Hi all,
My oldest son is just turned four and I'm really struggling to understand his behaviour sometimes. He is an incredibly sweet and loving little boy and I wouldn't say in general his behaviour at home is bad (although DH would disagree). From the moment he came out he had all the energy in the world and we can't get him to sit down to concentrate on anything and his nursery are finding the same.
I came on to ask about a trip we had to Santa yesterday. He was beside himself excited about meeting the big man obviously but he:
- Gets on the floor and starts crawling around like a baby when we're meant to be looking at the elves doing a little 'bit'
- Climbs into all the displays
- Doesn't really look at the mini 'performances' just shouts loudly at me or tries to pull down whatever decorations they have
- Kicking the walls
I found it a bit upsetting because then I end up just holding him or picking him up to stop the behaviour because he's wrecking the performance for everyone.
My question I suppose is this normal 4 year old behaviour? If you were out what would you do to help him? I tried diverting his attention to the acts or the activity (i.e. making letters to Santa).
He does it if he's in a group activity, he just becomes completely 'silly' like he doesn't know how to deal with the excitement or anxiety or whatever strong emotion he's having. I really want to do the best for him and I just don't know if I'm meant to be punitive here or if he's not coping in another way.
Sorry it's so long and massive thank you if you got this far x