16 Month Old and Screaming

Yes, get down on eye level and look her straight in the eye. Very softly tell her that when she speaks in a soft voice like you are speaking right now that your ears will be able to hear her better. Don't respond to any loud requests without doing this and getting her to lower her voice.

My guess is when she screams just to scream she is testing the sound of her voice. You can do the same as above, but instead of telling her it is not okay, tell her that it hurts your ears and to please use a voice that is soft like the one you are using now, or put her in her room and close the door. Tell her she can scream when she is alone and it doesn't hurt others ears.

Then the old inside and outside voice thing.

Ahhh, I was/still am in the same boat as you. It was right about at 16 months that my son started doing that as well. He is now 17months old and the only thing we have found to help is to put him in timeouts. We tell him when he is screaming to tell us what he needs/what the matter is and if he continues to scream we tell him if he continues to do that he will have a timeout. I'll admit it makes a lot of trips up the stairs to his bedroom but slowly but surely it seems to be helping. We put him in his crib and take out his blanket and stuffed toys and let him know that he is in a timeout right now. He usually continues to scream (even louder) but once he calms down we go back up to his room and explain why he was up there and then give him a hug and kiss, tell him that we love him and then bring him back down stairs to play. When we bring him up there he used to scream for a long time but now it is becoming shorter and shorter and now even if we bring up the word "timeout" he seems to understand a bit of what is going to happen if he doesn't quit. I wish I could say he would just quit screaming right then but that is not usually the case. I think this is just a phase that they are going through...one of many :) Hope this helps a bit.

In a non-threatening or injuring way...scream too! I have tried that with positive results. It took just a couple times. I also now diffuse lavender and other YL essential oils into our home and love the results!

16-month olds get frustrated very easily. When my children were that age, if I knew their screaming was not attention grabbing -- that they wanted to say something to me but were frustrated because they couldn't get the words out -- I would just get down on their level, take their hands and calmly tell them that I couldn't understand them when they were screaming and I would wait until they were ready to calm down and tell me what they wanted. Once they calmed down and struggled to say what they wanted to say, I would help them say it a little bit better or give them the words, giving them a lot of kudos (a big hoopla) for using their words and not yelling and screaming. It was all a work in progress but this seemed to work for us.

Hope this helps.

This is a really normal phase. Little ones experiment with everything including how loud they can be. Fun for them, not so fun for you. I think you are handling it well. It won't go on forever.

i babysat a long time ago for a screaming 3 yr old.. and didn't know what to do... my mom told me to wet my hands and splash her when she would scream.. or when she would hold her breath... it worked.. .. my mom also said a water gun is good for this... don't laugh.. just squirt it.. then put it away... it's realy not mean.. try it... good luck