[blparent] behavior problems with our 4 year old

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

I completely agree with what Judy has written, especially with the part 
about staying calm and firm, and having the child answer specific questions 
about what they did in the particular situation and what they can do 
differently next time.  My eight-year-old daughter hates that, but it really 
gets her focused, calmed down, and it turns a negative event into a learning 
moment.  Even at four, your daughter probably has the verbal skills to 
answer the basic questions.  And the cuddle time while you are talking is 
very healing.  I also definitely agree with always letting your daughter 
know that you love her dearly, even if her behavior is unacceptable.  I tell 
my daughter often that I love her, but because I love her, I can't allow her 
to act in certain ways or do unacceptable things.

Time-out, if it is effective, is usually only a minute per year of age of 
the child.  I have my daughter sit on the stairs instead of going to her 
room, since I want her room to be a positive place.  There's nothing to do 
on the stairs.  She went through a period of not staying put, so I just sat 
with her on the stairs and let her cling to me, so I wasn't completely 
withdrawn from her, but I didn't interact with her till the period of the 
time-out had passed.  I didn't see a problem with that because the point of 
the time-out was to get her calmed down enough to communicate reasonably 
about the infraction that had gotten her there in the first place.  I think 
an hour in isolation is too long for a child of any age, much less a 
preschooler, who doesn't have the attention span to cope with that.  After 
the time-out, I would sit on the stairs and talk to my daughter about why we 
were there and what needed to happen differently the next time.

Also, preparing your daughter before a meal or a trip somewhere might help a 
lot.  Tell her specifically what behavior you expect from her.  Instead of 
telling her to be good, say that you want her to hold your hand and use her 
inside voice.  Kids need to feel that their parents are in control of the 
situation, and it scares them if they get the idea they have too much 
control themselves.  My girl is strong-willed, too, so we've been through a 
lot of hard times.  But those few moments of outlining the expectations 
beforehand have worked wonders.  Another thing that has been of tremendous 
benefit is giving a warning time when transitioning between activities.  Let 
your daughter know when there are five minutes left before you are going to 
stop an activity and have lunch or go somewhere or whatever, then two 
minutes left, then one minute, or whatever works for her.  That stopped a 
lot of acting out with my daughter, who wasn't good at transitions, and 
tended to pitch big fits if we just suddenly sprung it on her that we were 
leaving or breaking for a meal or something.

Also, when your daughter isn't acting out, try to do as many positive 
activities with her as you can.  That may lessen her need to misbehave, 
wherever it is coming from.  Have her help you make muffins or plant flowers 
or whatever hobbies or interests you enjoy doing.  Build sand castles.  Play 
Barbies.  Watch movies together.  The more positive time you can enjoy, the 
less your focus will be on correcting her misbehavior, and a lot of it may 
correct itself.

Love and Logic is great.  I've taken a class and use some of its principles 
in my parenting every day.

Anything that can de-escalate a battle of wills is a good thing.  I know 
this well as the parent of a strong-willed child, but also as a grown up 
strong-willed child myself.  My mom used to laugh half-heartedly and say 
that "because I said so" never impressed me much as a kid.  She said when I 
was two or three years old, she used that line on me and I just tossed my 
little head and shrugged.  I remember vividly one evening when I was maybe 
nine or ten, she set a bowl of stew in front of me that wasn't to my liking, 
and when I turned up my nose, she said, "You're going to sit there till you 
finish eating that."  I crossed my arms and thought, "This is one fight I 
can win."  About midnight she walked into the kitchen and asked, "You're not 
going to pick up your spoon, are you?"  I just shook my head.  She was so 
furious she snatched up the bowl of stew and flung it to the floor.  The 
bowl shattered, the stew splattered, she had a mess to mop up, and I won 
hands-down.

Sorry for the long post.  Please understand,  I'm not trying to come across 
as an expert or anything.  I'm in the trenches just like you, and I've had 
my moments of desperation as the parent of a strong-willed child.  I wish 
you the best of luck, and I hope you share your challenges and successes 
along the way so the rest of us can benefit from what you learn.

Jo Elizabeth

"The Bright Side of Darkness"
is my newly published novel,
available in Kindle, audio, and paperback formats at Amazon.com.
-----Original Message----- 
From: Judy Jones via BlParent
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2016 12:07 PM
To: Blind Parents Mailing List
Cc: Judy Jones
Subject: Re: [blparent] behavior problems with our 4 year old

Thank you so much for writing in.  I am an older mom with grown girls.  I
could be wrong, but I am guessing that misbehaving may have started
happening long before now and that it has finally gotten to the point where
you are reaching out for help.

I know in this day and age and culture spanking is not popular, and some see
it as child abuse.  Certainly, if done in the wrong way, it can turn into
that.

I'm here to tell you, though, we did believe in spanking, only as a last
resort, and our daughters ages 29 and 25 can remember their spankings, and
now laugh about them, as I now laugh about the ones I remember getting, as
my mother also did hers as she recounted them.  Both daughters have also
told us that spankings worked and that they plan to spank their kids when
they have them.  My eldest is married to a state trooper, used to work in
Voc Rehab, next to my office, and told the people over there that a lot
fewer adults would have anxiety issues had they had clearer guidelines and
probably been loved and spanked growing up, her opinion, of course.

The most important thing is
to let your daughter know you love her unconditionally, but you will not
tollerate negative behaviors.  The idea is to love the person, but not
always the behavior.  The first time we had an issue with our eldest, she
was maybe 2, I was holding her in my arms, and there was something she
wasn't liking at the moment.  She reached out with her tiny hand and hit my
face.  I immediately popped her diapered bottom with my hand and firmly said
"No!"  She got really still, probably out of surprise, then started to cry.
So I hugged her close and told her I loved her but that she could not do
that.

