I Wa Low Self-esteem in 5 Year Old Girl

The phrase that stuck out at me in your post was "If we happen to yell at her, for example, for not cleaning up her toys"......
Why are you yelling? Yelling is not constructive. For a kid it can actually be scary.

Low self-esteem at 5 is not normal.

Self-esteem is built by feeling that you are *competent* and that, when presented with any given situation you have the *ability* to be successful. So, you can build self-esteem by putting your child in experiences where they will be able to successfully complete tasks which foster them to have a sense of "I did good".
Self-esteem is not built by you telling your child you love them, or you like the painting they drew. Self-esteem is LOWERED by you yelling or telling them they are not good enough or they *can't* do something.
When you have low self-esteem because you are in an emotional abusive home..... it affects every aspect of your life. It's pervasive. Please find other ways to discipline your daughter - like ONLY positive reinforcement. Tell her what you WANT her to do and then praise her when she does it.

Dr Phil (who I don't like everything he says.... but this I like) says it takes 100 atta-girls for every 1 negative. So, think of it this way..... every time you yell at your daughter to pick up her toys it will take 100 times of her doing something right where you praise her behavior for her to be BACK AT SQUARE ONE as far as she feels about herself.
Where are you on that scale? Have you given her 100 atta-girls for the ONE time you yelled at her? How about the 1,000 atta-girls you should give her if you've yelled at her, on average, 3x each year since she turned 3?

5 year olds are learning by behavior that is modeled around them. What are you teaching her?

It really makes me sad to read that some people think that your daughter is manipulating you. So every kid who needs some help with their feelings is manipulating? I don't think so. Your daughter may be very smart and that often makes it more difficult to deal with your feelings because she understands and feels so much yet she does not have the experience to deal with them. I would focus on the feelings with her. Don't judge any of the feelings, just give her someone to talk to about them. When you are talking about the friend who is playing with someone else, you can ask her how it makes her feel to see her friend playing with someone else? Tell her you are glad that you and she are talking about it. Regarding the toys, try not to yell as much as possible. It would hurt my heart if you yelled at me also, so why should this not be the same for a child? Help her to clean up her toys for awhile and before you know it, she will do it. You can say things to her like, I know it is hard to stop playing and to get ready for bed. Again, acknowledge her feeling, for example, that she is sad that the day is ending.

Because of her age...it is so hard to figure out what is going on with them. Kids at the age are recognizing the different feelings they are having, but don't necessarily know what they are and how to communicate them. Also kids feel loved and appreciated in different ways and at that age are really starting to notice what does and does not do that. For the most part, at least in my experience, it is either black and white...there is nothing in between. So if they don't want to play with her that day...she sees it as they don't want to be my friend anymore. As a parent we can explain to them, simply, that is not the case and that people can have more than one friend. Be prepared to repeat it a thousand times.
A really great book to help you discover her "love language" is The Five Love Languages for Children" I don't have it in front of me for the exact name and author, but you can google the five love languages and it is the same author. It is a great book. I have 3 very different kids and it really showed me how in some respects I can NOT treat them all the same in making them feel loved, because they are all different. And no, one doesn't feel like I love one more than another because the others don't notice when I do something for one because that is not how they feel loved. It all makes sense when you read the book. This also changed how I disciplined my children. My kids don't respond to ONLY positive reinforcement. They need some sort of NEGATIVE consequence, again, every child is different. My youngest feels loved with positive verbal affirmations. Spankings make no difference to her and she considered them totally worth the "happiness" committing the offense gave her. However, if I change my tone or raise my voice or she even so much as thinks I'm upset with her...she falls apart. I have to work hard to taylor how I respond to each of my kids so I am disciplining them, but not being detrimental to their self-esteem...so NOT easy sometimes. So...maybe that could be causing the responses you are getting from her.
You know your daughter better than anyone and should be able to tell if she is being manipulative or overly dramatic. When I compare my youngest's reactions to that of her sister, yes she is overly dramatic, but when I look at it from a perspective of what is normal of for her, that is not always the case. I have to base my response on what is NORMAL for HER...not on what I think is normal for me or another child.
Follow your mother's instinct with her. Sometimes it is not best to assume the worst, but to do a little research to discover ways we can LEARN about our children and in turn learn how to best nurture and teach them.

A) Phrases like "You don't love me anymore" and "my heart hurts when you yell at me" or "I feel like I'm not part of the family anymore" are straight up manipulative and over-dramatic. She totally knows better. And she does sound very smart.

