Tan-Tan-Ta-Trum

How to deal with Toddler tantrums

Strategy #1: Stand your ground
Pros: You get your way. Especially useful when time is of the essence, e.g. getting jacket on  to head out the door in the morning.
Cons: Usually escalates situation, so you're soon driving to work with a jacket-clad screaming toddler in the back seat. And when I say screaming, I mean SCREAMING.

Strategy #2: Give in
Pros: Nips the tantrum in the bud.
Cons: Possibly creates 100 new tantrums in the future when the same situation arises. And you have to live with the undisguised scorn of every parent in a 2 mile radius for having been bested by your kid. In these days of instant communication, skype, texting, and blogs, make that a 2,000 mile radius.

Strategy #3: Negotiate
Pros: Civilized solution. Possibly teaches toddler a life skill - using words to express frustration instead of screams. Can make child feel "heard".
Cons: Might not work, in which case it is an object lesson in the futility of trying to have a "civilized" discussion with a hurricane. Who knows just how to make himself heard...

Strategy #4: Ride it out
Pros: Easy to implement (in theory) - just grin and bear it. Teaches child tantrums are not effective in getting you to change your behaviors.
Cons: Bearing it. And the stares of hundreds of strangers when, say, it happens in a store, and you are that horrible parent who stands by looking (not feeling) nonchalant while your kid dissolves into a sobbing puddle on the (usually disgusting) floor of whatever store you happen to be in.

So what to do? In our case, employ a combination of the above hoping we can keep the ratio of Strategies #1 and #2 to Strategies #3 and #4 nice and low. And remember not to judge other parents we find in various stages of argument, capitulation, negotiation, nonchalance, and other states of emotional undress.