Jerry Seinfeld put it great when he said, “having a toddler is like having a blender with no lid.” And that’s really how it can feel sometimes. And so today, I want to give you my top three tips for distracting your child if you suspect he’s on the verge of a tantrum.

Check out my podcast. I got lots of great information in there about toddlers, toddler tantrums, why they happen, what to do about it. But today, I just want to give you a quick three quick three ways to derail your toddler if you see the storm is abrewin’. Right?

Now that’s really my number one tip when you have a toddler who has a tendency to go into dramatics or hysteria when they don’t get what they want or they’re frustrated about something. The first line of defense is to distract. Get their mind off of it. Change course. Get them focused on something else so that they quickly forget about that other thing. But they need a good distraction to get there. So I’m gonna give you three awesome distractions today.

Number one is bubbles. Keep bubbles on hand everywhere in your house. Just the little ones. We don’t want to make too much of a mess. Bubbles, I never met a child who doesn’t stop and just stare at a bubble going by. They love it! They’re just mesmerized by bubbles. So if you see your toddler and you know he’s getting ready to blow his top, pull out those bubbles and just blow a few. You don’t even have to say anything. He’s just going to stop dead in his tracks and look at those bubbles and hopefully that’s enough of a distraction that he kind of forgets what it was that was bothering him so much over here. Bubbles. Put them everywhere. All around the house, outside. So you don’t have to run around the house to try to find these bubbles. Just keep them on hand at all times when you’re dealing with a toddler. Great distraction.

Another one is music! Again, I don’t know too many kids who don’t love music. Now it’s got to be fairly loud because you want to catch their attention and it’s got to be upbeat and maybe they have a radio a favorite song that you can just crank on every time you sense that they’re about to go into tantrum mode. It’s a great strategy. Again, they kind of stop. They might start to dance and kind of forget about what was bothering them so much in the first place. So have that cued up on your phone or on the stereo ready to go at all times.

The third one is let them make a mess. I know, that’s hard right? Especially if you’re a neat freak or you don’t like mess. But toddlers love to just get down and dirty. They love to make messes. Tell me a toddler who doesn’t love to get his hands in a mud puddle or jump into a rain puddle. So there’s some quick ways that you can make mess you can get out some big buttons, we don’t want them swallowing buttons. But you can get out some sort of thing that you can dump out all over the floor or ribbons that they can kind of throw around and make a big mess. Your Tupperware drawer. Lots of toddlers love to get into that Tupperware drawer. So give them permission. Just fling open the drawer throw out a few things and see if you can catch their eye and distract them from whatever was bothering them.

Another great tip for making a mess and this will have to be parents supervised is to put them in a tub an empty tub with some shaving cream. Just spray some shaving cream around the perimeter of the tub. You can sprinkle some food coloring on it if you want to to make it fun. And just let them sort of finger paint with shaving cream. It’s really fun. In fact, I got a picture from a friend of mine the other day with her two little kids in the tub with the shaving cream and she said, “they said, ‘isn’t this fun?'” And they really got a kick out of it. So that can be a quick way to distract your child. Just let them make a mess. At first, they might not know you can even take the shaving cream and just spray it on the counter and kind of let them finger paint through it. Finger painting too is another great thing to do, just dump some finger paint out on the counter or on a piece of paper and let them kind of muddle through it. And it’s a really good distraction. And they’re gonna have fun doing it too.

So those are my top three toddler tantrum distractions. Thanks for watching today! Sleep well.