Tantrums, Oh the Tantrums

Owen has just come out of a two week bought of tantrums. Basically between moving and him being so sick, we think it threw our little guy out of wack. For two weeks he would throw non-stop, inconsolable tantrums from the time we picked him up from daycare (around 4:30pm) until he'd go to bed at night (8:30pm or so).

The smallest thing would set him off. For example, if he threw his ball and it rolled a little further than he was willing to go to pick it up - tantrum. The tantrums were quite dramatic - throwing himself on the floor. He wanted to picked up and not held at all - at the same time. Everything was a battle - and boy are tantrums exhausting.

We tried lots of different things. Holding him, walking away, trying to distract him with other things. Nada. We can't discipline him for this type of thing yet, he's still too young to understand. We tried increasing the number of naps he was taking to try to get him more sleep - nope, he just slept less (2 days with only 30min total of naps - that experiment certainly backfired). We finally discovered it was best to let him work through it on his own. We would sit next to him so he knew we were there and would read a book in a fun voice and let him do his thing.

He finally came out of this little phase over the weekend. It is so lovely to have our sweet and happy little boy back. Much more pleasant (and less exhausting) to be around. He moves up a level at day care starting on Monday. So we'll have to see if this new transition throws him back into a tantrum tailspin. Calling all parent friends... any suggestions on dealing with tantrums at 14 months old?