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Decision making...tantrums

2 replies

Mlg9 · 29/02/2020 09:20

Desperately after some advice about my 5yoDS. He’s mostly a placid kid, took a while but has settled at school, has a good social circle and lots of extra school activities.

However, our major 🤦🏻‍♀️ Issue is when either my husband and I need to do something separate from the other and DS absolutely cannot décidé who to go with. For example, this morning hubby was taking car to get a new tyre...spent 30mins With DS changing his mind whether he’d go or stay at home with me. We’d had a chat previously (when it last happened 2 days ago) and he told us it’s tricky to decide what to do. We spend ages calming him, telling him it’s ok whatever he wants to do. That he’ll only be away for 30mons etc. He screams and runs between both of us. Eventually my hubby was going to miss his appointment time so I had to hold DS Until he left. Which was followed by 20mins of screaming and shouting all sorts of mean things (hates living here, moving out etc 🙄). This can even be when one of us is popping to corner shop for two minutes.
Has anyone experienced this before? It’s very upsetting and draining as can happen multiple times a day. We can’t all go together everywhere, we’ve tried explaining, reasoning, telling him what he’s doing (not having a choice), and I’m out of ideas? 😓
He also has a speech sound delay - vocabulary and communication is not affected - just his pronunciation.
Help?! 🤞🏻

OP posts:
Jess827 · 29/02/2020 18:35

If he's overwhelmed by choices which aren't critical, why push it? Why not offer a default that he can flex some autonomy with, reframe it?

("I think it would be fun for you to see what happens when they put a new tyre on the car. So you're going to go with Daddy on a visit to the tyre shop. Tell me if you want to stay here and help with dinner instead, otherwise have fun with Daddy getting the new tyre.")

Mlg9 · 29/02/2020 21:11

We’ve already tried all the talking about it and negotiating (dad was taking him to the park whilst car was getting done). We’ve tried not giving him a choice, but as soon as one leaves he goes crazy cause he wants to go and then he doesn’t over and over - which can be for over an hour if we allow. And when he’s calmed down after he just says he wants us all to go everywhere together all the time...which unfortunately is impossible.

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