I have a 2.5 year old girl who has been with me for over a year. This young girl started screaming randomly over the past week. Several times a day, she will just burst out in tears and screams in the middle of craft time, lunch, singing and circle time. I have discussed with her in little terms that I cannot understand her screams and she needs to use her words. No such luck. I can't possibly think of a trigger as it is so random, and she has no changes in the home. Mom says she never sees this, but the darling little girl is catered to so that doesn't surprise me.

She can be very stubborn on her being in control of many situations as she is at home. Dad is a child psychologist and he spends more time analyzing the situation than dealing with it. Mom usually coddles over the child's every whimper and hugs her kissing her frantically.

I have just been allowing her space to scream at will of course away from the other children. Diversion has not been successful and it seems to be completely random.

She did this a couple of months ago. I ended up leaving her to cry herself out as I am doing now and she quit in a couple of days. This time it is a week.

Any other ideas?

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Sounds like she could be in pain--tummy, headache, growing pains, something like that. Or an ear infection? Some other kind of pain?

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yeah, but if that were the case, would she only be doing it at daycare?

At 2 1/2 she should be old enough to at least point and nod when you say "does something hurt?"

I'd ask mom to rule it out for sure, but otherwise...the "crying spot", in this case the "yelling spot" seems like the way to go.

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