Oh my...what a performance!

I am often calling my son the Oscar Winner. Sometimes I feel like I should have named him Oscar instead of Charles Robert. My son is just now starting to understand his FULL power. And by "full power" I mean his ability to really throw a tantrum. You know the full body kind. He falls to his knees with such drama, then throws is head and hands down and forward then falls flat and rolls around...all this while holding a steady cry. It is truly amazing how he can keep it all together. Rolling and crying...rolling and crying.

There are many times when I have to turn my head so he doesn't see me cracking up. He puts on quite the show, if I let him. But what I choose to do in these situations is tell him that I am not going to watch until he is done. I then proceed to ignore him until he has decided that the "show" is over. Lately, this only takes a couple of minutes. Of course, this all depends on hunger level and tired level. If those levels are elevated than the tantrum could last longer and might need a little interference.

As of late, most of his tantrums are the cause of not getting what he wants...like my cell phone. The cell phone is not 100% off limits because he somehow connected to 911 when I had locked my phone. All I heard was this loud "HELLO", "Hello". I immediately grabbed the phone and said, "HI." She said, "This is 911." I quickly told her my son had made the call and that I was sorry. Her reply was quick and rightfully harsh, "Ma am, take the phone away from your son." I felt like I had just gotten busted by my 5th grade teacher.

Anyway, the phone causes these tantrums. When it happened today my husband asked if he thought we should put him in time-out and I told him that I think he is gunning for attention...any kind of attention. Therefore, if we give him time-out attention, then he has succeeded and will do it more, but if we completely ignore it maybe he will eventually find it boring and move onto other things.

We seem to like the plan so far. For now we will continue to monitor the skills of our budding actor and try our best not to laugh...ok, maybe just a little...out of love, course.