4yr hits you every day, every week, once in a blue moon, never ???

[skybluedaze]

Hello everyone ! Have read lots of great stuff here on 'spirited' 4 yrs olds and what my DH unhelpfully but amusingly calls the 'hippy-dippy / don't take any shit' debate. I have two lovely kids, a very easy-going 3 yr old and a very challenging 4 yr old. Am at wits end and trying to work out just how extreme or normal my 4 yr olds behaviour is.....So, please tell me HOW OFTEN DOES YOUR 4 YR OLD LOSE THE PLOT AND TRY AND HIT YOU / AND OR SIBLINGS ? Thank you lovely people. I need to know.

Sorry but my 4 yr old never hits out but does have tantrums. Less frequently now but about once a fortnight Id guess at, normally if we tell her no to something she wants.

With hitting, you need to withdraw your attention immediatejy it happens, just walk away and do something else then talk about it/impose a sanction when you are both calmer. Use lots of positive reinforcement when he's good.

Sorry. That all stopped around 2. But we are definitely take-no-shit camp.

Similar to the above, my 4 year old never hits but does still have tantrums a few times a month, usually when he is tired.

My nearly 4 year old doesn't hit. She looks like she wants to sometimes, mid tantrum, but she can resist. That is very rare nowadays.

Neither of mine ever hit but I see plenty of preschoolers who do. I was just lucky!

My 4 yo hits me if mid tantrum and I try to touch her. These instances are thankfully much rarer now she's is nearly 5 (maybe once every couple of months). Tiredness and illness are the main contributing factors to her kicking off.

DD2 hits DD1 with fair regularity. She is currently in her bedroom. She's very nearly 4. She never hurts DD1 who is usually taunting her it's more of an arm push I suppose.

She has never hit anyone else ever.

DD1 hit me yesterday on the arm in anger, looked like she was about to crap herself as I don't think she meant to, and also got sent straight to her room. First, and hopefully last, time she has ever shown any inclination to hit anyone.

I've got a very well behaved lovely 7 year old who was an absolute nightmare till he was 4.5. From around age 3-4 he hit me often, a few times a week and had major explosive tantrums at least once or twice a week.

I don't think it's the norm by any standards and at the time I was at my wits end. I read books, watched bloody supernanny, spoke to professionals, even considered going to parenting classes towards the end.

However, something happened - he just grew out of it. We didn't do anything different, we didn't parent him differently. We just noticed over a number of months the challenging behaviour gradually getting less and less. It was amazing and such a relief .

He's the most chilled out little boy now and a pleasure.

Obviously this is my experience and only you can decide if you think
Your child's behaviour is normal or not. I definitely think mine wasn't but it wasn't for the want of trying to bloody fix it, we went down every road.

Hardly ever now but she is approaching 5. A lot of growing up has been done this year, probably to do with starting school and learning to control her emotions well. There are several in dd's class who are still inclined to lash out I think.
Btw dd has always been spirited and would hit a lot as a 2 or three year old.

Never.

He bites instead. The 18mo comes up to me sobbing with a perfect round set of teethmarks in his arm maybe once a week.

My 2 year old hit me once and i immediately put her in the naughty corner and then made her apologize and she never did it again. My dh tells me she hits him sometimes when she gets a bit excited but he doesn't do anything about it. You need to be tough. If he does it take him to his room for a time out (no talking or shouting) or take some toys away and then tell him when he's calmed down that's its wrong and he has to apologize. No apology no toys.

My DS is 2 and hits me/DH every day. We are trying everything and nothing much seems to be working. Sorry not much help, but I feel your pain, I was just hoping that by 4 he would stop it, but maybe not...

DD is 5.5, calm & gentle. Whilst she was 4, she used to hit me 3 or 4 times a week. Around turning 5, it probably went down to twice a week and now it has pretty much stopped although I still get a bit of foot stamping. She never did this to anyone else, indeed, she was sweetness & light for them. I think I was her "safe zone" where she knew she could vent and still be loved.
Hitting meant straight to time out for a few minutes and I got to choose her bedtime TV programme rather than her (banning TV altogether just led to more hitting...). If I thought she was about to start, she was asked if she wanted to go & hit pillows or to go & shout at her cuddly toys which sometimes got the gremlins out of her system.
As she approached five, she got better about telling me she was in a "muddle" due to "gremlins" which meant we could talk about it which reduced the occurrences of hitting.

Thank you eveybody - Tanfastic, you give me hope. MrsHathaway I laughed ( although perhaps I shouldn't ! ) and to HennaFlare and others on Team Take-No-Shit - thank you too for good advice.

I thought we were through the hitting phase but it's back - although certainly not daily. Seems to make no difference if she's tired or hungry or not - now and again the red mist descends and it's like she's turned into the Incredible Hulk. So much energy and flailing. And she's tall and strong. If we're out I take her straight home and she loses out on treats, toys get confiscated etc. But I struggle much more at home, especially near bedtime.

She won't stay in her bedroom if she's raging and if I walk off she follows. Should I be physically keeping her in her room or some kind of time out and if so how ?

Before you right me off as a hopeless soft touch, she and her sister are adopted and that has made me very wary of her feeling rejected or of being too tough. I've probably been too easy-going but I'm getting worried now school approaches. At nursery ( she goes a couple of days a week ) her behaviour is better, hitting and pushing are much rarer, but they have also talked - very helpfully - about strategies for helping her.

