Acting Out 4 Year Old

If she's doing it - it must be working for her. Don't let her get her way, unless she's done what you tell her. Put up a chart with positive spots on it. Give her a star for each good behavior. Tell her when she gets 20 stars she will get a special present. Ask her what she would like to have? (Not a huge present) Now she has a goal to work for.

Hi, C.,

As a stretched mom, in a military environment (meaning one devoid of nurturing and love), you don’t have a wellspring of nurturing from which to draw and lavish upon anyone. You’ve got your own stuff to deal with, and then you’ve got this unruly child. It's obvious from your previous posts that you're a devoted mom, but I'm sure she makes it hard for you to emote nurturing love. Heaven forbid there’s a mother out there who doesn’t gush love everywhere, as she bakes cookies in her apron and pearls! Well, June Cleaver is not reality and my heart goes out to you.

I've read that it's the child who "deserves" love the least that needs it the most. It seems to me that your daughter's way of getting attention, acting out, has become a pattern: her "normal." We all seek our own normal, so there are those of us who seek to stir the pot when things get too settled -- we create our own, turbulent norm. An adult female accomplished at this behavior earns the label "drama queen," but the behavior starts somewhere. Your daughter has emotions that generate emotional energy, but she doesn’t know what to do with either; she hasn’t yet learned how to positively channel the package, so she has to be taught. Another thing I noticed from your posts is that most of your “together” activities are sedentary. Can you introduce some physical activities that will run off some energy that would otherwise go into negative behavior? Right—one more thing to wear you out. Still . . ..

Everyone from child psychologists to dog trainers tell us that negative attention is better than no attention, so, to effect change, it makes sense to increase the positive attention at all times other than when she's acting out. Negative behavior is the time to withdraw attention -- not replace positive with negative, necessarily, but to speak your truth, “I don’t like being around you when you’re acting like this. Go outside, run around the house 3 times, get yourself back to being sweet, and then come back and we’ll [spend time together].” When she comes back, greet her with a huge smile and, “You’re back! I’m so glad to have my sweet girl again!” Big hug. GUSH. Repeat as often as necessary. Until you can feel it from truth, ACT. Put on your best actress and gush like you mean it, even when you don’t. The goal is for it to, someday, come naturally.

The only way to change the child’s behavior is to first change your own. We all resist change, and change takes work, so be prepared, mentally. If you’ve approached parenting like the military approaches its own, I’ll play Dr. Phil and ask, “How’s that working for you?” It never worked for me. So, set your sights on creating a new norm for yourself, first, and her, second. “Love and Logic” is a great program to use as a road map for change.

Maybe I just got incredibly lucky with the "clay" I was given in my 4th child, but with her I've come to believe that absolutely adoring a child produces an absolutely adorable child. I wish you as much.

C.

C.
how long have you both been here? It may be a phase from the move because her daily structure has changed. If that is the case she will eventually ease into her new life. I would still consistently do what you have been doing which is the time-outs and discipline when she acts up, but it will get better. When we moved to Kansas after living in Washington state, my son (who was over 2) would act out, but since he wasn;t in school we didn't have feedback from a teacher, but we noticed his change. Eventually he got better and somewhat grew out of it.

I also have a 4 year old and it seems that we are finally just coming out of that stage. Your experiences are very similar to ours about 6-8 months ago. I'm not sure exactly what is considered "acting out", but when my son was acting out we started a "boot camp", if you will, at home in which he had to follow through without exception. We didn't have any punishments that were based on school problems because he had consequences there; however, we really celebrate the good days and just this last week we finally had a full week without an incident. Also, I don't focus only on the behavior aspect of school. I always try to ask what he learned, played, experienced before I ask about behavior.

I'm sure your move has triggered some of these behaviors, the trigger in our house was the birth of our daughter. Just remain consistent in your expectations and follow through with established consequences and you will get results. Trust me, I fully understand the frustrations.

Good luck!

Check out How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids will Talk. It's a great book that has helped me a lot with my dicpiline problems with my daughter. It's all about dicipline, not punishment.

I hope things are getting better.

K..

It sounds like your daughter needs firm and consistent limits at both home and school. Kids don't know it, but they need limits to make their overwhelming environment more manageable. Think about how much they still have to learn about in life and how many new things they experience each day. Setting limits can make it less overwhelming and less of a huge 'task.'

You could decide together what the rules in the home are going to be. Let her know what the consequences are if she does not follow the rules, then follow through with the consequences. Tell her, though, that you don't expect it to be a problem and that you are sure she can follow the rules you both have decided on (this shows her that you have high expectations for her).

Logical consequences are best. Make sure she can make a connection between the misbehavior and the consequence. ex. if she hits a friend, then she needs to help the friend feel better, and then be removed from the situation and find another activity.

Make sure you remember to focus on the positive times and her good behavior, too. Be silly with her and act like a kid yourself! Always nagging at her will all start to sound the same and she could stop paying attention to it. In your reaction to her behavior, make sure you create a contrast between the times she is behaving appropriately and when she is not.

As for the whining and wanting her way, you need to be consistent and tell her every time that she needs to use her "big girl voice" when she talks to you and you can't hear her when she whines. (Make sure you don't whine when you talk to her as well). You may need to give her an example of what it should sound like.

