oh the screaming...the screaming

My middle girl is the same age and has the same name. Apparently naming my girl Abigail is where I went wrong. I know exactly what you mean with the unbelievable screaming. This is my second girl; my first was as sweet as can be at that age. This one... not so much. At first I was worried that she may have some form of autism. Her rages just come out of the blue. She claws at us, hits us, grabs things from us just to throw them... I've never seen anything like it. In all honesty, I'm pretty much in the same boat as you and hoping someone else will have a good answer, but I can tell you what I've done that seems to help.

First off, you yelling is going to make it worse every time. If she'll let you, you might try picking her up and singing softly in her ear. Sometimes that makes my girl quiet down so she can hear. I usually try to sing some folk song or something with a nice gentle rhythm and some horrific storyline like Tom Dooley or Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. If I could find a song about leaving screaming children on windswept crags, I'd sing that to her. It makes us both feel better. I'ev always wondered if that's why nursery rhymes are so scary.

Sometimes the higher volume thing works for us, but with music, not voices. Kids take a raised voice as something upsetting, but loud music can make them curious enough to stop and listen. When I try this approach, I go with Moterhead's Ace of Spades. I'm a sucker for the classics.

In an effort to prevent the screaming in the first place, my wife and I have both started spending more time with Abby. I take her upstairs to bed with just her and me, instead of her and her sister at the same time. She really enjoys the one-on-one and seems to have been craving it. My wife takes her for walks in the evening, which Abby loves. Both the personal attention and the exercise have seemed to help her stay more calm, more level. I also try to reduce the times when she can get jealous of her siblings, like giving Abby her dinner plate first so she doesn't attack her sister to steal her food. That seems to have helped too.

The best thing that I've found is taking a team approach with my wife. Just last night I was dealing with a screaming fit from Abby that lasted for damn near three hours. She just. Wouldn't. Stop. Nothing I did made any difference, except maybe to make her more angry. I finally went downstairs to get some gas drops (another good thing to try. Sometimes it's as easy as their little tummy hurts) and my wife asked me if everything was OK. As I recall, pretty much every second word out of my mouth was fuck, fucking, or fuckingshit. My wife just said "hey honey, take a break. Let me deal with her for a minute". She got Abby calmed down, I got myself calmed down, and Abby and I went to sleep about 30 minutes later. It's not that my wife was doing anything different, it's just that to Abby, the situation had changed by having a different person there. She was stuck in a screaming rut. It works the other way too. My son has been grumping at my wife all day, and right now he's snuggled up next to me, snoozing away. It just took a change of parental scenery to calm him down.

Like I said, all the things I've mentioned have only made a small, though noticeable and positive change in the screaming fits I have to deal with. I'm looking forward to hearing how other guys deal with this, too. Good luck and keep us updated.