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Elementary School-Aged Kids
Reply to "At wits end with almost 7 year old "
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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You need to withdraw. I agree the problem is you. Tell her the behavior is terrible and you nor anyone else should witness it. Then leave the room. If she doesn't do her chores implement consequences, i.e., take screen time or whatever she values away. If she throws a temper tantrum, leave. WHEN she follows you (and she will), leave again or tell her to go to her room until she can control herself. Do this quietly without shouting or anger. Ignore all bad behavior and make a big deal about the good behavior. Literally she's doing this because she's rewarded with your attention. Reprogram her by paying attention to only the positive things she does.[/quote] This. It is hard, and it will take a while. Implement a reward chart and make sure you have a strict schedule so she knows what to expect and when to expect it. Have you mentioned anything to her teacher. It is possible that she has had some behavior issues at school that the teacher was able to address easily in the classroom. If so, find out how the teacher addressed it, and see if you can implement something similar at home.[/quote] While these methods could work for some kids, I just want to point out that I have a kid like OP's and we've found that any form of ignoring tends to heighten negative behaviors (not just immediately but moving forward too -- she is extremely sensitive to anything that feels like rejection), and that reward charts tend to get extremely bogged down in logistics because she is a litigator and will argue the technicalities of any behavior assessment until she's blue in the face, and also very willing to simply say "I don't care, I don't want it" regarding even the best rewards. Instead of ignoring, we have learned to acknowledge her emotions but just kind of steel ourselves against them. She will cry and complain and whine and we'll say "I see you are upset" or even "I know it can be hard to hear no" or whatever. But that's it. We don't leave but we don't give in. It's really hard. The biggest thing is to not meet her big reaction with your own big reaction, as that validates in the wrong way. But if you can meet her big reaction with calm acceptance, but not give into the demands and whining, over time this does lessen the size of reaction and reduce the amount of time whining goes on. Sometimes she'll also just get frustrated and storm off to cry in her room, which we are fine with. She almost always emerges 5 minutes later totally fine. She just had to get the feelings out. And since reward charts don't work (she gets so stressed about them, fixates, wants to argue every little thing, then ignores them all together), we have to find other ways to motivate. Probably the biggest one for us is pulling her into what we're doing and making her feel like a grown up. So like she will get very defiant if I say "please wash your hands and set the table" but if I say "can you come help me in the kitchen?" she'll be enthusiastic to help and then if I ask her to wash her hands before touching food she'll say "I know silly, of course" and if I say "do you think you can get the table set" she confidently goes off to do it. She does not like being ordered around but she can actually be helpful and easy and fun if she feels like she's involved and has some agency/authority.[/quote]
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