Thanks everyone for chiming in. I appreciate your responses. I can totally see everyone’s view on this and agree with all of you to a certain extent. I am happy with the outcome of this particular scenario since no one was hurt and my niece was almost immediately calm once she has some space away from all the other cousins. Obviously, I was asking a general sort of question, so I’m going to get general answers, but the specifics that have been speculated upon are these: She was throwing hard objects (dollhouse furniture, barbie type dolls- objects that would hurt) I sat with her on a couch for a moment before it became clear that she needed to rage, not be comforted and I was not going to let her do that with my baby in her path. It should be said, however, that she <b>wanted</b> to be on my lap at first but was irate that she could still <b>see</b> my DS, which set her off again. There were 6 other kids in the playroom so she was the easiest to remove. BIL’s wife was holding SIL’s baby (4 months) and BIL had gone to drop off their teenager at a party. My SIL and her husband (parents of upset niece had already left- are you with me still ?... <img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="/img/vbsmilies/smilies/dizzy.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="Dizzy">: ) DH was putting the dogs outside, so we really didn’t have any extra adults around.<br><br>
My purpose in posting was that I really didn’t have a clear answer for DH when he asked me about it. He has come so far in his journey away from the way he was raised (Italian parents- lots of yelling, hitting and fear) so we’ve been doing a lot of talking about how important GD is. I’m glad, frankly, that it even registered for him that holding her could have been perceived as restraint. It’s a huge breakthrough for him.<img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="http://www.mothering.com/discussions/images/smilies/luxlove.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="throb"> Anyway, I think in every scenario there are different answers. In the heat of the moment it’s hard to always do the right thing, but I feel alright about how this worked out.
My purpose in posting was that I really didn’t have a clear answer for DH when he asked me about it. He has come so far in his journey away from the way he was raised (Italian parents- lots of yelling, hitting and fear) so we’ve been doing a lot of talking about how important GD is. I’m glad, frankly, that it even registered for him that holding her could have been perceived as restraint. It’s a huge breakthrough for him.<img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="http://www.mothering.com/discussions/images/smilies/luxlove.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="throb"> Anyway, I think in every scenario there are different answers. In the heat of the moment it’s hard to always do the right thing, but I feel alright about how this worked out.