A great book that is on BARD is Dr. James Dobson's Dare To Discipline, check
it out.

Above all, and this is hard to do, keep your voice down and calm, even in
the middle of a trying situation.  Let your actions speak for themselves,
and  no raised
voice.  Think of yourself as the corrections officer that does not have to
get angry, but does have to correct negative behavior.  I had an older lady
tell me when my kids were young to save the
yelling or raised voice for life-threatening situations, such as running in
front of a car, a fire, etc.  Not saying that you're yelling at your girl,
just some thoughts.

I also gather that she thinks she has the control since you can't see her.
and I'm guessing this started quite a while ago, too?

Many parents ask there kids to come to them, when the kid doesn't respond,
don't make a big deal about it or ask them to come to you.  Go find them,
and when you do, be very matter of fact about it, saying something like,
"Oh! There you are!"  .  You are subconsciously
training them then that whether or not they hide, you do the finding
regardless.  Believe it or not, my husband and I were given this advice when
having guide dogs and wanting to train the dog to always come to us.  It
worked for the dogs, and it worked for the girls in the toddler stage.  They
never hid because there was no reason to, and that helped in the control.

You can say things like, "You may not do such and such," or "This behavior
is unacceptable."  While it is obvious to us, you are training your child.
Stay away from phrases like "you're being bad," or any negative phrase with
the word "you"
in it.  You love your girl, but you don't love her behavior, very big
difference.

Spanking etiquette, if you want to call it that.  We wouldn't ever spank
for things like spilled milk, but would for any open rebellion or
disobedience, and used as a last resort.  We also would give them a warning,
and might say something like, if you do such and such again, you will get a
swat, then very important to follow through.
We only spanked where we knew that they knew they were out and out
disobeying, which was very
rare.

The first thing we would ask them is, "What did I tell you?"  They would
have to answer back.  Then you ask something like, "And what did you do?"
They have to answer that too.  Again without raised voices.  You have to do
this calmly and objectively.  Then we would send them to their room, saying
we would be up in a few minutes.  What that few minutes does is to help mom
and dad calm down, diffuses the situation, and gets kids really nervous,
according to my daughters, because they would know what is coming.  In about
5 or 10 minutes, one of us would go up to the room, give the swats on the
bottom only. Then we would have a cuddle time for a couple of minutes or
however long it would take for the child to cry, to reassure them we love
them, and that we want them to grow to be a loving adult.

Another thought.  When a daughter did something she shouldn't have done, or
when older, got herself into a situation she wished she hadn't, in talking
things out, we would try to look at the solution, get into problem-solving
mode.  The phrase that starts this off is quote Next Time.  Example, "Next
time, come to mom first."  "Next time, check with so and so."  When they are
older and you're talking you can ask them something like, "How do you think
you can avoid that, or what would help you next time?"

Your daughter sounds very smart and sociable, but all kids are going to test
their parents, it's part of growing up, it's okay.  How we respond will set
the tone for the future.  I know lots of people do time-out, but we never
did.  Hope some of these thoughts are of help, and definitely let us know
how things go.


Judy
-----Original Message----- 
From: Chris Reagan via BlParent
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2016 9:24 AM
To: blparent at nfbnet.org
Cc: Chris Reagan
Subject: [blparent] behavior problems with our 4 year old

Good morning all:
We're having a serious behavior problem with our 4 year old child and
we'd like to know if there's anything anyone can suggest on how to get
this issue under control. We've tried just about everything we can
think of to deal with this and It's almost like she doesn't care. I'll
give some examples as to what she's done and what we've tried. She
likes to take foodand dump it, we finally got the locks that will keep
her out of the cabinets. She's taken the drawers out of her dresser. In
response we've put locks on them which she got around. Here's something
that I wrote for what happened this morning, and this is also a common
occurrence.
Okay, so our child does something wrong, we put her in timeout. She
doesn't stay still in timeout, so she is sent to her room for an hour.
Mind you, that because of her behavior, we've taken all her toys away
so her room isn't a very enjoyible place right now. So she opens the
window and starts talking to people in general which we don't want her
to do because of housing rules regarding the windows being open when
the temps are below 50 and because we don't know who she's talking too.
So I go in and close the window and she decides to get out of her room,
run in to the living room and run from us and hide in plain sight. I
catch her and put her back in. in the attempt to keep her in there for
the time that we've set, she takes my phone runs to her bed with it,
and tosses it behind her bed, thank god for outerbox cases. I normally
don't spank, but that deserved a spanking and that's what she got. Now
she's a very bright kid, very smart, does well in head start. She loves
to draw and help people and we're happy to have her in our lives!. But,
her behavior is getting to the point where she's wearing us down. Now,
spanking is something we don't like to do and we don't enjoy it at all.
Plus, I believe that it only causes more problems. We've taken away tv
privoleges and I've also resorted to taking away her toys as I
previously stated including the stuffed animals that she likes to sleep
and play with. When we want to go somewhere, we can't, because her
grandparents won't baby sit anymore because of her behavior, plus when
we take her places, we insist she hold mommy and daddy's hand, but does
she, no and she knows how to remove the leashes. So if there's anything
that we've missed or haven't done to curve her behavior, please don't
hesitate to speak up. We love her dearly and we only want the best for
her in the end.
Take Care all:
Chris

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