behavior is usually good ... BUT

Hi all! I feel like I could start 37 new topics ... and here I was, foolishly, thinking that the older they got the EASIER they would get ... well, the joke is on me, eh?!

So, my girls just turned 4 and the main issue I am having (for the moment) is TANTRUMS. They are out of control. They no longer nap so I wonder if it is tiredness that is the main culprit and I have decided that I am going to be type A super anal about their schedule like I was when they were little and see if that helps ... here is my problem. When they fuss, they WILL NOT stay in their rooms for a TO. Tonight, this is the SHORT version of what happened. Was trying to get everyone bathed, PJed, and in bed (I have 4 yo twins and an 18 month old and a husband who is an MD on call and still not home at 10PM). One of my twins was freaking out (ie screaming and crying) because her sister beat her in the "be the first to get Pull-Ups and PJs on" game. Well, I told her if she did not calm down before I got her sister's hair dryed she would not get books. She didn't calm down therefore I tried to put her in the bed after I got her hair dried and teeth brushed. She would not stay in her bed/room therefore I had to take the other two to the baby's room to read them books. I locked Hannah out of Caroline's room. She proceeded to bang/kick the door with all her body weight/might the whole time I read books to the other two. Then, after a few minutes, she went into the guest room (the baby has a jack-n-jill bath with the guest room) and got the antique vanity table chair and rammed it into the locked bathroom door over and over and over while screaming the whole time I read books to the other two. By this time, her twin is crying bc she is upset her sister is so upset and the baby starts crying when I lay her down. I leave the baby crying and walk up the stairs to put Meredith in her bed and give her kisses. I walk out and now she is also crying. I go down and carry screaming Hannah up to her room and put her in her bed ... she is still freaking out and so I run out and hold the doorknob so she can't get out of her room ... I was fully planning on staying there until she cried herself to sleep. She is hitting/ kicking the door and ramming her toys into the door then I hear a CRASH. She took her piggy bank and threw it and it shattered all over her room. That is about when I lost it. I tossed her on her bed and told her to stay there (which, of course, she didn't) and she is running all over while I am trying to get the vacuum (mind you, the other two are still crying, too) and I am trying to vacuum up the shards of ceramic all over while she is running around screaming ..I put her in her bed several times and she kept getting out while I was trying to clean up all the glass ... yada yada ... I finally got it all cleaned and got her to stay in her room ... I went downstairs and called my Mom to talk me down from the ledge ... WHAT DO I DO?! Who else's kids ram furniture into doors and throw glass piggy banks? She is well-behaved a good bit of the time but her tantrums are totally out of control ... any advice? I am not above locking her into her room ... that is my next order of business ... installing a lock for the outside. TIA =) I have a glass of wine down and everyone has cried themselves to sleep and I am feeling better ... but OY! What a crap way to end the night.

 

It sounds to me she may be needing the attention and is planning on getting her way any way she can even if it means getting angry attention from you. I can only suggest what I had learned and that is to not respond. Just put her back in to bed and do not react to her actions. Don't talk to her, don't look at her, just put her in her bed and walk out. She gets up, go back in and put her back in to her bed. She won't be getting your attention as she's not behaving as she should. When she does behave, then you go in and talk to her and tuck her in or do as you like to a calm Hannah. When things are calm maybe the next morning, get her to help you pick up her stuff, but during the tantrums, don't address what she's done. It's very likely she's in such a fit, she'll even wreck something that meant a lot to her so she'll be feeling badly about it afterwards. She hopefully doesn't break something that meant a lot to you, that's a hard one to ignore, but I found if my boys are doing something that involved something I cared about and broke it, there's nothing much I can do about it other than speak to them calmly when I'm no longer angry about what they broke. I fail at this and I pay the price. I feel badly about it afterwards, but I have learned they react much better when I'm calm and that's what you need to do. She may really want more of your attention and does not know how to get the right kind of attention from you so she throws a fit to get the attention. You can tell her calmly to tell you in a quiet voice what is upsetting her. Maybe talk to her when she's calm about it, but during her fits, the key is not to react to what she's doing other than putting her back in to the place you want her without a word or look. You may have to repeat this a few times or many times, but eventually she'll get it that you are not going to talk to her until she calms down.

Screaming at her will only add to the tension she's feeling and will make you just as stressed out. You at that point will have lost control as she's lost control of herself. You need to gain that control by controlling your emotions so therefor controlling the situation by having that control over yourself.

 

:hug: sounds like a rough evening!

I have many nights that it's just me and the little ones so I've come to learn some things.

The main thing that I've learned is that I can't punish them longer then 3 minutes. So after the 3 minutes of locking her out, I would have let her in. I bet at the end she had no idea what she even did in the beginning to get in trouble in the first place. They just don't have the memory for that.
I do tend to ignore most tantrums but if I'm putting them in timeout then I do so in a spot... not in a room. I find the spot to be easier because I can put them back until their time is up. It takes some time to get used too but when I put mine in their room they destroy it. Plus it ends up being a "bad" place and I want them to love their room and sleep well


Just a couple things that work around here. I also know that the more I talk to them and discuss things with them, the easier things seem to go. :hug:

 

I hear what you are both saying but here are my questions ...