Anyone got advice on what to do when she loses the plot at home? When I read 1-2-3 Magic it seemed to say I should basically be barricading her into her room until she calms down. Is that really right ? Needless to say, she is lovely most of the time. But 4.5 seems too old for this, I worry she's always going to be prone to sudden fury and lashing out.

Hi again,
My dd would also lash out and almost completely lose it. She was beyond being reasoned with. Funnily enough I work sort of alongside adoption teams and went along to a conference where a prominent neuro scientist was talking about toddler tantrums etc. She explained how children have all these emotions rushing round with no way to make sense of them. She recommended empathising, giving voice to their anger eg. I know this is what is making you sad etc and lots of cuddles and physical contact. I thought yeah right... but actually when i have done that dd calms down a lot quicker than when we have got to a sort of stand off situation.

Does she get easily frustrated? Any sensory issues?

My dd used to have major melt downs age 4-5yo complete screaming, lost the plot head fits. She didn't hit but was hard to manage.

She is now 9yo and finally being assessed for sensory processing disorder, I had never heard of it until recently but could have seriously done with knowing it about it a lot of sooner!!

There is a good book called the out of sync child which might help.

I'm in the take-no-shit team. DS didn't hit and had no more than a couple of tantrums (he learned quickly enough that a tantrum won't get him anything but a trip to the naughty step).

Hits me : never
Hits her brother : most days but usually when he's hit her first and it is not normally sore so I mostly ignore it.

She is definitely challenging in other ways though - single minded, stubborn, belligerent, intelligent, witty, conniving etc. Luckily she's also cute, caring and kind.

Incidentally, I'm in the take no shit side of things - this is why Ds never tantrummed or hit or anything. It's not even remotely influenced by their innate nature.

This is why I don't understand why dd has tantrummed many times - parented same way etc? Some people might say it's because they're different kids and I was lucky with Ds ....

DS is 4.5 and still tantrums a few times a week and occassionally hits me. We're not "hippy-dippy" parents and certainly don't give in to the tantrums. I think it's more a question of emotional maturity; it takes some children much longer than others to learn how to deal with disappointment. Your parenting approach can help them along, but you can't override their innate characters.

DS is an emotional child (will sob inconsolably at sad music) and is quite rigid in his expectations; the combination of which means he throws more tantrums and lashes out more than his 2 year old sister, who is more likely to shrug her shoulders and move on.

He is improving gradually so hopefully if we hold our nerves he will grow out of it soon. He does show signs of having some sensory issues so I haven't ruled that out.

I do think it's innate and I do try to sympathise with the anger, although not the hitting of course. I honestly never 'give in' to tantrums MotherOfAllDillemas - the fury comes from being thwarted not as a strategy for getting what she wants - like Mrs Frumble I think and hope she will grow out of it - at least the hitting bit - before long but I worry.

I still struggle with a consistent response - fine when we're out ( that's not okay, we have to go home now ) but much harder at home.

I'll tell her it's completely unacceptable and send or sometimes carry her to her room, but then what ? I've occasionally sat with my back to the door to stop her steaming out again but it just seems all wrong ( isn't it ??) . I don't want to feed the drama and attention. Toy confiscation / treat cancellation and almost every other variety of consequences - both good and bad - seems to have no real effect. So we end up with a very brief time out, stern words, the loss of some kind of treat and then the next day or a few days later it all happens again.

I remember an infants' teacher once saying to me that a rather diva-ish little one had an 'older mother' and - probably because I am older - I'm haunted by what that implies. Presumably a mother who lets her kids run rings round her and now has the kid nobody wants to play with. Gosh.

Sorry for the essay and thank you for your very useful responses !

I'm a youngish mum and dd is definitely a diva!

Does holding her work? My 4yo hasn't needed this for a while, but certainly last year I had to do the holding her on my lap facing out while she tantrums thing. I did deep breathing and being calm. She shrieked and thrashed. It usually took three shriek/gradual calm/start up again cycles before she was calm enough to stop struggling and properly calm down.

It felt to me that she needed help to manage her emotions, rather than being left on her own with them.

I did always take her to a quiet place, so that I didn't impose her tantrum on others and because they often seemed to relate to over-stimulation. I spent quite a few parties in side rooms of church halls...

Different children are different in tantrumming as much as anything else.

Mine were parented the same way:
Dd1 had three tantrums in her 2s, all brought on by mil making what I regarded ridiculous demands on a week holiday with them. Along the lines of "look I bought you a chocolate bar". Hands chocolate bar over "Please may I eat it now" "No, it's nearly dinner time..." Why on earth give it to her then? She never hit anyone.

Dd2 did tantrums over silly things that all I could do with her were pick her up and leave her in her bed to, usually, fall asleep. She was over the by 3yo too. Heck, she even occasionally had tantrums in her sleep-I remember coming into her one night hearing her yellind and finding her fast asleep and yelling "I don't want to go in the buggy. I don't want to be strapped in!" I said calmly that she wasn't in her buggy and she wasn't going to be strapped in, which stopped that one totally. Dd2 occasionally threatened hitting at 4yo. She never did it though.

Ds didn't so much tantrum as get into a tearing rage. Usually with either something or someone he wanted to control and wouldn't comply. At 7yo he still struggles with that, but is much better. What I am working on with him is being a good sport, such as not getting into a strop if he's lost, which is probably his worst one now. He had just called the computer a "stups speckly bleagh object" in a loud voice when it crashed on him half way through a game though. He slightly struggles with emotive language as we've banned some of his more colourful expressions, so now makes up quite a few words, or says things like "You are a T-word". Not quite sure what the "T-word", but it's probably one we've banned at some point.