Reply to Free to good home: one child, age four

Forum Index » Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers

Reply to "Free to good home: one child, age four"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sleeps 4-6 hours per night, spends remaining 16-18 hours refusing to eat, sit on the potty, get dressed, brush teeth, leave the house, or return to the house. Charming smile, smart as a whip, literally killing me.[/quote]

Ignore all non-dangerous behavior. If he won't get dressed, take him to playdates or shopping in his PJs. If he won't eat, clean up the food, and let him go hungry. If he won't brush his teeth, well there's not a whole lot you can do about that except incentivize. "We can go out to the park when your teeth are brushed."

Nagging is a waste of time with an oppositional kid. Don't engage. Ignore all behavior you're not happy with unless it's destructive.

Praise all the good behavior you see "Good sitting!" "Good breathing!" "Good walking!" and ignore the rest, OP.

Give yourself a break. You aren't going to tame this kid, so stop trying. Use incentives and praise, and he will change his behavior eventually. If you keep trying to get him to do what you want, he will outsmart you and wear you down. [/quote]

OP here and great advice! I do think a lot of this will get better when he restarts preschool next week. We are just going to prioritize sleep above everything else for the next five days and not really do anything else, and hope to get him into some semblance of a functional schedule before he goes back to school. I honestly think if I could just get a little bit of time away from him I could get back into my parenting groove. I know it was going to be tough when his school went into quarantine because it's so many days at home in a row, but I did not anticipate this level of meltdown at all.

He's actually upstairs playing in his room on his own right now. No idea how long it will last but I'm really enjoying the break. And to posters suggesting more exercise and outdoor time -- it's all we do! Playground every morning, plus walks or bike/scooter every afternoon. We're actually frustrated because normally we'd be outside enjoying every minute of this warm weather this time of year, but it's been so hard to get him out the door (the potty is the big sticking point, he refuses to go when he's in this mood and there are certain times of day where we know we cannot leave the house until he pees). Normally we'd be out hiking and meeting up with friends at the park right now but we can't really plan anything with him in this state. It's tough. I want my functional family back![/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics