If I could I offer a little grandmotherly advice, I would say you are on the right track by trying to head off the fits before they get to the pas(ture). Ha!

Kids (and adults) who have fits are very difficult to reason with. When my son was little, he would wake up at night screaming and I would ask “What’s wrong?” He would respond by crying harder. It took me awhile to figure out he had to pee and didn’t want to wake up and my 30 questions was making matters worse. So I would give him lots of sympathy and invent the reason for his angst and suggest a solution. “You poor thing, you want to go potty. I’ll help you.”
That would work, although he sometimes cried through it but he would calm down and go back to sleep while I rubbed his back and told him what a good boy he was.

I find that even adult children who have fits want to have their concerns acknowledged rather than questioned and debated. It is good advice that I’m not so good at myself. It was so much easier to say to a 3 year old, “You really miss mommy don’t you?” than to say to a 30-something, “Your boss/husband/whatever is really mean to you, isn’t he? You were so right to quit your job/tell him to go fly a kite/whatever.”

Enjoy the days when milk, a book and a cuddle will make everything all better.

Later she will be all wily and concealing, like a cat. But right now she’s a dog: every feeling on display, no subterfuge. All’s I could do was position myself in some way as to keep her from pawing or chewing her way out.

LOL – love the image. Dogs are so completely guileless.

plus, it reminds me of an old Kids in the Hall sketch…

My Menopause Switch usually just makes me break into tears at pretty much any provocation- the sky is blue, my dog is old, a garbage truck drives by… etc.

And violetta, alas, I am the least well-read former English major you will ever meet, virtually and/or actually (!). One of my favorite parlor games, my chums will attest, is Name That Literary Classic You Think I Should Have Read, But I Actually Didn’t! Skirting the edges of the canon did great things for my spirit, from time to time, but sank my GRE scores on the subject exam in English down to near about the level of my Math scores. (Guess how many questions on the GRE about Adrienne Rich! Right! One at most! Guess how many for Black women authors! Right again! One! Bonus point: who? Right again! Toni Morrison! That’s it! Game over! Thanks for playing!).

Ah, but I digressed. A Platonic Meno? Rings a distant bell. Wikipedia rings it louder. Will now use whatever discretionary time I have trying to write up a Socratic dialog using menopause as its theme.

http://craftergeek.blogspot.com/2006/11/tlc-tcby-and-pirate-cow.html

Don’t know if that helps or not but we’re to the point where we just name the Cow outright and both sides erupt into laughter at the absurdity of it all.

“Mirror-filled funhouse” is apt, since half the battle is keeping a clear bead on exactly which is the hyperbolic projection of your actual kid, and which is the actual kid. Who — I’ve got to believe — is nearly as horrified and exhausted by the tummult of emotion as you are.

Here’s an interesting coda: one day, since this COW, she seemed to have a flicker of another one in her. I forget the catalyst, but she was beginning to ramp up, and I was having a bad menopause day (kind of like a bad hair day only 10,000 times worse). I could tell my wick was short. I said something like, “You know, you could have a fit, like you did the other day, but that would make everyone absolutely miserable. We could just cut to the chase and have the books and milk right away and be done with it.” I don’t know if she sensed my own mood, and was able to think better of it, or what. But that day, it worked. That day. Watch it was a fluke.

We’re just climbing into the mirror-filled funhouse of two, tantrums, manipulations, snuggles, and all.