Care and Feeding

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Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here .

Dear Care and Feeding,

A little under two years ago, I wrote to the column as Don’t Want a Rift and got a very helpful response in this article. I wanted to write with an update and ask for some new help as things have developed.

Pegging access to the swords (under supervision) to behavioral benchmarks worked amazingly well. The tantrums stopped almost immediately; “Matthew” was more thoughtful about them, and my husband and son started talking about them more in depth, and he got some very limited access to them as the year went by.…