A Tantrum Victory

This morning I was cooking chicken drumsticks for my boyfriend to take to work for lunch. I was in and out of the kitchen and my son was crawling all around the living room during this time finding interesting things to play with.

I re-entered the living room and he approached me, lifted his arms up to indicate that he wanted to be picked up. I obliged, gave him a hug and a kiss and then I heard the the timer beep in the kitchen. I went to put my son back down on the floor. He arched his back, began crying and flailing his limbs uncontrollably.

"Here we go again." I thought to myself. But then I thought, "Let me try something." So I carefully placed him on the floor and said "goodbye." in a very matter of fact way. I wanted to communicate to him that if he was going to act in an out of control way, then I would not be around him.

Guess what? It worked. He cried for three seconds, got up and began searching for new and exciting objects to play with.

Victory! One point for mommy!