We have a 13 year old girl residing in our house.
No we haven’t started taking in orphans.
I mean our sweet four-year-old, David, has suddenly developed an attitude that rivals that of a Hannah Montana groupie.
He’s defiant, and rebellious. Talking back, and testing us at every turn.
“David if you’re finished eating breakfast it’s time for you to dressed. I put your clothes out in your room.”
“No.”
“You don’ t tell me no. You have to stand in Time Out now.”
“If you put me in Time Out I’ll throw you in the trash!”
Yes, he threatens to throw us in the trash when he gets mad. The thing he doesn’t know is that after a long day of him pushing all my buttons, being whisked away in the back of a garbage truck sounds kind of nice.
We’ve ramped up the discipline to put an end to this behavior.
After David continued to disobey and sass in spite of taking quite a few Time Outs last Thursday, I decided to try something new. I discovered that taking away TV, movie and computer privileges is about the worst possible consequence he could ever suffer, at least in his view.
You can not imagine the grief not being able to watch TV for an entire day brought on. First David cried for an hour. Then he spent another hour lying mournfully on the couch, pouting silently, and I’m sure plotting some sort of revenge against his evil mother.
Everyone says two is terrible. But it wasn’t. At three things started to get a little dicey, but now at four David can really just be completely incorrigible. He’s stubborn and headstrong as it is. Add in back-talking and a bad temper and he’s impossible at times. I hope this is just a phase, and I wonder if some of this has been brought on by the impending arrival of his new little brother. If that’s the case, I can’t imagine what will happen once Wade is actually here.
David isn’t like that all the time. Most of the time he’s his happy, pleasant self. But when he gets in those moods, oh, watch out! And there’s nothing more frustrating than going around in circles with a child who still isn’t old enough to reason. It’s easy to feel like you’re losing control of the situation. It’s hard to stay in control of your own temper. And It’s exhausting. I swear it gave me something close to a migraine last week.
We had a good day today. There were no major episodes of defiance, and I didn’t once feel the urge once to lock myself in the bathroom. Maybe the Shock and Awe discipline blitzkrieg is working.
How do you deal with your kids when they give you “attitude”?
Taking away privileges always worked well in the classroom. It works well when there is the opportunity to earn a reward. Basically, the privilege routine.
Just last Sunday I was speaking with a lady at church who has a 3 year old – soon to be 4 – who is going through the same thing. She has found that taking away privileges works best with him, too.
And, as I recall from my own childhood…taking away privileges works great through the teen years as well…oh those weeks without phone privileges – horror for me!
Hang in there.
The down side to taking away privileges is that it creates a very negative environment where the child feels he has no control. Where children feel like the victims, they may not develop a sense of personal responsibility for their choices and the consequences of those choices.
We use a system mapped out in the book, “Transforming Your Difficult Child” by Glasser. It is much more focused on positive reinforcement for behavior you want to encourage along with known, consistent consequences for unacceptable choices. It also puts an end to the endless go-rounds with, “That’s one, that’s Two, that’s THREE!” which threatened to put ME in the funny farm.
In conjunction with the system nicely outlined in that book, we use a website called Handipoints to track expectations and rewards. It works fantastic for us as it give the kids concrete feedback from us every day. We all love the opportunity to sit down together to talk about what did or didn’t work for the day (we have a 7 and 9 yo, started this system and sight a year ago).
I realize that David is only 4 – and truly, this is normal, boundary testing child behavior. But it’s certainly not too early to help him learn that certain behavioral choices have consequences he will NOT like! It’s far better to teach kids to do the right thing intrinsically than to have them behave out of fear of punishment form some authority figure.
Well, my kids are now 16 and 20 so we really don’t have the issues we did when they were little.
However, when my youngest was four he kicked, hit, and bit me all in one day. So I do think that what you’re going thru is a very normal phase at this age.
That son is now 16 and we really haven’t had a problem with either of ours in regards to a temper or huge rebellion or anything.
I think it just helps to continually be consistent (which is hard, I admit). Taking privileges away is excellent.
Talking with them about their heart attitude and letting them know your expectations is great too, but the consistency is the key, I think.
It’s also hard. Especially when you just want to go lock yourself in the bathroom and have a nice quiet bath and a little peace and quiet, lol!
We would start small, like losing an hour or two of t.v. for arguing, etc. Sometimes losing the whole day if the behavior did not change.
We didn’t accept surly behavior and gave timeouts or sent them to their rooms until they could come out with a smile on their face and in their hearts, KWIM?
We treated disrespect as a huge thing, and you might be grounded in your room for a whole day with that one (of course, not at age four. That was for a few years later).
We didn’t like talking back either, so they got in big trouble for that too.
It’s hard but continue to toe that line and don’t accept the sassing or disrespect as being “normal.”
Yes, it’s normal for it to happen but that doesn’t mean we want to excuse it and let them get away with it, which you’re not, fortunately!
Sorry for such a long comment, by the way. I just stumbled across you on twitter!
Thanks for the encouragement!
I feel your pain! Two was not terrible; it was typical. It’s the ‘freaking fours’ that will push you over the edge. At first, I thought I was imagining that four was a horrible age. Then, our second child turned four. My fears were confirmed; four is a year long version of torture for the mother. We are six months away from our third child turning four. I’ve decided to take up heavy drinking to cope with it. Just kidding. It’s different with each child.
Oh geez. Well, at least I only have 8 months left of four. I’m counting the days! 🙂
When my niece went through her difficult four year-old drama queen phase, my brother and his wife would tell her to go to her room until she was ready to calm down. The advantage to this approach–rather than imposing a time-out or taking away a privilege–is that it placed the responsibility for monitoring her feelings and behavior in her own hands. She learned that when she was upset and out-of-control, she needed to isolate herself from other people until she could behave acceptably. Before she reached the age of five, I observed that when she got upset, she would sometimes go quietly to her room on her own initiative–sans the drama–and calmly return several minutes later. I agree with Debbie S that punishment can make kids feel helpless and lead to worse behavior. Teaching them self-control sets them on the path to maturity.