3 o'clock tears

[Tgger]

My DS is 4.5 and a lovely boy. He napped until about 3.5 or even older so was quite late in giving that up. These days his behaviour is pretty good but come 3ish or sometimes 4 almost every day we get tears. It's often some small insignificant thing that upsets him but the time of the day seems to be consistent that it trigger tears rather than a more robust response.

I wonder, do I just sit this out- we do try to do quieter things around this time, but it seems not to make that much difference. Anyone gone through this and come out the other end? It's better when we go out somewhere and he gets a rest in the car- mostly it's when we're stuck in the house (like today as DD has chickenpox) that we get this behaviour.

Its a difficult one, if you took him out at that time say for a walk to the park or even just in the garden playing would he still get teary? Maybe you could make that time special story time and let him pick the book, I would say try distraction and see if it makes any difference but other than that he's probably just venting a bit of tiredness and sometimes it can be better for them to let it out anyway :-)

Think this is really normal - it's a bit of a witching hour for children this age. If he watches TV, this is not a bad time for it, or sometimes something like going for a walk helps. The real PITA is if you're trying to do something like make dinner, and it all gets frazzly and everyone ends up yelling at each other. My tips are from my mother, really - try and be organised so that dinner's something that will look after itself on days you think will be worse, use TV if you want to, and just ride it out! DD is similar - same age and only dropped her nap (a bit artificially) in November - ideally she'd still have one a couple of times a week, I think. It doesn't help that she tends to get up when we do with (brutally bad sleeper) ds.

Thanks both!

Yes, I find getting out of the house is often better, it's the days when for whatever reason we are in that the problems seem to come. It's a funny one because these days it doesn't last long at all and I'm often left wondering "what was that!"- then I see the time and think- oh yeah.....

Perhaps it's because he napped for so long that he's not very good at this time, still getting over it? Oh well, he's a lot better than he used to be and as I say it doesn't last long. We have T.V. on after lunch and I try not to have too much, but perhaps I'll try to move it to this time on the days when we are not going out.