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Strategies for 6 year old not listening - cycle of shouting

3 replies

piscis · 13/11/2023 08:55

Hi mumsnetters, I hope someone here can offer some advice because I am feeling so low at the moment and I am not sure what I can do to change things at home.

Our DD is 6 and she is great most of the time but she is very strong willed and sometimes can be so difficult...Mornings in particular are a struggle. We literally have to repeat everything she has to do 10-20 times (going to toilet, wash hands, wash face, get dressed...), we cannot leave her to it as it wouldn't get done or take hours. This is so draining and exhausting that after repeting many times then the tone starts changing and when we have repeated the same instruction so many times, we end up shouting. She shouts back. We need to break this shouting cycle, it is really bringing me down, but it seems it is the only way she does things!

Any ideas or strategies of what to do to improve things? Unfortunately waking up earlier is no help as one of the problems is to get out of bed, and the sleepier she is, the more problems we have in the morning...we don't have a lot of time to play with to go to bed earlier either, as she has to attend afternoon club and we already struggle as it is to get homework done, shower (some days)

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BlueChampagne · 13/11/2023 13:29

Are there any reward strategies that you could borrow from school? Then she'd already be familiar with them.

piscis · 13/11/2023 17:30

@BlueChampagne i could check with school if things don't improve, the only reward strategy I know they use are stickers but there may be others I don't know of...

@Whothatbe Thanks for the article. It is tricky because I don't think this is an attention problem, she doesnt want to do things because of a reason. She doesn't want to get out of bed because she is sleepy and it is comfy, she doesnt want to go to the toilet because it is cold, she doesn't want to put her coat and shoes on because she doesn't want to leave the house...so she refuses. In the end we resort to shouting after repeting instructions so many times, but it is damaging...such a bad start to the day!

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