Verdict: Fail

There is nothing that makes me feel more like a failure than when my two year old melts down in front of other people. He is so completely different than Charlotte in that regard. When Charlotte would melt down I could almost always get her to do breathing exercises with me until she calmed down or if I picked her up and held her close she would just relax into me. It was almost like she really wanted to calm down and just didn't know how. It took time and patience, but I never felt out of control when she would do it in front of others.

Greg on the other hand will look you in the eye and scream and scream and if you pick him up he will go rigid and continue to scream in your ear. When we're at home I just send him to his room until he stops. And his stopping of the crying is just as abrupt as the starting. It's not like he needs to "calm down" it's like he just needs to flip the switch to turn it off and then he's fine again. Once he's done he comes out and joins in the family activity. I've done it so much that when he feels he needs to let it all out he starts walking to his room before any waterworks even start. When we're home we just let him ride it out in his room. Out of the house though, I have no coping mechanism and it makes me feel like I'm failing.

Today he started a meltdown at another person's house. This was our first ever visit there and it was awful. I had no idea what to do. In the end I picked him up put shoes and coats on all of us and left. He continued to scream at me for an hour. AN HOUR. Just when I thought he would calm down he would intentionally take a huge breath and start all over again. He was so mad he wouldn't even eat his sausage at lunch. I don't know if you know this, but he is highly carnivorous.

Sweet little miss Charlotte tried to help him by offering him all sorts of her things if he would only stop crying. His reply to that was to sob/scream at the top of his lungs that he didn't want that! I finally told her to just ignore him because he wasn't going to stop. Boy did I feel like a failure.

Because of his meltdown and my frazzled attempts to just stop the yelling I sort of missed out on an important piece of information that someone was trying to tell me. I couldn't even process the information fully until a solid hour and a half after his yelling fit had quieted down. Then once I had processed it I realized that I must have totally seemed, well, I don't know what I seemed like, but I know I missed the mark on that one today.

I know much of this is just living through it. He's two that's what they do, but wish I could teach him a better way of dealing with situations that don't go exactly how he wants them to. That's going to happen to him and he's got to figure out how to cope with it. Here's hoping that he grows out of this behavior sooner rather than later.