, so we are going to go to bed in 5 minutes”. You still may get some defiance, but you have given yourself a better chance of avoiding it.
Secondly, offer your toddler choices. Open ended questions can be difficult for your toddler to comprehend. Therefore, offering a set of choices makes decision making easier for your toddler, allows your toddler to feel that they are independent and making their own decisions, when in reality, they are all options you as a parent are happy with.
Related post: Why Won’t My Child Listen To Me?
4. Running Away
Your toddler running away is one of the more concerning behaviours they display, as it can potentially be dangerous. These behaviours are again more of your toddlers drive for independence coming out. Toddlers have limited control of the world around them. One of the things they can try and control is their feet! If they see an opportunity to run away, they just may do so!
How to manage this behaviour?
Routinely practicing safety skills with your toddler is good practice for ensuring your toddler learns when and where they can safely run and explore. For example, instructing your toddler that holding hands near road or in busy places is a non-negotiable. If applied consistently, your toddler will learn to expect to hold hand, therefore, reducing the chance of them running off.
Furthermore, you can also allow some scope for your child to practice safely following you and walking by your side. I am in the middle of doing this with my two year old currently. When we are in the supermarket, if it is quiet enough I will let her walk independently next to me as we go around the shop. Should she try and walk off or run away, she knows she will have to hold my hand again. Thankfully, she now rarely does this as she knows what will happen.
As with most things, this just requires practice and patience.
Related post: 3 Key Steps to Using Effective Consequences With Children
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5. Throwing Things
Toddlers can throw things for a number of reasons, some innocent, some less so. Early on, toddlers can use throwing things as their very own science experiment. They will throw things to see what noise they make, what happens when they land or what happens if they hit something. However, throwing the wrong object at the wrong target can be a major cause for concern!
Your toddler needs to learn the boundaries of these type of activities. What is allowed to be thrown and where? Even if this is well established with your toddler, they may still resort to throwing things to express their displeasure or anger.
Therefore, this process of educating your toddler of what can and cannot be thrown, has to start early once these behaviours begin.
How to manage this behaviour?
It is important to establish the boundaries around this behaviour very quickly. If something has been thrown by your toddler that shouldn’t have been, calmly explain why that item cannot be thrown, what can be thrown and what will happen if they continue to throw this item (i.e. a consequence/removal of the item). Allow some scope for learning, however, if your toddler continues to throw an item they know they shouldn’t, or does so in anger or frustration, follow up with an immediate consequence.
Be consistent and tight on your boundaries with this, you may feel harsh from time to time, but it will help your toddler learn and prevent injury or damage.
Related post: 7 Steps to Encourage Your Child to Follow Instructions
Summary
There are three words I would encourage you to remember. Clear. Calm. Consistent. These three words should form the basis of your responses to all the behaviours above.
Being clear with your rules and boundaries is essential to help your toddler learn. Grey areas or unclear rules will only increase confusion and likely lead to behaviours continuing.
It is also so important with toddlers that we remain calm. If we lose our cool, the message in anything we say will be lost, as your toddler will be focusing on the fact they are being shouted at.
Finally, consistency is key! We must be consistent in our approach as parents. The rules we enforce, the routines we keep and the response we take. If we challenge behaviour sometimes and then ignore it other times, the toddler will learn that they can sometimes get away with certain behaviours and will likely repeat it.
It can take a lot of effort, but in the long run you will be pleased you did it!
What challenges have you faced with your toddler? Do you have any good suggestions for other parents? Let me know in the comments below!
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Thankfully we avoided too many of these phases. No was a popular one (from both of us), and I remember him having 1 tantrum in the shopping centre. It wasn’t even a tantrum, it was just a shouty cry/lying on the floor. I just walked off where I could still see him with everyone walking around. Someone even said to me ‘good to see someone just leaving them to it’. Didn’t take him long to get up and come back to me, all tears gone.
Haha it is almost like it is a rite of passage for parents to have their toddler shout and screen on a shop floor! But yes, sometimes the more attention you pay the tantrum, the more you fuel it.
This is a good knowledge sharing. I shall share this post with my cousins and friends who have kids. Thank you for sharing.