To think I’m too hard on my ds age five?

[eatyourpizza]

I feel like I’m too hard on my five year old ds, and he must hear a constant stream of nagging from me but equally I don’t feel I can ignore some stuff so I don’t really know what to do. It inevitably ends in my frustration tipping into annoyance and then he gets angry and upset.

Just now at the dinner table he would not sit up or sit down. He was jumping up and down from his chair, lolling and leaning so that he was lying across the chair with his head on the floor, then up again, running round then back and lolling again.

I don’t feel I can ignore it but equally I don’t want to be always on at him!

"Oh - don't you want your dinner? Never mind then".

Take his plate away and put it on the side in the kitchen. I can pretty much guarantee he will want it back immediately and at that point you say "Come and sit nicely then". If he doesn't sit nicely, take it away again and he goes without.

Expecting a neurotypical child to sit up sensibly for a reasonable period of time while he eats is not being hard on him.

@begonefoulclutter but if I did that he’d have it back in the dining room then ten seconds later be lolling all over the place again. I guess this is what worries me a bit - that can he do it or is it that he can’t? And if it is ADHD I don’t want to destroy his self esteem by constantly being on at him, but then even if he does have ADHD he has to learn to sit at the table!

Well nagging isn't getting you anywhere so a change of approach is needed.
The suggestion from @begonefoulclutter us a good one and definitely worth a try. Or, if he has finished his meal before the acrobatics start, let him go and play quietly where you can see him.

If he's hungry and wants his dinner, he might try to get up again a couple of times but will learn quickly (if he is NT, I don't know about ADHD children).
We use the same method this poster has mentioned with both our kids and it worked perfectly.

The only time this doesn't really work is when they're not hungry or don't like the dinner we made. Could it be one of those?
Or did you ask him why he isn't sitting down?

This is why we have dessert every night so the kids know they have to sit on their bottoms and eat their tea to get it

It's probably attention seeking. Have you tried giving him attention/conversation while he's sitting nicely and eating, then not giving him any attention when he starts being silly?

I don't think you're being too harsh, but it sounds like the nagging isn't working for him - or for you. If you're worried there's an underlying neurodiversity going on, one approach would be to give him loads of sensory input before you're asking him to sit down at the table - so challenge him to do something big and physical and then be like, 'and now we're going to sit super still at the table to eat'. It might also help if you can find a way to be more playful, i.e. all pretending to be super well mannered because you're practicing for having tea with the Queen. Phrases like 'sit nicely' don't always mean that much to be a 5yo so be specific i.e. sit on your bottom. I'd also say just remember he will sit at a table properly eventually, so don't get ahead of yourself worrying that because he behaves a certain way now, he'll behave that way forever

My 5yo does this and I typically just remind him in a kind/pleasant tone about how I expect him to sit and why (because it's safer to eat sitting upright/ so you don't drop your food in the floor/so your clothes stay clean). It probably helps that I have the same 'rules' for my 3yo so I'm not singling him out (although honestly the 3yo doesn't loll about as much!). I frame it as "this is how we all sit to eat" rather than "you're doing something wrong" and since I give sensible reasons he usually accepts it (and forgets again 5 minutes later).

Can you give any other examples? Because this one snap shot wouldn't really show if overall you are being to hard on him...

How long as he being doing this? Have you always pulled him up on it? If this has been a longstanding issue, what you're doing isn't working. Children can usually sit for a meal by age 5 unless they have additional needs. Maybe he needs more active play before food. Sensory circuits to get the energy out then bring him back to calm. Wobble cushion. Stimulation during meal times, maybe use that time to practice mental arithmetic or just chat about his day, play eye spy.

Do you know even that doesn’t work … that’s what makes me wonder if he CAN’T!

We used to have a toddler table and chair and he kept rocking on the chair and falling off and I realised it probably was too small for him, so the dining table is only in the last couple of months or so. But his teacher commented on his poor core strength at parents evening as well.

Have you tried: "I see you don't want to sit down. That's fine, your body wants to move. You can stand to eat your dinner instead. It's here on the table."

There is some really good advice here. Yes to the thing about making sure you’re mostly rewarding good behaviour with attention, not bad behaviour. And no desert if he hasn’t behaved, although he might be too young for that kind of logic based reasoning, and if he really can’t sit due to special needs then I guess that seems unkind.
It’s just a really difficult dilemma, am I being too hard, or too soft, and either way is that causing this issue. One thing I used to feel was that I had to mostly pick battles I was sure of winning, or you’re kind of just advertising that you don’t have any authority, so sometimes let stuff go. But none of us can really say whether he does have special needs etc, or how tired he is after a long day. Could you give him his dinner a bit earlier, or even have ‘dinner’ at lunch, and just have something easy like a boiled egg in the evening?
Or I guess you could try a star chart, with a reward if he’s good all week? I found that worked for us when the issue was bedtime behaviour getting out of hand.

