Crying: Sad or Attention Seeking. What do I Do?

As babies, crying is the only way to communicate babies' needs, be it a wet diaper, pain, wind or hungry. But as the baby grows into toddlerhood and is able to speak even one word or two word sentence, the child now has another way of informing us parents of her/his needs. Given this, most parents should find it easier to understand and provide for the child. However for some toddler and parents, things don't get any easier but the cries get intensified! Their toddler cries and screams almost all the time! 

As parents, you must be able to differentiate if your child is upset/sad over something or your child is actually seeking attention? Cries due to parting with family, friends, lost of something that is the toddler's favorite, a soft toy that she/he always play with for instance can be grouped as sad/upset.  In this situations, you should acknowledge the emotion your child is experiencing and pacify her/him. 

However, often times, we see toddlers who cry, scream and roll on the floor for some reason. This situation can be a nightmare for parents. Just what makes some toddlers throw such tantrum while some others can ask for something and yet not scream and roll on the floor if her/his wants are not met?  The answer to this is how parents respond to the toddler in moments like this. In many cases, parents quickly give in and provide the toddler with whatever the toddler wants. Let's examine a few situations.

Situation A
Your toddler is playing with some cousins and likes a toy another cousin is playing with. Your toddler snatches it away and off course the other child would pull it back, and your toddler is suddenly on the floor, kicking in the air, rolling and screaming and crying. You come over to check, you panic with the screams and cry and could only think of the easiest way out - give the toy to your child. So you nicely tell the other toddler to share his/her toy with your toddler, taking the toy away from that child and giving it to your toddler. 

Situation B
You are at the supermarket, grocery shopping. You pass by the toy section and your toddler wants to go see the toys. You turn into the toy section. From just seeing, now your toddler wants to buy a toy but you have no plans to buy toys on that day and said "no", and it starts all over again. You feel embarrassed, you think other shoppers are looking and making remarks about you, so you instantly grab the toy, give it to your child and walk away from the toy section. Your child is now quiet, happy that her/his wants have been met. 

The two situations above are observed very often. If you analyse the situation, you will see that what happened is a chain of events that begins with an antecedent, followed by a certain behaviour and eventually brings a consequence. The child's cry becomes an antecedent for you which makes you give in to her/his demands which represents the behaviour and this satisfies the child, makes her/him stop crying. As this happens many times, you give in and your child gets quiet, you will continue to give in because it instantly stops the cries. However without realising, you have indirectly conditioned your child to throw tantrums whenever she/he wants something, because she/he now knows that by doing so, she/he will get whatever she/he wants. This now becomes a vicious cycle which will continue until you choose to do something to break that cycle. 

Usually whenever you are faced with such situations, it is best  not to entertain to their demands the first time itself. However if you are already in that cycle, you need to break from it. When faced with such situations, the best way to deal with it is to pick your child up and explain. Yes explain why she/he cannot have it her/his way. You can pick up and say "I know you want that but you cannot have anything if you  continue screaming like this." Slowly walk around to give sometime to the child to cool down and then sit and explain why you cannot fulfill her/his demands. If we look at situation A above, you need to pick up the child and tell her/him "You cannot have it if you cry and scream like this, you need to stop and we will talk about this." Then once she/he is calm, explain "When you play, you must share, you need to take turns and you cannot snatched toys from others." Then bring your child back to the group, with you seated together, observe how they play and teach your child to ask for a toy, you need to show it for your child to model it. 

A child who always throws tantrums do so, because they think it is acceptable and the right thing to do, it is us parents who need to stop the tantrums and show them the best acceptable way to behave.