Teach her more acceptable ways of handling her emotions when she does not get what she wants. You could say, "I'm sorry you're upset. I can't let you___, but you can____" Give her an alternative. For example, "I can't let you have candy at the store, but we can have a snack when we get in the car. Would you like granola bars or fruit?" It may not be what she wants, but if you give in to her throwing a fit, she will learn that all she has to do is throw a fit to get what she wants. You have to be very consistent with this. She needs to know that it's OK to feel sad, angry etc. but there are acceptable and unacceptable ways of handling her emotions.

I would also sit down with her teacher to talk about her behavior at school. Find out what the teacher does when she misbehaves. Whatever the teacher is doing, it sounds like there may be a better way. Most of the time when there is a behavior problem, it is because the child is not getting something they need. It could be they need more one on one attention, more limits (like I described above), a stronger parent/caregiver bond, more stimulation, more structure, etc. Hopefully, you and the teacher can figure it out together.

You also may need to find out if there are any patterns in the misbehavior. Is it always the same thing? same time of day? with same peers? As adults, we have to remember that kids don't automatically know everything we expect them to know. Most things have to be taught. You can't expect a child to act appropriately if no one has taught them which behaviors are ok and which are not. For ex. many kids will go up to a group of kids and act mean or disruptive when they want to play with them. They don't know how to approach the group, and that is their way of asking if they can play with them. Someone has to take the time to help them learn how to ask a group of kids if they can join them. With your daughter, she may just not know what the right ways to behave are.

Sorry this is so long, I just wanted to cover several of the reasons that the misbehavior may be occurring. I work with kids and families at a child development center and have a master's degree in early childhood education, so I have a lot of experience with this type of situation. If you would like to talk more specifically about your daughter's situation and what exactly it is that she needs to help her succeed, I would be happy to talk with you further.

Best wishes, C.

My son did the same thing and I discovered he was bored. He is a kinetic thinker so I bought kid science experiments and things such as that. Now he knows he won't get to build anything or make anything if he has a bad day and things have improved. Also, I've discovered that the teachers have a tendency to expect him to act out since he did. My son is very smart and the teachers have bored him so he responds to that. The schoolyear is almost over but possibly look for more challenging things for your daughter and see what happens.

Good luck,
D.

It is difficult to connect a disciplinary measure with an action that took place hours ago. In other words, if your 4 year old "acts out" at 9am and you discipline her for it at 6pm, there's not much of a connection between the two. Your big question is - what are they doing at preschool when she "acts out" (I'm very curious about the term, too, but that's another story.
If she is doing something specific, the school should be doing something right away. For example, if she hits someone, she is removed from the group and can't return to activities for specific amount of time. That day, you should get a note, not the end of the week, so you can also provide some measure of discipline. "If I get a note from your teacher, you go to bed a half hour earlier" or whatever you chose to do. So, she is immediately corrected for the bad behavior and it is backed up by you at home. If the preschool can't oblige, maybe it's not the place for your daughter.

Good luck and hang in there. Correcting behavior, especially having respect for other people and herself will serve her well her whole life and make your relationship better. When you feel like giving up, imagine her having the same behaviors at 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 years old!

Dena and Colleen both said what I would have typed so I will just second their posts. I learned from my husband that when you spend really good fun time with your kids they are way more likely to pay attention to you when it is time to discipline. And my daughter is also a kinetic learner and gets bored in her classroom. It helped me to switch her to a Montessori school and I can recommend one if you like, but it isn't full time. There might be full-time ones out there though. They allow the children to really play with things to learn. And they do learn. And it is child-centered rather than teacher centered. I saw a big leap in her skills. Good luck. Mostly I would say make home time fun for her. I think you'll see an improvement.

Hi, C..
When you described how your daughter was behaving, it caught me because my own daughters still act that way sometimes. However, they are steadily showing improvement in behavior, and so am I.
Our class in "Growing Kids God's Way" studied a chapter about giving children too many choices and responsibilities they aren't ready to handle. Example: Your child awakes and you immediately provide choices. Would you like Cheerios or corn flakes? In a blue bowl or a red one? Milk or juice? In a green cup or a yellow one? Would you like and apple or a banana with your cereal? The child is the one answering all these questions; they are deciding what happens in their life for breakfast, but we can't figure out why they throw a fit over the grilled cheese we've made them for lunch. They didn't choose it.
When a child is "addicted to choice", he or she will have a fit over anything someone else chose. For us, it meant that I had to backtrack a little and take back some of the freedoms I had given my kids too early.
I hope this helps. It's helping our family. Check out the website. www.growingkids.org

I also had a very intelligent child that would act out on me after preschool. She was 3yo. She was good in class, but then was a terror when she got home, like there was something wrong. One day when I was volunteering in class, I noticed something. The children had these cookie cutter activities to do with the teacher. And, my bright left handed child is more the type that you hand her the glue, scissors, crayons and whatever, and let her have at it. Well, she was putting her craft together the way she wanted, it wasn't right, so the helper would change it without asking or anything, just change it and move on to anyone else who did it "wrong". I saw this more than once. She was upset because they were changing her project!! It could be somethinga as simple that they could accommodate for the child. I had pulled her out, for the reason that I figured I could "homeschool" her preschool so she could have a creative outlet, instead of being frustrated with the classroom atmosphere. But, I suppose that if I had talked to the teacher, they would have not done that to her anymore. See if you can observe, or get to some detail maybe someone is missing. See if you can take some added stuff for her to do that she enjoys for her down time.