Dealing with toddler who is easily frustrated

[wendibird22]

How do you approach, deal with, minimize your toddler's frustration? DD (27mos) gets easily frustrated with seemingly little things that set her off on a whining/crying meltdown. Her blocks won't stand up. Her food won't stay on the fork. Her blanky won't wrap around her baby just how she wants. Her arm gets stuck in her sleeve while undressing herself, but no mommy you can't help me! You get the picture. Each of these situations brings her to tears and a request for mommy to hold her. DH and I have tried responding with "try again" or "it's ok, mommy/daddy will help" or "do you need help?" None seem to be particularly effective.

So how do you deal with these outbursts of frustration?

[brittone2]

I think it is very normal but it does drive me nuts!

For us we did a lot of reflecting feelings "You are frustrated." "You wanted the blocks to stand up." and realizing that they are just really struggling with a body that doesn't always do what they want/need it to do. It is hard to realize they are going to be unhappy sometimes, and that it is one of those very normal toddler challenges. It is hard for me to not try to make them happy and let them feel the disappointment or frustration.

We definitely did the whole "do you need help" or showed the kids (reminded them) of the sign for "help" because sometimes they could get the sign out when they were getting too frustrated to get the word out (even after they were very verbal). This worked pretty well for DS. For some reason he found being able to sign it when frustrated really helpful.

DD is approaching 3 and still goes through this. It drives me batty but I just try to remind myself that the frustration is all just part of the learning process and I shouldn't stop her from feeling it. But yeah, it is really hard.