# VERY spirited 14-month-old



## cotopaxi (Sep 17, 2007)

Not mine - I'm feeling really lucky right now that she's not even walking yet.
But my friend is at her wit's end and I don't know what to tell her.
Her 14-month-old seems to be very bright, determined, and have amazing motor skills.

If he wants something, he goes after it and doesn't forget about it with any amount of distraction. When he gets mad he hits, bites (his mom and his sister), and screams. She says he can have tantrums for well over an hour. If she takes him out for a walk to calm and distract him he'll scream the whole time and then go right back to going after the forbidden object.

She also says he is able to push the kitchen chairs to where he wants them to be, then climb up on them to get to objects high up. He's also apparently ripped some doorknobs off.

I always tell people "distract, redirect, prevent" at this age, but she's finding it very hard to babyproof effectively given his kind of astounding motor skills, and redirection / distraction is not working given his persistence.

Anyone have a young toddler like this? Did it get better? Did anything you do help?


----------



## Kathryn B (Jan 23, 2007)

My nephew was a lot like that -- my sister ended up using several gates in her home to keep him safe -- bookshelves had to be moved to rooms he couldn't get to because he would climb them; and, yeah, the trick with the kitchen chairs; he did that too. How are his verbal skills? My nephew's verbal skills weren't very good at that age -- they certainly didn't match his motor skills.

Perhaps if your friend's son learned some sign language it would help him to be able to communicate his desires in a way that he could be more clearly understood. "Signing Time" has some very good DVD's -- they aren't cheap, but they are very effective! Have your friend check the library for sign language videos -- it might help a great deal.

Good luck!


----------



## cotopaxi (Sep 17, 2007)

His verbal skills are actually incredible too. Seriously I think this kid will turn out to be an amazing person, it's just such a challenge to parent him as a toddler! They do do sign language with him - he was signing for more, milk, and up at seven months! And then he started talking at I think 10 months, at only 14 months has a spoken vocabulary of 20-30 words.

He scales conventional baby gates with ease apparently - are there any that are higher or harder to climb that you know of?


----------



## AlpineMama (Aug 16, 2007)

Sounds like DS, minus the talking. (No words yet.) We just moved and our entire first floor is empty minus a couch and his toys. Our kitchen is baby gated off but I'm not sure how long that'll hold. Usually he stands at the gate and screams and bangs it so unless I'm cooking something hot I let him in. Baby proofing doesn't work so I moved all the breakables into the garage and let him play with pots. All the other rooms in the house are closed off via doors; I dread the day he can open doorknobs on his own. He's done it once or twice already.

Between him and DD, my days are FULL.


----------



## nextcommercial (Nov 8, 2005)

OY! I had a daycare boy like this!

We called him Bam-Bam. He could pull a kitchen chair with a five year old sitting on it across the kitchen floor.

He broke three pack n Plays, two high chairs and a little Tykes play house.

At age two, his parents put a screen security door on his bedroom, and left him only a mattress, and a bunch of toys in his room. That way, when he woke up in the middle of the night, he couldn't get out. He would play with toys until he fell back asleep. The few times he did get out unnoticed, he was a danger to himself.

He could do amazing things!!! He could practically scale walls. I have no idea where he got his strength.

He split his chin open trying to get over a pool fence before he was two, and he was so determined to get over the fence, that he didn't even care that he'd just hurt himself.

He didn't have the violent tantrums though. Just normal toddler tantrums. He was a pretty happy go lucky kid unless he was very sick. He was exhausting!!! But, I miss the little boy that he was, he was so cute, and fun, and naughty, and determined.

When he started school, they tried out three different schools for him. One was a "hands on" school that specialized in kids like him. No school setting worked for him, and by third grade, they sadly put him on medication. He lives in another state now, and he is doing well, still happy, but mom says he isn't the same on the meds, so he only takes it during the school year. He also gained a ton of weight over the last three years and nobody can explain why.


----------



## pitchfork (May 3, 2005)

don't know what to suggest except to be firm and consistent (and use gates if you need to) my LO was like this, he's now 2.5. Tell your friend it gets better. Mine was talking full sentences, even compound sentences beforehe was two. It helped for me to be really clear about what I could and couldn't allow, and to scale it to what was the reality of what he could do and handle, and then let no be no, even if he freaked.

He could eventually adjust to things that were always NO, and sometimes accept a similar substitute, but overall, we just did a lot of validating. "yes, I know you really want that, it makes you mad Mama won't let you have it"...

On he upside, he's an amazing 2YO, a lot of fun to be around. Still an intense personality, but the respect I have given him as paid off.


----------



## corps9499 (Jun 2, 2005)

My child is like this. She's 3 now. Like some of the other posters, she dragged verbally a little bit and when she became more verbal her listening skills got better, too. She could walk at 8 mo; climbed out of her crib at 14 mo; opened the garage door (and we have one of those really old fashioned heavy wooden ones- search for "strong toddler" on you tube if you'd like to see that lol) just after turning 2; could open so-called child-proof medicine bottles before she was a year old. In fact, I have arthritis and carpal tunnel so my hands and wrists hurt a lot, especially in the morning. I just hand her the bottles and she opens them for me, or if I can't get the lid off a jar of pickles, she'll do it for me. At her daycare, she would give kids rides on the sleds. Two or three kids would sit on the sled and she would run them all over the yard.

My biggest advice for dealing with such a strong, intuitive and spirited child is to prevent as much as possible. And use combination locks on things you don't want them getting into since they can beat the regular child locks. We have chains with combination locks on the cupboards we don't want her in, and lock our medications in toolboxes with combination locks. Also, invest in puzzles. At that age, she was capable of doing 25-30 piece puzzles, or I could take all the pieces of her dozen or so wooden chunky puzzles and dump them in one pile and lay out all the boards and let her do them all at once for more of a challenge. Now, at 3, I give her 100 pc puzzles and she does them. Also, start I work with her on piano and trumpet, so if your friend is musically inclined, perhaps she could start teaching piano? She can't really play any woodwind instruments yet because her fingers are two small to reach all the keys, but I swear she has a better tone on the trumpet than I do - and I'm a music teacher! lol. Also, she NEEDS to get outside everyday and burn some energy or she is impossible to deal with. She does pilates and yoga DVDs with me, too, and I think that helps her as well.

It's challenging, for sure. I just keep reminding myself that she could be the one to grow and discover a cure to cancer or find life on Mars.









Also, I _just_ started reading a book called "Raising Your Spirited Child" a couple days ago (only on Chapter 6 right now) and while I haven't gotten to the parts where they give you specific strategies with dealing with certain situations, I almost cried when I realized that there ARE other kids out there like mine and I'm not a horrible parent! Like I said, I haven't finished it yet, but it looks very promising. I definitely wish I would have found this book when she was 14 mo old!

Is your friend a member here? If not, tell her she can e-mail me anytime... corps9499 at verizon dot net if she wants to talk with someone who's going through the same thing.


----------

