DD4 struggling with taking turns and kindness- how can I help her ?

[angelha]

I've been told this by nursery and want to support at home.

She can be a bit impulsive in the moment, if she wants a toy- struggles to wait her turn and always wants to go first.

She doesn't seem to care if she's upset someone by taking the toy etc.

At home, she has a little sister, 2.

She has days where she gets it and other days where she doesn't get it.

I play board games with her a lot and I'm trying to teach her to take turns there and not go off in a huff if she loses or when I win a point.

I have books on kindness and how to wait your turn etc that we read every day.

I intervene every time there's a situation with her little sister.

My DD is much better than she was. But what else could I do to support her ? It's like she really understands the concept that in order to have friends, she needs to take turns and not take things from children / not make them upset. However I feel in the moment at nursery, she can be impulsive.

Not always, thankfully. But enough for them to have raised it with me. Apparently it's worse when she's tired. So I'm working on earlier bed times and more down time.

I really want to help her.

I used to pretend to burst into comically exaggerated tears/effect a meltdown when I lost a game to my 4 year old which she found very funny & I genuinely think helped her understand how she looked to others. Probably depends how yours would take it!

This is normal behaviour. The fact that she can do it sometimes is an excellent sign that she is on the right track. There will be 6 year olds who struggle with not being a sore loser (I use 6 as that’s 50% more than 4)

School and nurseries often provide info on what a child should be working on next. They aren’t unreasonable to have this as a target and it will help her maintain friendships in future. Many of her classmates would have this target and my advice would be to keep on going.

I think you're doing what you can. This is normal for her age, autistic or not.

Don't try to tell her not to get upset when she loses. It's all right to feel upset isn't it, it's really shit to lose! You can say 'i hate losing too!' or something. It's the behaviour she needs to manage and that comes with practice. We always say winner tidies up in this house to take the edge off and have played endless endless games of mini golf with tantrums and strops when people do badly (sometimes... mine). I think you're doing the right things so just plug away at it. Validate the feelings but don't accept the behaviour.

Thanks, you're very kind.

I have told her that the teachers tell me and I've told her if the teachers tell me she's been kind and good at taking turns, then she'll get a star and if she gets enough stars, she gets a treat / present.

Is that OK ? Or am I just raising her to be super materialistic ?

I am also explaining and talking to her a lot about whether she wants friends ? And she says ' yes I do ' and I say, in order to have friends - what do we need to do ? And she says ' take turns and be kind to them ' and I have really drummed on about it a lot. I said if we aren't kind and if we take our friends toys and talk over them all the time, then no one will want to play with you. She started crying bit last night when I said that. I then explained that it's ok, she can just try learning to be kinder and taking turns and then she can have friends. I also explained it's the same for grown ups. That we have to be kind to each other etc.

I don't know if this is the right way to speak to her. But I'm having these conversations a lot. I did also have them before, but more now I've learnt about her behaviour at nursery form her teachers.

Happy for any feedback on the above.

I do that sometimes when she's being unnecessarily whiney about something. It always makes her laugh and she stops.

It sounds like fairly normal behaviour for a 4 year old. I'd continue with what you're doing. When my kids were about that age I always praised DD1 heavily when I saw her taking turns or being gracious with her younger sister. If the younger one was snatching the toys I'd also put a stop to it and tell her that it's DD1's turn. They learn after awhile.

Parent of the year here, well done!

No one on this thread has tried your innovative parenting approach.

Seriously.

I’d lay off on the ‘kind’ stuff, as she’s a girl and that features way too much in female socialisation, and leads in extremes to the kind of gendered peoole-pleasing so many posters on here suffer from, while being friendless.

I’d focus on fairness. It’s ‘fair’, rather than ‘kind’ to take turns to play with something more than one person wants. @Greentomatoes21’s suggestion is also a good one — a four year old may not be able to understand that it’s not that she can’t ever have the toy, it’s that she can have it in x minutes.

My 5.5yo struggles with this too - I have been trying to work on it with him recently.

What you're doing already is really great.

What I would add to it is have a think and see if you can notice any patterns e.g. is it harder for her to share vs easier for her to share in certain situations? Times of day? And when she's in a "sharing and kindness is easy" sort of mood, what clues can you see about her body language? When she's in a snatching, reactive, impatient mood, what clues can you see about her body language?