B) You don't need to yell. At five, she should be doing what you ask based on a positive, loving relationship and desire to do right. YES, she could be stubborn about cleaning and normal discipline issues, which is where consistent consequences after one calm warning all along could have prevented the need to get mad and yell to achieve basic daily tasks. But you can ramp that up.

I would start with that. Don't yell. Go straight to consequence after one calm warning. Warn her first of the impending change, so she knows what to expect. In about three days, if your consequence is effective enough, she'll stop pushing the envelope. Go right back into positive and happy mode right after discipline or compliance, don't milk any drama. You want the aggravating behavior off the table, and you want to model calm.

Counter her manipulative claims FIRMLY with, "I love you and of course you are part of the family, which is why you need to be helpful. Please do not say things like that, it is disrespectful." If she continues, enforce discipline. My kids all tried mopy little phrases like that when they weren't getting their way. I explained it wasn't allowed like any other rule. I also keep things light and calm at home, and I don't yell. So their drama fell on deaf ears, and they knew I wasn't joking if they kept it up.

For insecurity at school, sounds like she may be feeling burned out -thank goodness for summer! Over the summer, I'd work on your relationship with her-which is probably awesome- but we can all ALWAYS improve. Sometimes I get tied up in things and realize I'm doing more enforcement than playing with my kids, so we take a week to do lots of fun stuff together, and I try to get myself back in "fun mom" mode. I also have to take no guff on normal discipline though, because it opens a door to drama, thus the firm consequence in lieu of yelling. It prevents a lot of drama. Hopefully after a summer of fun and boundary enforcement, she'll be refreshed and ready to be social when school rolls around again. If not, you can take this more seriously, and definitely monitor her if she seems depressed, etc. It wouldn't hurt to have her evaluated.

My oldest (6) is one of those kids who is happy around everyone all the time, but she doesn't get burned out because her play time and social time is limited to Tae Kwon Do, the park, Homeschool network activities, Play dates, so she's not around kids all day every day (except two sibs), and it's sort of a treat to do those things. Meanwhile I try to be fun at home and keep drama to a minimum. Your daughter has been in "school" a long time, she's in a bummer phase. Try not to worry too much and see where you can tweak things. She'll be alright!

She is being overly dramatic, IMO. Give a one sentence only response to the drama - "Everyone in this family cleans up" or "I love you but I do not like your behavior right now." Kids pick up these phrases from tv shows, from other kids, etc. As for the friend issue, talk about this with her preschool teacher and see if teacher can help with her social skills. Good luck!

It sounds like she may have some sort of emotional issues that are surfacing. My daughter, now 25 and married, had some of the similar stories you shared here. Of course, only a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist can make the diagnosis, but it doesn't sound like a normal phase. My daughter suffered with lots of issues for most of her childhood because the doctors are very cautious in "labeling" a problem in a child since it's so hard to tell sometimes if it's a phase or something else. I understand why they are cautious, especially with medication. Does your daughter ever have extraordinarily "up" moods as well or just the down ones?
It doesn't sound like she is trying to manipulate you though, especially if there is nothing in it for her to gain. I'm sorry you are having to go through this. It's hard to watch your kids suffer in any way. I hope you get the help you need.

I found your post because I'm having some concerns with my 6 year old son along the same lines.

I know when you said you 'yell at her' you just mean anytime you change your voice tone to 'i've asked you 5 times to do that' or 'you know that was wrong behavior' tone and they respond with what I believe is a very heartfelt implosion of self doubt and loathing. My son's responses are a bit more severe than your daughters, but on the same lines ... I do not believe it is manipulative. i've been trying to get my son psychiatric help for over 4 months now and am in an insurance whirlpool.

I'd be interested to know if you see any changes during the summer. I sometimes think it is reaction to stress, all the pressures we put on our little ones these days. Maybe there was a change in teacher or child in the pre-school and how would we feel if we had to go to work every day with someone we didn't feel comfortable with.

I'm sorry I don't have any answers for you, but wanted you to know you weren't alone and I hope you find the answers you are looking for during her summer break.

It sounds like she was outgoing up until 3 and then wasnt right? Thats how my daughter was. I think thats a common age to decide where you are (inro-extro vert) Up until that age you don't have self awareness. When children realize others judge them and start to care about what others say they IMO often split into the into/extro vert catagory. My daughter was dancing, singing, and loud until 3 and at 3 decided to be the shy dramatic kid you describe. By your description our kids could be the same.
I've tried to not pay attention to the pouting as much and point out that all kids have the same opportunities to have fun and that all kids are jst as worrid as her.
My work always says "that kid needs a shot" when I describe her because her brain is non stop, she cant J. relax and be the happy kid