Talk

Flip

Talk to others about child development and behaviour stages here. You can find more information on our development calendar.

Behaviour/development

5 year old hysterical crying

4 replies

Hannah2199 · 25/02/2020 20:11

My DD often gets hysterical and cries for no reason. She doesn't seem to be able to calm herself down. It can start over something small like DS is looking at her and rapidly escalate.

Weve tried cuddling her, talking to her, giving her a toy to cuddle, sending her to her room, ignoring her. OH has on occasion shouted at her which shocked her into silence for a while before the crying started again.

It only seems to happen when her siblings are around for example gets hysterical if DS has chosen the chair she wants at breakfast or if she cant sit next to DD2 in the car (they take turns).

The reason I've started trying to ignore this behaviour is because I'm wondering if it's just attention seeking. I do my best but theres only so much I can do when I'm home alone with 3 kids whike OH at work, the dinner needs cooking, baby needs feeding, showers etc. We do spend lots of time playing and stories as well and she gets activities like swimming in the week.

I mostly stick to boundaries so if shes hysterical because she wanted a sweet and I said no she knows theres no point t crying because she will not be getting a sweet. Yet she still carries on crying.

But if I ignore her she gets so hysterical that DS and my other DD cant continue with their activity anyway. And she gets increasingly hysterical.

Not sure where to go from here. I should say that DD is 5 so it's not like we are talking about a toddler

OP posts:

Report

SomeoneElseEntirelyNow · 25/02/2020 22:14

Have you tried talking to her about it when she's calm? Asking her how she feels when she gets that upset, and what she thinks might help? Get her to try and work through it with you a bit, maybe see if there are any strategies you could try when it happens that you can agree upon together?

Report

Hannah2199 · 26/02/2020 11:01

Good point. Yes I've tried talking to her about it but I'm still at a loss. For example, she says she doesnt want to do her gymnastics class because there are boys in the class?! I've told her that's a silly reason and if for some reason she doesnt like these particular children just to play with someone else but not having any luck yet

OP posts:

Report

SomeoneElseEntirelyNow · 26/02/2020 11:25

...if my daughter was crying hysterically about not wanting to go to a gym class because there are boys there, id be doing a lot of close investigations into what the hell happened to make her so upset about being around boys. that sounds really worrying to me, and i think you should consider keeping her out of the gym class til you figure it out.