Why must he always find SOMETHING to freak out about when out of the house??

[eirual]

DS just turned 3, I feel like we haven't had an enjoyable outing in a looong time! It seems there's always something that he gets caught up on and turns the outing into a freaking-out-screaming-crying, non-communicating frenzy.

I don't get it.

We can usually sort it out half an our after the fact after we've given up and gone home and he's calmed down, and there's usually a fairly simple sol'n, but in the moment there's no responding to any logic or sympathy it's just full-fledged freakout.

We just tried to walk down to the farmer's market and didn't make it 3 houses down the street- he was wanting a big snowball (large chunk of snow from a snowbank) but none of them were big enough, I tried giving him some big ones, but they weren't big enough. I tried letting him know that we'd walk on and we could find some big ones as we go. I tried inticing him with pushing the cross-walk button, offering to carry him the sling, asking if he wanted to just go home, asking him what he needed, offering cuddles and sympathy- and that resulted in him wanting to run off in the other direction.

Is there anything here that I'm missing??? :

[fritz]

Maybe he's just easily overstimulated? Inside a house is a finite space with a finite number of objects that are fairly familiar. Outside is literally a whole world of sights, sounds, textures, colors, smells--maybe it's just too much for him to process at once?

Or maybe it really was all about wanting a really big snowball.... If my DS (3.5yo) is fixated on something, he is single-minded in its pursuit--so that no matter what I ask him, it gets a "No!" b/c he's so focused on xyz, and until xyz is resolved, he just can't deal with anything else.

Maybe just revise your expectations, so instead of focusing on the end result (farmer's market), you focus on the journey itself (let your son's interests guide you). It might cut down on your frustration.

[Bleu]

IME, if it's happening with that degree of regularity, it's not the "something" that's triggering the freakout, it's a freakout that's going to happen anyhow, and the snowball is just pretext. Not that he's lying or manipulating, because he's too little to do that, and I'm sure in his mind it's the snowball.... but it's not. The freakout is coming from your son, not the snowball, ykwim? If you try to solve it by adult logic, you will drive yourself mad.

I wish I had a solution better than what you're doing now, but I don't - and I'm not sure there IS one. You manage the basics by making sure your kid is rested, fed and able to handle the environment, and then if after that he's still freaking out, you can offer comfort, food, distraction... just as you're doing now. Sometimes that will be enough; sometimes not. I found that really hard to accept -- I wanted to fix it, you know? It's hard because you're moving from his babyhood when you really could solve all his needs and wants, to childhood where you can't.