Carrying discipline over to nursery

[Noomininoo]

Hi,

My DD1 (aged 3.4 years) is going through a particularly 'challenging' time at the moment with her behaviour.

She has been through a lot of change in the last few months with the arrival of a new baby sister (now 4 months old), moving house (3 months ago) & losing a lot of her friends from nursery as they left to attend school (last month) which may go some way towards explaining her behaviour but whilst I recognise the possible reasons for it & try to be sympathetic towards it I still need to do something about the bad behaviour.

At home we have a naughty spot & withdrawal of privileges as discipline techniques which seem to work (to lesser & greater degrees depending on her mood), along with lots of praise (& sometimes a little bribery :oS) for good behaviour. The problem we have, however, is that she attends nursery 5 days a week & whilst talking to her carer in nursery about her behaviour we've been told that they are not allowed to apply these techniques at nursery. How then can I carry over the discipline we try to instil at home to nursery?

Can I discipline a 3yo at the end of the day at home for things she did at the beginning of the day at nursery or is that being a bit unfair? At what age can a child appreciate that bad behaviour can have consequences many hours after the actual incident or should a 3yo be disciplined straight away? I don't want to be unfair on the poor little thing but I do want to put an end to this bad behaviour at nursery as well as at home.

Anybody got any advice...?

No, I don't think so - not at this age - the key is immediate consequences for bad behaviour imo. Let the nursery deal with it their way. As long as the 'rules' are consistent - no pushing/hitting/or whatever I don't think it matters much if the consequence for that behaviour is different b/w settings (as long as it is consistent within the home/nursery).

TBH if you are struggling at home too, I wouldn't even tell her off for bad behaviour at nursery - it just means you start each evening off on a bad note and you need to make your relationship as positive as possible at the moment.

My ds1 had a new brother and 2 house moves to contend with in a short period and you do get fallout (in fact I'd worry if you didn't). It will pass, honest.

Hi, a decent nursery should have their own way of dealing with challenging behaviour. I went through exact same thing with my DS (then 4 yrs) and they had their own techniques of making him sit on the carpet and having 'time-out' for bad behaviour without punishing him, and the same applied to rewarding good behaviour. I had to work closely with nursery for some consistency in what they were doing. My DS had also been through many changes & it does pass to a certain extent and instead the challenges change as they get older. Good luck :)