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Dr. Su Laurent: It's very rare that a child gets through the first three years of life without tantrums and that's why it's known as the terrible twos. It's all to do with the state of development which is learning about asserting themselves, learning about who they are, learning about who's in control.
I think, what's very important for the parents at this stage is to realize that this is the child testing their boundaries and testing your parenting to this limit to see how you come up. If you don't quite clearly show where the boundaries are, they will continue to push back until you do. So, temper tantrums are all about showing your child, okay, that's acceptable and, okay, that's not acceptable and what happens if it's not acceptable.
Male Speaker: What should happen if it's not acceptable?
Dr. Su Laurent: I speak for most pediatricians and health workers when I say that smacking is not acceptable. That is never a good way of demonstrating to a child that they're doing the wrong thing, because all it's doing is showing a type of aggression toward the child. Before you know, they'll be smacking you back again or they'll be using that on other children.
So what you have to do is, there are two very important things to remember, really. First of all, it's as much as possible to ignore bad behavior. So to put the child out of harm's way, put them somewhere where they can't harm themselves or anybody else and just simply ignore them when they're having a tantrum. Because if they get ignored, they won't get the feedback that they want from it. Eventually, they'll think there's no point doing this.
At the same time, it's really important to reward good behavior. It's always important to remember if a child has had a very good afternoon and they've been very well-behaved, remember to say, "You've been so good today!" And maybe even give them a little something to say, "You've been very good" and try and focus on the things they do well and ignore the things they do badly.
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