Does anyone else feel like advice just doesn’t work?

[ShiftingSands21]

My 3 year old has a lot of tantrums, is a picky eater, a bad sleeper, you name it. Does anyone else feel like the standard advice other there just … doesn’t work? Doesn’t apply, even? For example, how do you ignore a tantrum when your child resorts to violent and dangerous behaviour? How do you put them back in bed calmly and leave the room when there is no limit to the number of times they are prepared to leave the bed and you never get to the endpoint? How do you get them to eat when giving them multiple options doesn’t work and giving them no options doesn’t work either? And then they are hungry and their behaviour is even worse? When they don’t care about sticker charts? I’m just raging that so much of the so called advice just can’t even be put into practice half the time. Is it me? Is it my child? What’s the deal?

Anyone

There’s a lot more information that we need before any of us can attempt to give you advice.

What triggers the tantrums? Noise? Ice cream vans? Trying to put socks on? Cancelling a promised swimming trip?

What foods will or won’t your child eat?

Does your child have difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep or both? Does your child have eczema? Nightmares? Sleep apnoea? Too much exposure to blue light before bed? Or does your child need less sleep than average?

Hm. Some kids who don't follow the rulebook are just going through a phase. Others have something longer term going on - sensory issues or social communication issues for example.

And sometimes the advice doesn't work because it is incomplete. There are different ways to use sticker charts for example, some are more effective than others. Plus children have different preferences and different abilities. For best effect focus on one or two specific good behaviours that earn a reward, and make sure they are positive behaviours like, I dunno, saying please or helping to put a couple of things away when you say so or sitting down on a chair when you say so, and don't try to reward negative behaviours like "not screaming". You might need to choose a different reward - what does your DC actually like best? And even a child who likes stickers wont be motivated by them if the target to earn a sticker is just a little bit too hard. Make earning them much easier than you think you need to. Best to tell them an easy target and give them the sticker for doing it, not to tell your DC a harder target and then give them a sticker sticker for not-quite achieving it. And don't set a target you think your child should be able to achieve. Only set a target that you know they can achieve but they don't always manage. You can break a task down and give the reward for just doing the easiest step, and then build up.

My own DC followed some bits of the rulebook and not others. I created my own adapted rulebook made up of some "ordinary" parenting advice, some SEN advice, and some super-tricky-temperamental-kid advice

Tantrums are often triggered by something sensory like wearing clothes, restriction to movement such as going in a car seat, by any time of transition such as coming home from nursery, going out, or also when something is inexplicably “not done right”.

Seems ok with loud noises expect hand dryers. No speech delay. Her speech is I think very normal for her age.

She will eat things that are very plain and very separate. But only sometimes.

She has a difficult time both falling asleep and staying asleep - but come morning she is tired. Not aware of any nightmares or sleep apnoea.

No obvious allergies or eczema.

Really appreciate your thoughts and words of comfort!

Hm again. Tantrums over sensory issues, food separation, transitions and things "not done right", plus sleep issues, do sound a bit potentially autism-spectrum-ish. That could be worth looking into. What do the nursery think? Does she have tantrums there, eat well, cope with transitions....? Though having said that, my own DS was so well settled at nursery and they were so good at managing him that no-one noticed he had an issue until he hit school (and when I say hit I mean hit....!) A year after starting school he had an ASC diagnosis.

A few strategies that worked with DS - I found that "choice-of-two" worked better than either "no choice" or "lots of choice" - cheese sandwich or ham sandwich, story first or teeth first. Lots of routine helped. "First this then that" helped, so he knew what was coming. And "when you have done this, then you can do that", calmly repeated. Visual timetables which we talked through together helped (when he was older and diagnosed) Me using a very calm neutral voice tone for instructions and not showing any level of anger or frustration myself (not easy!) helped to not trigger his anxiety and defiance. Short simple instructions, followed by a pause, followed by repeat instruction, helped. "Count to three and consequence" helped. The last two are good for kids with a slight processing delay - gives them a bit of time to get their heads round what you are asking for, so they don't just dig in and say "no". And I still say "shall we do it now or in five minutes?" though DS is grown up and left home Dunno if any of these will work for you though!

DS didn't have sleep issues, some parents use melatonin but not a thing I've investigated so might be suitable or not. You might also want to look into strategies for kids with ARFID (food issues) and PDA (pathological demand avoidance). Even if your DD doesn't strictly speaking have those conditions you might pick up a few non-standard parenting techniques that will help with some particular problems.

And finally - in my experience, once the huge tantrum starts there was nothing much I could do except batten down the hatches and weather the storm til it was over. My main effort had to go into understanding whatever was triggering them and then managing it, so as to have relatively few of them.

You could try some of the Gentle Parenting techniques, Sarah Ockwell Smith has a in my opinion great book on it. It's not the traditional sticker charts and naughty step approach and might work better. It's definitely not permissive parenting - more finding ways to help achieve behaviour you want to see and enforcing limits calmly.

I don't havé the experience to say how it might help if the problem is more an autism spectrum issue but probably still worth a go and seeing.

An old fashioned egg timer might also help you with transitions so you can say when the sand runs out it's time to do x...

Nursery haven’t really flagged anything, other than her sometimes failure to use “listening ears” and “walking feet”. They obviously know of the eating issue and they seem to have had some minimal success with sticker charts there, but not much. They’ve told me a couple of times that she has had an “emotional” day. But I don’t think she has meltdowns at nursery - just immediately before and after! I don’t think DD could be autistic because her speech is fine and she seems socially engaged and capable of joint attention and talking about the perspectives of other people and things like that. She points to faces in books and says how she thinks they are feeling and things like that. But I was wondering about something like ADHD maybe.

Lots of good suggestions for me to try, thank you!

Girls often exhibit tantrums at home, and are almost impeccably behaved in nursery/school.

I second ASD (and I am ASD so I know it's not really a big deal once you figure it out and I don't even worry about my two kids having it or not, I just take it as a personality thing more than anything else).

FWIW I was exceptionally well advanced in speech and social skills were OK, no concerns over any of the obv signs and here I am.

I would do some reading on the thing. See if some books on girls autism strike a note. See if you find some common denominators, and they also may help you with coping mechanisms (for her and for you).

I had a cat, animals in general helped me with meltdowns together with always having a very clear plan of the day and not changing things without prior discussion or planning, and a lot of silent alone time helped too.

Maybe it's none of this and she is just developing and will be totally regular toddler in 3 months but you lose nothing by reading a book :)