Dear Lord, the whining! Make it stop!

[elektra]

Is this our new reality?
DD has been overall a very happy and happy-go-lucky baby for the first 23 months of her life. BUT the past two weeks have been horrible! She gets so worked up over the smallest little things!
I first thought she was coming down with an illness because she was so irritable. But no other symptoms have developed. She is just cranky and gets unhappy if we are not doing exactly what she wants to at any given moment.
I have been trying to head off more situations (ex. turning off the TV before Martha Speaks comes on because if she sees the first few minutes she will freak out if I turn it off, OR if I am drinking juice I will make her a little juice cup too to head off her begging and crying for mine).
But she now just throws a tantrum or whines like crazy for anything from not being able to play with the pen she wants, to the music not being to her liking, or that something is wrong with her yogurt, to who knows what!
This morning I just let her sit there and cry it out over her yogurt issue. I don't know what to do.
I feel like this might be some kind of thing where she is testing her limits and I don't want to do anything that sends the message that this whining is the way to get what she wants. But the whining is driving me crazy! And then I'm thinking, "is something wrong with her?" "Is there something else I can do to help her feel better?"
:(

[DrSally]

Could be just the age. Is she getting any molars? DS acts like this when he's sick or tired. Today I drank some water and it went down the wrong pipe and I was hacking and coughing. All I kept hearing was "I want a show, I want a show, I want a show". OMG. I told DS that it's nice to wait until someone stops coughing to talk to them.

[Melaine]

I wish I knew how to make it stop.....mine have done it since birth though. Now it seems much more annoying.

[Piglet]

Teething??? Have you ruled out an ear infection? My dd sounds a lot like yours and it has recently gotten a bit better as her vocabulary developed. It comes in waves for us, but I would really check to see if she is teething - that makes for a miserable kid :(

[frgsnlzrds]

Both of my sons went through the same thing around the time of their birthdays. It's a stage. Just be consistent and it too shall pass. It's a kind of emotional milestone. For my boys, the third birthdays were so much worse. But after a several weeks they went back to normal. Hang in there!

[mommymy]

Sorry, don't have any advice but just wanted to say I'm in the exact same boat as you and was thinking the same thing this morning as DD was whinning away b/c she wanted tylenol "medicine" b/c she saw her brother get it..but he's sick! I wanted to yell...stop whinning already..but of course didn't...but was very close to :) Hope it gets better. I'm clinging onto what the pp said about "this too shall pass"!

[C99]

Welcome to the terrible twos! And yes, IME, they start around 18 months and last until... well, until they go to school. What can work is to put words to what you think she's feeling -- "You are upset that you cannot have the red pen. Would you like to draw with the green crayon on the paper after breakfast?" I also try to ignore as much as possible when it gets bad.

[elektra]

Thanks for the reassurance. Well I'm not sure which is worse, to have this be something wrong with DD that I need to figure out, or that it's completely normal and will last for years to come!
I have been trying to verbalize to her that I understand she is frustrated that she can't play with the pen for example, and I do try to just direct her to something else.
And I think it's part frustration on her part about not being able to communicate better. She can say alot of words but can't tell me exactly what she wants in a sentence either.

And I do think it's possible it's something with her teeth. The teeth she does have have come in really late and her 1st molars actually just came in. I thought maybe that might mean that she wouldn't get her 2 year molars until she was closer to 3 or something but maybe they are coming in now too.