One of my friends son can't sit still hes a teenager now and is still incapable of staying still for any length of time im sure he has undiagnosed adhd or something. Its not always parenting some people just genuinely can't.

I’m not convinced this would bother me unless he was likely to hurt himself or make a mess. I’d offer him to stand and eat probably. Is he actually hungry? Is he struggling to eat easily - smaller cutlery or a spoon vs fork maybe help?

What does he do at school ?

If you suspect ADHD a wobble cushion and exercise band on the legs of the chair can be helpful for getting children to sit at a table

At the start of the year his teacher did mention he wasn’t sitting up at the table there (he is in reception.) That seems to have improved a bit but she did say his core strength seemed quite poor as in he lolls and moves his bum down onto the edge of the seat so that his back and head are slumped (I probably didn’t explain that very well, sorry,)

I do have a two year old who sits fine at the table 🤷‍♀️ I do think I’ve possibly been historically guilty of letting some stuff slide just so he eats and then it became a habit but I’ve really tried hard to address it since starting school became imminent, so maybe a year now?

Thank you

As for other examples … argghh, hard to say. He’s 100 miles an hour, joins in things with great zest and enthusiasm, is often hilarious and is very bold and determined. I love all that about him. But when I’m tired or just needing five minutes peace I find I’m snapping at him or get a bit worn down with the ‘but mummy … but but but … the sun IS a planet because …’

So recent examples - went hurtling into a pack of alpacas and bellowed BLUE TRACTOR at the top of his voice (it’s not as random as it sounds; we live rurally and have a bit of a daft game that if a green tractor goes by I win, his sister is red and he’s blue so he was overjoyed to see this one as he’d ’won’ problem was he nearly caused a stampede of alpacas in the process.) Walking across a muddy field and randomly decided to start walking on his knees. Trying to ride his sisters balance bike on the garden table. Errr …

I have 4 sons. My 19yr old (second eldest) has adhd diagnosed at 8 but plain as day he had it from a very young age (I will refer to him as R)
i'll tell you the difference in him to my other 3, the other 3 soon learnt when we told them not to do things. But R? I could live again with the breath I wasted on him. Nothing ever sunk in with him. No consequences, no repetition NOTHING. I could tell him "sit down and eat please" and 2mins later he'd be up and off again rinse and repeat x 50 till i realised it was a waste of time.
It's like he had the memory of Dory off Finding Nemo. My others, only needed telling a twice if that and they'd stop. He never stopped. He was action from the moment his eyes opened to the moment they shut. I look back now and think how did I survive that? But I did. And he's wonderful. Driving, working as a painter and decorator, brings me no trouble (he never did he was just full on).

He sounds like my DS at that age. Diagnosed ASD at 20 and still on an ADHD waiting list at 23.

It was soooooo tiring. Also, you have a younger one, so you need to parent consistently. I only had him to wrestle with, so rightly or wrongly, I let him get on with some of it and he could deal with the consequences.

So deciding to crawl through mud? OK, but he had to strip off before he got in the car and travel home in his pants. Oh, did you not get the ice cream you were hoping for? Muddy boys can't go into ice cream shops.

Some things, like riding a bike on a table, I would have put a stop to.

Don't make a threat unless you will carry it out. So, not sitting at a table? - No dinner until he was sat. I did scrape his dinner into the bin a couple of times and go through to the lounge and ignore him. The fact that he knew I would carry out a threat did seem to help.

But also, I would sometimes say that he still had too much energy to eat dinner, and please go and run round the garden five times then come back and try. That worked sometimes.

It is hard when you have a non-conforming child and nothing works.

I have two NT children..girls...both able to sit still when they want to, both can be a complete pain and get up every 3 seconds despite being told to sit down and rhey do all the sliding down the chair nonesense. Its completely normal. They need to be taught to sit still and many find it hard. I would personally read him a book to keep him seated and allow movement breaks.

I had one child who could sit still
at the table for his whole meal from the minute he sat up in a high chair to when he graduated to a normal chair and on to this day. I had another child who would do anything to get some physical stimulation out if a seat. We had tummy on the table with one toe on the chair, we had one buttock on chair, we had all manner of strange positions and balancing while watching TV. He can manage to sit still much more now aged 8 but still while watching TV he’ll be up and down a bit, balancing on one arm of the sofa on his tummy, changing positions a lot. He is also a big climber and wrestler. He NEEDS the physical stimulation. If you feel you’re nagging your child too much, perhaps you are. It may be that siting still is just a bit harder for him than for some others. It used to drive me mad that my younger child kept forgetting at the table but I can see in hindsight that he truly couldn’t help it. Maybe ask him to sit still for a few minutes then let him
get down for a 10 second wiggle?