We're having a bit of an issue here and I'm trying to find a way of dealing with it.
Our girl is 7, generally pretty well behaved, generally takes a telling and if told "no you can't have that" or "no we can't do that" she just accepts it.
Where we have a problem is, sometimes if we give her in to trouble for something, always pretty minor and the telling off is just a "can you please not do that" she can sometimes lose it a bit and start crying. Mostly it all blows over quickly, but occasionally she will really lose it and it ends up with her just yelling and crying. We've tried all sorts of ways of dealing with it and haven't really found a good one. It all ends with a calm conversation about what just happened and promises (on both sides) to do better next time.
Our current method is to basically let her get on with it and tell her we will talk to her when she stops yelling. It seems to have been working, the last time she only yelled for a few minutes and I thought we had it cracked. But tonight she got out of bed at ten pm with a spurious night time attention request (we've had a few nights of her not being able to get to sleep, which happens from time to time). We refused to pander to it, as it's become a bit of a habit. I told her the last time she asked, we wouldn't be doing it again. She did not like this and right royally kicked off. Shouted, yelled, and even screamed, which is a big no no in our house. She threw the mother of all tantrums and the ignoring thing didn't work, seemed to make it worse. Eventually I told her if I came upstairs, which is what she was insisting I did, it would be to close her door (she hates that) and she would be in her room all day tomorrow. She stopped, went to bed and fell asleep.
So, needless to say, tomorrow we are going to have to have words. She already is off screens because she's had trouble sleeping and I know that can cause sleep issues, so the "no telly" thing won't work. There isn't really anything else I can think of to take away from her, and anyway, that's never been too effective. So, I wondered, would it be weird, or terrible to give her lines tomorrow? Is that all outdated? Do schools still do it? Am I nuts for even thinking about it?
Or can anyone else suggest an alternative? How on earth do you deal with a tantrumming 7 year old who will literally just scream "I just want to talk to you" over and over again. I've tried a couple of times saying "ok, let's talk" and she actually doesn't really have anything to say. It seems to be an attention thing, but seriously, she is the most attended child ever because of her disability.
I have talked to her extensively to see if anything is bothering her. She did have a few sleep issues a few weeks back when a scary story was doing the rounds, But she got over that ok and was sleeping fine. We talk a lot about how she is feeling and sharing our worries. If she is bothered by something she usually tells us.
Ready to be royally roasted - interested to hear whether it's a really terrible idea!