What do you do with a screamer?

Ds is almost 20 months and hasn't yet learnt many words beyond car truck, plane, train and gone. Instead, he prefers screaming at the top of his lungs... Especially in the car.

What do you do when they start screaming like that? Df always gives him what he is after straight away, which reinforces that if he screams he will get what he wants. I can't stand it anymore though. I would rather develop his talking so he doesn't need to scream, but he just doesn't seem ready to learn yet and doesn't respond to me the way DD used to when we would point at things and say the word etc.

Also, what do you do in the car? I try to just ignore him, but he is so persistent, he managed to go for 50 mins straight the other day!

Oh it's awful isn't it?

We just tell DS that "It's too loud, please use your inside voice. " if he doesn't stop I tell him, "that's too noisy, I'm not listening" then don't respond until he stops. If he talks I talk back but screaming gets no response.

Generally I don't like ignoring him, but any attention paid to the screaming made it 50 times worse. Every time. It took a while but he knows now that if I say it I mean it, and he stops within a minute or two.

DD2 would do that. It got to the point where I had tO put her in time out because nothing else worked. It took three days and no more screaming. She has completely stopped for the past year. In the car, I ignored her if she screamed but that was really tough. Good luck x

I would do what H&Z did - 'please use your inside voice' then ignore the behaviour until either DD stopped screaming or at least tried talking

Thanks everyone! I am trying to be patient and get him to stop and then try talking to him, lots of progress so far, except for the car! Worst place in the world for the screaming so I might have to see if I can get some car toys to distract him. I can't believe how many words he has said since I started focussing on getting him talking though, I guess I have not been paying enough attention!