My guess is (from what I've observed with my DS plus things I've learned recently) you might notice this:

Sharing, kind, generous, patient =
Body is relaxed, voice is low and calm, movements are slower, facial expression neutral-ish, her laugh seems natural, if you ask her something she likely responds.

Snatching, mean, impatient, reactive =
Body is tense (if you touch her to try and calm her or direct her movement), movements are fast and frantic, voice is high or loud or harsh, facial expression may be angry or almost a "manic" kind of smile, her laugh seems unkind or "too much", liable to respond with nonsense or a more defiant type of retort if you try to speak to her.

What can happen when children can seem to manage something sometimes, but not all the time, is that it's a sign something is going on underneath.

For DS when I notice he is getting into this sort of state I can run through a sort of mental checklist (a bit like "why is the baby crying?" checklist).

Is he hungry? Thirsty?
Does he need a wee or a poo and been putting it off?
Have we been outside today?
Have I spent some one on one time with him today?
Is he tired, coming down with something?
Is something causing a strong emotion? E.g. anxiety about other child's actions. Sadness because parent is currently working away. Discomfort from clothing. Frustration because the task is too difficult.

Children of this age can be a bit behind in their development of interoception - a fancy word for the internal sensations in the body - so they don't always notice when they feel hungry or irritated or need a wee etc, and this associated discomfort can cause their capacity for other skills like empathy, impulse control, listening etc to be a bit dampened. If this is the problem, you can increase frequency of things like meals so it's little and often, and do more prompting for toilet visits. Try and encourage her to check in with her body and think about whether she needs anything. (I printed off a version of the checklist for DS to look at actually).

Or another common cause of social problems is when they are a bit behind in their communication, which could be anything from speech delay (checklist for age 4) to hearing problems, to difficulty understanding non-verbal cues, which causes anxiety because they can't easily predict the behaviour of other children and they often jump to the conclusion they are scared of (he's going to break it!)

Or it could be impulse control in general - but if it was this I think it wouldn't just be this area - you'd be seeing other behaviours like hyperactivity, risk taking, difficulty following adult instructions etc.

Anyway. My DS has problems with all of these things but he is a bit older so it's more unusual that he struggles with these skills. As she's only four, it is more likely that it's just one or two things that are feeding into this difficulty for her and it is something she'll outgrow. You can definitely help her in the short term.

Something which has been really helpful for us is helping DS to slow down and observe rather than immediately reacting. So, when his 2.5yo brother is having a turn with something and the 5.5yo wants it, I bring him over to me (sometimes this is not really his choice and he fights it a little bit) but he sits on my lap and I say "Look. Let's watch DS3. He is going to get bored of that in a minute. Let's see if we can wait for ten minutes. I'll help you wait. What shall we do while we wait?" If the TV is on, I might talk about what's happening there. Or invite him to choose a book to read. He has half an eye on DS3 the whole time and he's probably itching to get off my lap, because his whole entire body is willing him to go and snatch the toy that he wants so much. Because in the past, he has had the experience that waiting does not work (because he doesn't wait long enough) and that snatching does work (because if a grown up doesn't intervene, then he can easily overpower DS3 and get the toy). So the point of this is to build in lots of successful waiting experiences and show him that, actually, he CAN wait longer.

We almost always find that 10 minutes is enough for the 2.5yo to get bored of the item. In fact, the 2yo often voluntarily comes and gives the item to the 5yo. Though honestly, just as often he will literally abandon it on the floor as his own attention shifts. As soon as I'm sure it's been actually finished with, I praise DS2 for waiting (even if he hasn't been especially patient, the point is that he did not snatch, even if he only didn't snatch because I was holding him away from arm's reach) and he's free to have the toy.

Some other things we are working on, adjacent to this are - determining whether DS3 has ACTUALLY finished with the item or if he has just put it down for a moment but is still playing with it, understanding the difference (otherwise, DS2 will gleefully snatch up the "abandoned" item thinking that he has done the right thing and DS3 will be upset anyway. DS2 is then upset if you take it off him because he genuinely thought that it counted as DS3 being finished).

And when DS2 has the item that DS3 wants, DS2 has the tendency not to give it to him but to grasp it tighter and almost hoard it, even if he's not actually playing with it. So again, reminding DS2 that DS3 will get bored of the toy very quickly, and encouraging him to give it to him with the knowledge that it's not forever. I think in these situations, DS2 gets caught up in the fear that DS3 might take the item and not give it back.

