Stroking My Parenting Ego

Andrina had a melt-down at today's 18 month well-baby visit. She seemed to either get tired of being in the exam room or cranky or just wanted to go home. Of course, being an active toddler in a boring exam room with little stimulation would make her want to leave! Whatever it was, she got really mad towards the end of her visit and kept walking over to the door, hitting it, and saying "home". Well I dealt with this like I do with almost all of Andrina's tantrums and meltdowns. I walked over to her, knelt down and told her that I knew that she wanted to go home but it would just be a little bit longer. She got upset at essentially being told "no" so she tried to throw herself on the floor to have a tantrum. Normally I'd let her do this and ignore it but it was a tiled floor instead of carpet like we're accustomed to at home. So I had to pick her up and hold her while she was screaming and flinging herself about. I told her that I could not put her down because she was too upset and would hurt herself on the hard floor. After a few seconds she settled down so I put her down on her feet and asked her if she would be able to handle this on her own now. The answer must have been "no" since she went back to the door and started hitting it and saying "home" again. I went to the corner of the exam room and got a Cailou board book and exclaimed, "there's babies in this book! I'm going to look at the babies in this book!" Andrina was now just standing at the door looking at me so I went on to excitedly describe what the baby was doing on the first page. That worked to distract her and she came over to me to sit on my lap to see the book. So I'm sitting on the floor of the exam room with a diaper-clad only toddler in my lap and the pediatrician starts telling me how I displayed all of the effective parenting techniques with a toddler. He was saying how I got down on her level, empathized with her, didn't let her hurt herself, gave her the opportunity to soothe herself, and distracted her while staying calm myself. Wow! That was all very nice to hear although I just interacted with Andrina like I always do when she is upset. But thanks for the compliments anyways. I know I'm a great mom but it's nice to get validation from someone else!