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Hello, I'm pretty new to the forums, but I've been listening to FDR podcasts for about two years. Here is a little bit of context before I ask my question: I'm a 24 year old stay at home dad, I have a 1 1/2 year old daughter who I have joint legal/physical custody of and I have her 50% of the time. I fought for half custody before she was even born fortunately, and I got it. Obviously things didn't work out in the relationship I had with my daughters biological mother, but that's a long story. I've been married now for about a year, and my wife is able to support us both so I can stay home. Our custody arrangement is called a 2-2-3 system, basically we transition her every 2 1/2 days; it's a lot of transition, and I'm trying hard to get it changed to weekly. Okay now that you have some basic context of my situation, here is my question: How do I deal with tantrums of a 1 1/2 year old? Understand that my daughter is switching homes every 2 1/2 days, with different parenting styles, completely different environments, etc. That in itself would make anyone's life very difficult I'd imagine. She isn't old enough to communicate in English yet, so she can't explain to me why she's upset. I'll give an example of what I mean by tantrum: I'm trying to teach her how to use a spoon so she can feed herself. Sometimes during mealtime, I'll put her bowl of food with a spoon on her high chair for her and demonstrate what to do. Occasionally she'll completely freak out and scream if I have her try to feed herself. If that's the case, I hug her and try to calm her down and let her know I love her. That doesn't work though, so I'm basically forced to just wait until she's done screaming, then I distract her to make her laugh and get her mind off it, then she's fine and will eat (if I feed her though). I'm not quite sure what to do, because I don't want to positively reinforce her behavior by hugging her, but I also want her to know that I care. That's just one example, it doesn't revolve around eating. I know Stef talks about tantrums sometimes and says that his daughter never has had one. My situation is unique though, because I only get my daughter half of the time. In my household it's very peaceful, fun and relaxed; and not only do I not know what the other household is like, but it's hard to say how she'd behave if I had her 100% of the time. I hope my question makes sense. Thanks for your time, and let me know if I can provide any further information.

I am a mom of a boy who turns 3 in a couple of months and his tantrums are getting hard to deal with. I am putting a lot of work into coping with them by breathing and trying to remain calm (and not flipping my lid as well) but it's wearing me out. Today I went to meet a friend for lunch and as a compromise we got take-out and went to a park because my son will not sit still at a restaurant for more than 10 minutes. When we got to the park he did not want to get out of the car, and cried, and rebuckled his carseat, and kept saying "Sit down! Sit down! Go home!", and turned red, and.... it was awful. I wanted to do what he was asking and cancel our lunch but my friend (who is 68 and never had kids) said "If you cave he's just going to keep throwing fits to control you." So, I took him out of the car and walked to a picnic table where he kept trying to leave us and walk back to the car. I would go get him and calmly bring him back to the table and tell him "No, we can leave after we finish eating." He kept crying, throwing a fit, hitting me, hitting himself... My friend and I didn't even have a conversation, but I forced him to stay with us while we ate our food. I feel like such a bad person for forcing him to do things he doesn't want to do but a bad parent (in other people's eyes) for giving in to tantrums. It is so hard for me to make it through a 20-30 minute tantrum without having my anxiety go through the roof. Is it really so bad to give in?