HELP! How do you deal with screaming?

1

1sttimemom

Registered User
My 9 month old won't stop screaming. She doesn't scream when she wants something, she screams when she's happy, excited and everything in between.

She went through phases where she did do some screaming, but now that she's older and I am dreading the 12 hour flight back to Canada we'll be doing when she's 12 months old, I've been trying to stop her screaming.

For about a week, I would say but on a blank face, drop the tone of my voice, and say "no, no screaming". It worked, but then my in-laws came, watched her on their own for 3 hours, and all the work I had done went out the window.

In the last few days, I've had to say "no" 20-30 times. She is screaming more than ever before.

How do you all handle screaming? If I let her scream at home, but say "no" when she screams away from home, will she know the difference? I have a feeling she's screaming more than ever because she's trying to test my limits and everyone else...
 
nope, she won't know the difference. patience, perseverance and persistance.....that's all that will work.
 
thanks mamas. my mom keeps saying that it's just a phase. i sometimes feel guilty, like i'm stopping her from expressing her emotions (excitement, happiness)... but when i imagine her screaming for no reason on a plane.. UGH.
 
I am interested in the advises from other moms. My 9 month old baby is not screaming, but blowing saliva. He is doing it everytime, went he is being fed..... he would just blow when his mouth is full, blowing all his food over us. When he did that 2 weeks ago when I was feeding him, I told him not to do it, and seemed to work. My helper took care of him during the following week days, and last weekend (my turn to take care of the baby again), he was doing it again.. over and over again. I asked my helper, and she said that she would tell him not to do it.. but I don't know how consistent she is when trying to teach my son (I, for example, would tell him not to do it with a serious face... and if he continue, I would stop the feeding and even leave the room, and resume later if he behave).

Sometime I don't know if he really know the meaning of NO. Sometime we tell him not to do it, when he is blowing saliva, and he would continue...probably find it funny? Got the attention he wanted? I wonder if it would be better to just ignore the bad behavior (like screaming, in your case).. then he may know that he would not get any attention if he does it.
 
I find that with things like that, often completely ignoring it works better than giving her all the attention of saying "no" every time. She's not being "naughty", she's just playing, and your responses may be a game for her. Particularly at that age... If they were older and DELIBERATELY being cheeky and if they were old enough to know not to, then I would say "no" and correct them, or even use time out or a stern word - but at that age, it's just a game to them and the less attention they get, the less "fun" it will be for them... just my opinion anyway...
 
my little one enjoys doing blowing saliva too - she started at 9mths and now at 10mths does it occassionally but not as frequently....we tried saying "no" but she'd do it more because it was fun...then we ignored it and continued with whatever we were doing and she blows her saliva less. i think it might be because she has found her teeth, and wants to play with it and thinks it fun. think your baby will eventually move on to things that are more "fun" - mine is starting to bite everyone she likes to play with now!
 
Yeah, I'd go with pointed ignoring from everyone in the room, it's slow but it works and isn't 'mean' because as you say, they're only experimenting with stuff that is fun and ways to express themselves so it's not like you want to come down hard on them!
 
I see both styles here. Interesting! I have officially given up saying "no" for the rest of April. We'll see how it goes. She doesn't laugh (at me) when I say "no, no screaming" because I have a really serious/blank face on, but part of me doesn't want to stop her from expressing herself, as jvn points out, and it may just be a phase.... so I am not 100% behind my "no, no screaming" discipline.
 
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