Terrible 18 month old: tantrums handling

Sophie is now 18mo and she will occasionally have meltdowns, usually when she's hungry or tired or didn't get enough sleep. When that happens, hubs and I will try very hard to soothe the savage upset baby of ours but really, there's no easy way to do it. She will harden her body and cry her heart out! And sometimes the more we soothe her, the worst it gets. She seems to understand that mummy and daddy are going to keep trying and entertain her tantrums so she continues her act #diva #slapsforehead.

When she was younger, I will force-hug her and it immediately calmed her down. But these days, immediate act doesn't seem to do the magic anymore. So I will just sit next to her (and sometimes pretend to ignore) and wait for her to burn herself out. After a while, she will come to me and sit on my lap and this is the moment I will do the calming-her-down part by rubbing her back and talking to her softly (and I eventually offer my boobies lah). 

I am fully aware that she is trying to express her frustration over something that she is not happy about - it can either caused by the fact that she didn't manage to do something she wanted to do or we told her she could not do something. Mix in with the fact she hasn't gotten her nap or didn't eat her lunch properly, and BOOM!


So we will try our best to ensure that she is well rested and well fed. One of the tips I learnt to make sure she really naps during her nap time is by getting her to play and burn out her energy just before nap time - it helps her to get tired enough to fall asleep faster. Another tip will be the usage of white noise. We have been using white noise since her birth and it does wonders (downloaded and played on iPad). You can also make sure the room your baby sleeps in is dark. As dark as possible to promote melatonin production (body's natural sleep hormone).

As for making sure they eat well. Despite my crazy hardworking cooking activities, preparing her food - Sophie sometimes refuses to eat her homemade food so we just constantly feed her food (any food she'd eat) throughout the day. I am not sure how else to do this. Do you have any tips?