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Behaviour/development

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Avoidant kids.... how on earth do you discipline them? And did I deal with this right?

3 replies

88milesanhour · 19/06/2022 22:15

My dd is 4. We try to practice positive parenting. The thing I find hardest however is that she really lacks confidence sometimes and covers for this by being silly/confrontational or trying to dodge the issue altogether. It's hardest when she has misbehaved as she just goes into shut down mode. I don't discipline with the naughty step as a rule and try to just have a direct conversation with her about why her.behaviour is unacceptable and how we can put it right. However this can be virtually impossible. The minute she realises she's done wrong she just becomes rude and sometimes mildly aggressive and runs away or covers her eyes/ears or fiddles with whatever is in her reach. I'm not going to lie I often then lose my sh%t with her and just shouting at her or effectively putting her on the naughty step anyway and it ends up being chaos and the opposite of what I wanted

Today was an example of this and plz be gentle with your opinions as I did my best... Her cousin had come to stay and very kindly let her play with some of her toys. However when it was about time to take her home the cousin did ask my dd to now leave her stuff alone as she'd got it ready to go. My dd didn't listen and yanked a toy out of her bag and it broke a tiny bit. I then calmly asked dd to come and speak to me about it and tried to get on her level but she did her usual trick of running away from me, refusing to listen and (despite the fact that she's usually a very sweet and caring little girl) refused to say sorry to her cousin or make any effort to put it right (I suggested she go help daddy find some glue to fix it) I took her to the step for a chat and explained that it this was all very disrespectful to her cousin and that if she didn't want to help put it right then I'd decide what was right. I explained that since she broke one of cousin's toys she'd have go give her one of her toys to replace it and picked a small toy out. I tried not to gloat but I did explain that if she'd just apologised to cousin and listened to me instead of being so rude then we could've put this right without the need for all this.

Was I harsh? I just don't know how to deal with her when she gets like this. I don't want to blindly punish or make her feel worse about herself and I doubt myself because I know really that such behaviour is coming from a place of insecurity. However, I cannot let her think that she can just avoid the consequences of crappy behaviour when it suits her. She's my world and I love her to bits but any help on how to deal with such infuriating behaviour would be gratefully accepted 🤣 TIA x

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Healthanxietyruiningmylife · 19/06/2022 22:24

Hi @88milesanhour not much advice I’m afraid but we have exactly the same problem with my six year old son. I don’t think I handle it that well either. I try to model the good behaviour I want to see e.g. always make a big deal of apologising if I’ve done something wrong and regularly tell him that it takes a strong, brave person to say sorry and try to put things right. I think he is getting slightly better as he gets older but the problem is still there and can be the cause of a lot of stress in our house! Like your DD, it definitely comes from a place of insecurity.

88milesanhour · 20/06/2022 10:22

Healthanxietyruiningmylife · 19/06/2022 22:24

Hi @88milesanhour not much advice I’m afraid but we have exactly the same problem with my six year old son. I don’t think I handle it that well either. I try to model the good behaviour I want to see e.g. always make a big deal of apologising if I’ve done something wrong and regularly tell him that it takes a strong, brave person to say sorry and try to put things right. I think he is getting slightly better as he gets older but the problem is still there and can be the cause of a lot of stress in our house! Like your DD, it definitely comes from a place of insecurity.

Thanks. We try to do this and I make a big think of really praising bravery, eg I showered her with praise yesterday as she jumped in in her swimming lesson which she's quite afraid of even though she saw a little boy slip and hurt himself jumping in just before. On the whole she's delightful but when things go wrong I just feel like I'm failing in dealing with it :-( It's good to hear your DS is improving a bit and probably indicates that you're doing great mama x

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skkyelark · 21/06/2022 12:16

It sounds like you and she might have got into a bit of a negative spiral. She shuts down and gets avoidant when she’s done something wrong; you find this infuriating and end up shouting at her, which makes her more upset/avoidant (probably both at the time and as an overall pattern of behaviour), and so on.

My DD is a bit younger, but similar in that she gets very upset if she accidentally does something wrong (not so much if she’s deliberately testing boundaries!). Even that initial first ‘no!’ or ‘stop!’ when you realise she’s about to do something she shouldn’t upsets her. I find that I really have to stay very calm, almost soothing with her (although the initial no/stop does still happen, and as that keeps her safe, she’s going to have to learn to cope with it). I essentially have to calm her down before we can talk about the actual incident, or everything just escalates and she’s in no state to discuss why it was wrong or do anything to fix it. I try to view it as a part of managing her emotions that I have to help and support her to learn, and to remind myself that, really, disliking doing wrong/getting told off/etc. is a good thing.

I find it easier to stay calm myself if I have sort of stock response that I can just repeat for the calming down phase. For us at the moment, that’s often something like ‘It’s okay. You didn’t know and you stopped when I asked you to’, but something a bit more generic like ‘We can fix this. Let’s take some deep breaths together and calm down, and then we’ll talk’ might work better for you, and then as she’s calm and can see/hear that you’re calm, you can ask her to uncover her ears/eyes, or whatever.

With the behaviour you describe, I personally wouldn’t view the running away, fiddling, or hiding eyes/ears as naughtiness – I’d view that as an expression of her emotion that is perhaps annoying, but okay at her age, and that I need to support her to learn to handle better. If by ‘mildly aggressive’ you mean she’s hitting, throwing things, etc., then that’s not okay and does need dealing with, but if she’s not prone to doing it in other situations, I’d probably look to work on keeping calm myself first and see if that fixes it, and for now probably just remind her once everyone is calm that this hurts/can break things/etc. and is not good behaviour (and ideally get an apology). Rudeness is kind of in the middle. Calling you names, not on. Not looking at you/not answering you could well be part of the emotional response and more of a ‘can’t’ do it than a ‘won’t’.

With the incident with her cousin, I think you escalated it a bit by giving one of her toys to her cousin when her cousin’s toy was fixable, and she presumably hadn’t broken it deliberately. Losing a toy permanently is a pretty big sanction for a moment of four-year-old impulsiveness. What if instead you had stuck with ‘You broke cousin’s toy, so you need to help fix it; go help Daddy find some glue.’ and just repeated that, and not let her play with other things until it was done, ‘No, we need to fix cousin’s toy before we can play’, and so on?

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