Last week, my 4yo daughter and I had a discussion about how we can get her needs met without having to go through a universally-hated tantrum first, and I've been so proud of us: she agreed (and has been following through!) to specifically ask for parental attention before she makes a request for some assistance/thing so we have a chance to refocus attention to her, and/or let her know what we need to wrap up before giving her attention/when she could expect it. The past week has been virtually tantrum-free as she has discovered asking for attention works with more peace and effectiveness than her previous strategies...but now I'm wondering why I had to teach her to ask for attention, and that this was such a novel thing for us to implement when she has an 8 year old brother. Or maybe her needing this to be taught meant she's assuming she has all our attention all the time (a very 4 year old assumption, right?) and there's some power in knowing how to ask for it. (I'm going to go overthink this for a while now)