Or, if it really is fair that it's DS2's turn, encouraging DS2 to find a similar/alternative item for DS3, and if this is too difficult (because DS2 has something underlying I can't immediately fix, or because it's something highly valued like this old phone we let them play games on sometimes) then an adult will engage DS3 in finding an alternative or separate play space.

Sometimes when they are playing together (e.g. both with the train track) they can share and collaborate well together. But if they are having a hard time with this then we find it helps if an adult sits right beside DS2 and does a combination of "downloading calm" (basically being very calm and grounded ourselves, not going into fear about him being a brat, not going into irritation, modelling deep breathing, maybe providing calming input like a steady hand on his back, arm/back strokes, talking with a deliberately slow and quiet and calm tone) and doing that slow-down-and-observe thing.

So DS3 will grab a piece of track that I know DS2 wanted to use. I remind him "Don't worry. DS3 will put that down in a minute. Let's build this part instead while we wait." Sure enough DS3 puts the piece of track in a random location and in 30 seconds has moved on to something else and doesn't notice when I move that track back to DS2's preferred location. Or DS3 wants to drive trains around the track which is unfinished. DS2 does not want this. I remind him "Don't worry, he's testing that part. When he gets to this part, we can put a red traffic light here. This part is closed for maintenance!" Basically, the problem here is that DS2 wants DS3 to do exactly what DS2 has in mind. And DS3, being 2, sometimes finds following instructions easy and sometimes he does his own thing (parallel play). But DS2, being 5 (and a bit socially delayed) doesn't understand that and gets frustrated, or anxious that DS3 will "mess everything up". He just needs more experiences of DS3 behaving in an unpredictable way and that being OK (or even fun), which he needs a bit of support with. And I think this will also dissipate as DS3 gets older and more able to play collaboratively, as he does when he's in a more cooperative mood. It's also easier for him to relax knowing that an adult will prevent DS3 from totally destroying the track, whether from play, malice or accident.

I think you are right to talk seriously with her. Just make sure you go in from the point of view that she IS a lovely, friendly girl and people like her, that you KNOW she is kind and fair but she needs to work on showing it sometimes. Self-esteem building is so important and tied into all of this. (I am not saying she has low self esteem, just that you wouldn't want her to internalise "I snatched that toy so I am not a kind person.") Kids are so black and white. You want her to know that if it she loses it/forgets/upsets someone, that it is because she is learning to take turns. You are most likely doing all of this anyway! Please be reassured that it is developmentally normal, children learn this at different paces. She has a fiesty 2 year old sister who is challenging her at home too! Sometimes snatching it the quickest and most effective way to get what you want! They'll both get there.

@Greentomatoes21 thanks so much.

I hadn't even thought about the self esteem angle. I had only thought that she has to get this right. Not about the impact it could be having on her self esteem.

Could the behaviour in itself come from low self esteem ? Maybe we've been too hard on her inadvertently.

She was a bit of a difficult toddler with lots of tantrums. I didn't really understand at first that some toddlers have a lot of tantrums. Maybe I made her feel bad about it ? Maybe she could sense that I was somehow disappointed in her ?

I acted the usual ways you're supposed to when they have tantrums - stay calm, validate feelings and give cuddles when it's over.

But maybe she felt that I didn't really get it at first?

Whereas with my second child I haven't had any disappointments because I expected the tantrums stage.

I know it sounds awful to say I was disappointed at her tantrums, but I do think that's how I felt sometimes. Maybe she picked up on it.

You're absolutely right, she does have to get it right. It's just like learning anything, she's going to have bumps in the road and that's hard and frustrating but she'll get there in the end. But she is so much more than this issue at nursery 😊 impulsive behaviour (like snatching) is the most natural thing in the world at this age. Give her actual things to do or say when she wants a toy/turn and practise saying them together. I would probably teach her to tell an adult at this point...it's all well and good teaching her to a)wait for a turn (she could be waiting all day, which is unrealistic and setting up to fail or b)asking a fellow 4 year old who is just as likely to say NO!, which could understandably result in her just taking the thing.

She's still sooo little. Don't beat yourself up about self esteem, that's not what I meant at all. Just meant make sure you try to separate the behaviour from who she is as a wee person. X