Reply to Struggling getting 4 year old to cooperate

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP again. To clarify on the bath struggles, she loves it once she’s in! It’s the transitions that she struggles with. So we will be downstairs playing after dinner and give her a warning that in 5 min it’ll be time to go upstairs for bath and bedtime. She’ll go upstairs ok and then it turns into like 10-15 min of nonsense/wildness like harassing the dog, running around naked, getting distracted by toys etc. and at that point, I’m frustrated and just want her to get in the GD bath! And yeah, me getting frustrated always escalates both of us. But thanks again for a lot of these tips. There are a lot of good reminders for me. I know I can be rigid. She is so sweet and silly and I love her so much. She’s our only kid and I’m so thankful we have her. So i take it really hard when i get frustrated with her. She’ll tell me “mommy, it’s hard to be 4” and I’ll remember that, yes, it is really hard to be 4! [/quote]

This sounds more like distraction than disobedience. Can you streamline the process?  If she goes upstairs okay, maybe have her go straight to the bathroom. She can strip and use the toilet while you take her dirty clothes away and start to run the bath.  Then she won’t have the opportunity to be distracted by toys, the dog, etc.[/quote]

Yeah this is just distraction and it being late in the day when it’s harder for everyone (kid and parent) to follow through on a simple action. In this case you have to accept that a 4yo needs to be micromanaged a bit more, they will not just walk upstairs and report for the bath. Things you can try:

- pick the kid up and carry them
- have both parents go sit in the bathtub and wait for the kid to join them
- incentivize a part of the bath that they like - eg, I’m pouring the bubbles now! They will only last a couple minutes so you’ll need to be in here to enjoy them.
- set a timer. “We have 15 minutes for bath. Timer starts now. The sooner you get upstairs and in the bath, the more time you will enjoy in there.”

I have used all of these depending on age, which kid, and how tired they are.[/quote]

And lol, I meant have both parents sit in the bathroom by the bathtub, not IN the bathtub[/quote]

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