Toddler cries historically when leaving the park

Hahaha my daughter does the same thing. I just end up staying at the park for a long time like an hour or two until I know she is tired out haha. 🤣 I usually try to tell her ok say bye to the park now and she will say bye park, bye swings, bye slide haha on our way back to the car and I try to tell her ok we will come back another time. Sometimes I do the bribing too. Bring a candy or a snack in the car and tell her she will get the candy if she gets into her car seat. Idk I think it’s pretty normal. Sometimes it’s a total meltdown other times it’s ok just depends

Yep my daughter is the same, took her to the park yesterday and when we leave she always has a tantrum and I just pick her up and walk out the park whole she cries there's nothing else I can do, I try to distract her on the way in the hope that she'll stop crying 🤦🏻‍♀️

Bubble bath 🛁 works for me 🤗
They love bubble 🫧😅

Start a routine that they look forward to when going back home. That could be even toys that are only for the car ride when going home. This does mean toys for only the car ride going somewhere too.

If toys are a huge fight too then simply maybe always a fun activity you do when you guys get home. Like drawing your adventures that day. You could even do a craft book of putting a leaf in a page from the park or grass, printing off a photo, just drawing together.

A lot of times after park time means they are going home to play by themselves because it's time to cook or do other things that they can't really do, but you could start inviting them to join

Bringing a visual timer like your phone and letting them press 5mins can also help them feel in control of when you leave

We usually ended up getting icecream on the way out. Or repeated reminders and telling them they could pick to go on one last thing. Or to leave the park to which they usually follow! Or we’d go do the ducks or visit the squirrels.

They struggle with transitions, what always seemed to help my daughter was lots of prep, reminders and countdowns. I would introduce the idea of us leaving quite a bit of time before we actually had to leave. Then do countdowns, I would set timers on my phone that would go off every minute and tell her after 3 times we are going for example. Or after 3 more times on the slide etc etc. She would still struggle with it sometimes but I would also time things so it was snack time once we got in the car, that would distract her too. It is hard though, but very normal, I wouldn’t let it stop you from doing anything. My daughter is 4 and a half now and she tries to negotiate, ‘I just need to do this’ ‘I’m just going to do this before we go’ etc. So it never ends! 😂