People say not to give in to a tantrum ... so if she is throwing a fit for my attention ... why do I want to let her in the room with us while I read books ... I feel like that is "giving in" to her fit. She's not two ... she is four ... and even this morning she woke up saying sorry that she fussed and threw her piggy bank ... she remembers and she is fully aware of why she is in trouble. And anyway, I would not have even known what to "give" her as she was mad because she didn't get her Pull up on "first." GAH!

Also, to put her back in her room over and over is not possible for me as I had the two other kids to get into bed. She would have played that game for an HOUR ... trust me, we have been there. If I am to ignore a tantrum, then, to me, putting her back in her room over and over is giving her attention ... more attention than I think that kind of behavior deserves. When I put her in TO she does not mearly sulk she screams her head off and runs around the room. There is no TO in a chair or the bottom step or any just "spot" because they WILL NOT sit there. She is manipulative and says "I want Mommy to hooooooold me ... I can't calm down by myself .... I need my Mommmmmmy!!!!!!!!!!!!" Well, it breaks my heart but I know she is manipulating me and I simply WILL NOT give in to what she wants while she is throwing a fit. When I finally went back in after I got the other two in bed (prior to the throwing of the bank) I offered to lay down with her until she calmed down and she screamed in my face that she was NOT going to bed that she wanted BOOKS! She knew that "no books" were her punishment and I was not about to give in but I did offer her the comfort and then she screamed at me that she did not want ANYONE in the house with her at all she did not WANT a Mommy and she wanted BOOKS! She will hit me sometimes ... I mean just not making sense at all and I knew she was just overtired by this point (she had been screaming for over an hour) ...

As for giving her attention. I am a SAHM and spend all day every day with them and I make sure to get on the floor and run around and play games and do art and whatever they want to do for a good portion of the day. They get a lot of time with me. I do feel guilty at how much time the little one takes up but I am doing the absolute best I can with giving everyone their Mommy time.

Ugh! I really appreciate the thoughts though. I may not do a TO anymore and just come up with another way to deal with the tantrums because TO is clearly not doing a bit of good in our house. Just makes the whole house tired and upset. :cry:

 

I am sure it will result in a meltdown but we have had to balance TO's with taking things away - otherwise some days they would be in TO all day. So sometimes toys get taken away or the movie gets turned off - whatever is your child's currency. I have been also trying to talk to my boys about feelings and how it is okay to be mad but not okay to throw things or hit people - I am hoping that at some point it will sink in. I need to try and find some books to read with them about feelings.
Hope today is a better day!

 

The first thing I would do is try and limit the things that cause tantrums. I never did games like 'who can get their PJs on first' for exactly that reason-it creates a winner and a looser and the looser is likely to get upset. (Of course they need to learn how to handle loosing and being disappointed, but not at bedtime!) Instead I would frame it as a challenge to be fast but not first, eg 'can you get your PJs on before I put the baby's on' or even just 'how fast can you be' and start a timer so you can tell them how long it was, then they can try and be faster the next night.

Secondly I think you're right to consider stopping time outs, if they won't sit properly and are wrecking everything and you're not able to keep putting them back then it's probably not doing any good. What I would do is try and make an area that is tantrum proof (nothing hard or breakable to hand) and put them there when they need to calm down. Their bedroom would do if you can take out anything valuable/breakable/dangerous, but even a couch would work as a calm down area. I actually often just used a (sometimes hastily cleared) corner of whichever room we were in because it allowed me to keep an eye on them while carrying on playing with the other twin, but mine were quite good at staying where I put them.
Explain to them that when they are calm they can come back to whatever they were doing-similar to time out but with the focus on controlling emotions rather than punishment for a behaviour. I also might try to talk her through a couple of tantrums to see if that helps her calm down quicker, verbalise her emotions and explain how you want her to behave. To take your example you could say something like "I can see you're feeling very cross because you didn't get your pyjamas on as fast as you wanted to. It is not OK to keep screaming like that, you need to calm down. When you calm down you can come and listen to stories with us." That way you are giving her an 'out' from the tantrum at any point instead of putting a time limit on and then a consequence. (If you think about it once she had not calmed down within your hair-drying time there was no incentive for her to stop screaming, she had lost her books either way.) Then I would remind her every couple of minutes during the tantrum "when you calm down and stop screaming you can come and join in with books."
In conjunction with this I'd talk to them at a calm time about how to handle emotions. That it is OK to be angry or upset but not to scream and throw things. Give them some ideas for what to do when they feel like that to help them calm down (sit in a quiet place, come and ask you for a hug, hit a pillow, shout 'I feel mad!'). You will need to go over these things many times, and remind them of them during and after their tantrums, before they will be able to do them independently but they should be old enough to understand.

The only other thing I would add is are you sure she can calm down by herself once she's that worked up? I know that, with my kids, ignoring and not giving in was usually the best thing to do but on occasion (thankfully rarely) they would get themselves into such a state that they literally couldn't calm down on their own. At that point it was better to go and give them some comfort, I didn't hug and soothe because I didn't want them to see it as a reward. I'd sit them on my lap-facing out from me-hold them still, and gently tell them "that's enough now, stop screaming" until they calmed down.

I'm sorry you're having a hard time at the moment. I'm sure that once they adjust to not napping and learn some better ways to deal with negative emotions things will improve. I remember the attitudes my big girls got around 4 and it was not fun, and that was without having to deal with an 18 month old (which was another tricky age for us!) :hug: Good luck!