Highly Emotional 5 Year Old - Where to Start

[Anonymous]

OP, I have a child much like yours (it seems.)

Most helpful to us has been reading the work of Kazdin and Greene. Livesinthebalance.org (Greene's site) is increasingly helpful as my child becomes more articulate about his emotions.

Also extremely helpful have been a couple of sessions talking with a psychiatrist who specializes in working with kids. We met w/ the psychiatrist - who helped us identify a few strategies to try, and who also helped us determine whether or not we needed to escalate testing or other services for our child.

I'd start w/ some of those things. Many on this board will be extremely helpful, and some responses (as you're seeing) will scare you about the presumed severity of behavioral issues that will be a horror in the classroom. You don't sound like you're there yet w/ your daughter. There are lots of techniques you can try and it may be that one or two new tactics or approaches will be the key to helping your daughter work through emotions more helpfully. If you can really focus on figuring out what some of her triggers are that will also help (is it anxiety, control, fear of being last in a social setting, etc...)

There are a lot of wonderful kids out there for whom the conventional disciplinary tactics just don't work. It will test you as a parent to relearn other ways of working towards better behaviors but it can definitely be done and you have a lot going right already w/ your daughter in terms of who she has for parents, the school resources, your willingness to explore other options, etc...

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does your child have other issues, like inflexibly, difficulty making friends, problems following multi-step directions?

My HFA child has problems regulating emotions--to a lesser extent, so does my ADHD child.

I'd get an evaluation and consider OT.

She's really okay in all other aspects. Very social, maintains friends and able to follow directions; although she sometimes isn't the best listener. She's generally non disruptive in class. We are challenged with regulating emotions most. Any little thing, big or small can set her off into crying where she becomes unable to speak or calm herself down.

When you say "get an evaluation" what do you mean? Where do you go for that? Seems like a dumb question, sorry.

OP, not to be harsh, but this would indeed be very, very disruptive in class, and is going to cause major problems soon at school. It is obviously outside the range of normal crying/tantruming/resisting/avoiding, because it is indeed all of those things. It sounds like anxiety and you need to see a psychiatrist.

A psychiatrist is there for managing medication, and as someone who has gone down this road, very few psychiatrists will medicate for a child this young. Play therapy will be mostly what is offered, even at a child psychologist, because she is not really old enough to take in cognitive behavioral therapy.

[Anonymous]

I have a child who has had emotional breakdowns in school -- to the point where we had to remove DC from that school. Things got much better at the new school, but our child still has issues with emotional regulation at home. Our child is on the spectrum; I'm not in any way suggesting that your child is.

Anxiety could be part of the problem, low frustration tolerance, sensory issues... who knows. This needs a developmental pediatrician or psychiatrist as a first-line eval.

While I don't think this is a parenting issue (like you are not being strict enough, etc.), I do think there are parenting strategies that you can use to help you help your child.

Good luck. I know how heartbreaking it is to watch your child suffer when you feel like everything should be going well. :/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does your child have other issues, like inflexibly, difficulty making friends, problems following multi-step directions?

My HFA child has problems regulating emotions--to a lesser extent, so does my ADHD child.

I'd get an evaluation and consider OT.

She's really okay in all other aspects. Very social, maintains friends and able to follow directions; although she sometimes isn't the best listener. She's generally non disruptive in class. We are challenged with regulating emotions most. Any little thing, big or small can set her off into crying where she becomes unable to speak or calm herself down.

When you say "get an evaluation" what do you mean? Where do you go for that? Seems like a dumb question, sorry.

Have you ever talked about this with your ped? They probably maintain a list of child psychologists they work with. I don't think you need a neuropsychologist or developmental pediatrician yet. But talk to you pediatrician to start if you don't know what to do.

[Anonymous]

The "upstairs brain" and "downstairs brain" concept in this book -- https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Brain-Child-Revolutionary-Strategies-Developing/dp/0553386697/ -- might be helpful to you. It sounds like you've tried a ton of upstairs brain tactics to stop the crying fits and they haven't worked because when she's trapped in her downstairs brain, she can't access her upstairs brain. This book has a really good explanation and even ways to help explain it to a child.

Emotional regulation is part of mental flexibility where a person is able to consciously or semi-consciously switch gears from a hot reaction -- they can choose what to focus on. Some people just aren't as good at it as other people and need more skill building. Greene's book mentioned before (The Explosive Child) comes at this from one angle and the book I linked above from another.

Poor emotional regulation can be tied to ASD, ADHD, and anxiety or just an area of weakness that needs building. It would be hard to know without a professional evaluation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have you talked to your pediatrician? If not, you could always start there.

Another resource to consider in case it is some 're-training' needed: http://zonesofregulation.com/index.html (It is a framework for self-regulation and gaining emotional control - I don't think I understood how much control we can have over our emotions until I started counseling classes - I pretty much just thought emotions simply 'happened' to you and I was an adult! We use this when working with some individuals at school that become frustrated with school work, or in general individual counseling. We've also tried in some classrooms where there seem to be several students that seem to have difficulty managing their emotions.)

When it comes to kids, I also love resources by Jim Fay and James Dobson

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does your child have other issues, like inflexibly, difficulty making friends, problems following multi-step directions?

My HFA child has problems regulating emotions--to a lesser extent, so does my ADHD child.

I'd get an evaluation and consider OT.

THis is my child as well. She has diagnosed ADHD and much of these issues seem to be impulse control related. From a social skills perspective we have to work on helping her to stop and think before she speaks.