When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout

Two thoughts on this video clip:

First, I see this kind of behavior every week. At my office, where some people need to work on their interpersonal skills and at the pool where I take my kids for swimming lessons, there is a bank of vending machines that sell canned coffee and soft drinks, bottles of cold green tea, water, sports drinks and, everyone's favorite -- ice cream. The room is stuffy and overheated and I'm there for a couple of hours along with all the other parents and the little brothers and sisters of the kids who are in the pool. I take my ipod and sit facing the ice cream machine and watch a succession of toddlers completely and utterly misplace their feces (occasionally this literally happens, but the diaper-throwing story is one for another day). I'm talking about two-, three- and four-year-old kids who see the ice cream machine and upon being denied a frosty treat, go straight to defcon 5 and launch the mother of all tantrums.

The duration record so far this year is held by a three-year-old girl who, being told she could not have a second ice cream, launched into a 35-minute fit of floor-pounding, screeching, purple-faced rage that culminated in running across the room and repeatedly kicking her mother (the kid, not me) before actually falling asleep/passing out from lack of air mid tantrum.

The intensity record was set by a three-year old boy who after jumping up and down hollering for a few minutes, ran straight into a concrete pillar in the center of the room and bloodied his nose, which seemed to calm him down a bit.

For the record, my kids, while they might occasionally whine, never threw tantrums when they were little. In fact, with one notable exception when I had to take my son outside and explain that no, he could not go to karaoke in the bar adjoining the restaurant and crying at the table wasn't going to get him anywhere, they have always been extremely well behaved where ever we go.

Second, the woman in the video is in the airport in Hong Kong. Its a good thing she's in a country that respects human rights as much as China. Imagine what might have happened if she had carried on like this in certain other places.

crossposted from the Woodshed