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Reply to "Disciplining the undisciplinable - HELP me with my 4yo DD"

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[quote=Anonymous]Several thoughts ...

If you are walking on eggshells and at your wits end, get professional help.  You can pay for a private evaluation with a short timeline or go through your pediatrician to find the best course of action for getting an evaluation covered by insurance if money is a factor (private evaluations usually run $3-4k).  You can also see professionals early that help with providing immediate supports while you wait to get a comprehensive evaluation.  Your child may end up with a diagnosis or may not, but you will end up with a lot more insight and tools to help your family turn things around.

Ideally contact your school to start an educational evaluation process before entering K (usually Child Find).  This is different than an evaluation from a psychologist or a developmental pediatrician in that it's geared towards identifying what your child will need in the educational setting.  By having this in place or at least having established communication with the school as your child enters the school setting, you're more likely to be able to immediately get on top of issues if (when) it turns out the gen ed setting with no accommodations is too much for them.  There is usually a number of kindergarten kids starting this processing in late October/November, so get ahead of it.

In the meantime, prioritize creating a consistent and simplified surroundings and routine for your child.  A surprise outing may seem fun to you, but it can drive a child with anxiety and sensory issues over the edge.  Simplifying their surroundings means less to throw or break during a meltdown, but also lessens anxiety.

Your goal is to help your child learn how to regulate their responses, part of which is helping them learn how to calm down once they're aroused.  The problem with time outs is they're conceived as a way to discipline a child while they're in an aroused state.  Children who are constantly melting down are showing that they don't have the skills to regulate, so attempting to discipline when they're not calm simply isn't going to work.  So that's a long way of saying, get rid of the time outs as a discipline tool or really any attempts to discipline in the middle of a meltdown.  Time ins can help a child calm down safely so long as the adult can remain calm and non-reactive.  Discipline is simply enforcing rules and expectations consistently (like a PP said, no "special days" or exceptions) and helping the child develop executive skills that are lagging.

Book recommendations:
Dr. Ross Greene's "The Explosive Child" is pretty much the go to recommendation and a good one.  OP was right that it can be geared more towards parenting children who are a little bit older, but the mindset and principals are pretty universal.  As trite as it sounds, your child isn't trying to "win" by having a meltdown like OP described, they have exceeded their ability to cope with the situation and need help both with calming down in the short term and developing executive functioning skills in the long term.

The Kazdin Method - Rewards systems DO work, but they have to be practiced in very specific ways that are different in how most families do rewards charts.  The Kazdin Method is a way to implement behaviorist techniques to extinguish specific bad behaviors using positive reinforcement without punishment.  Not using punishment is harder in that it requires more effort and consistency from the adults (and also runs counter to how many of us were raised), however it is more effective for many children, especially those who get labeled as "oppositional".
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