Meltdowns everyday at school pickup

[MissYouForever]

My 4 year old has always been an intense child. She’s very bubbly and well liked, doing really well at preschool, teachers lover her, but her continuous meltdowns and arguments at home are destroying me. The main issue at the moment is just getting her home from school without having to resort to physically picking her up and carrying her to the car whilst she screams and cries!

It’s always something. I feel like I have to walk on eggshells! Literally anything can set her off. I greet her with a big smile, all happy, but then suddenly she wants to run to the gate and someone ran in front of her. Or, the ice cream van is there and she has to have one. Or, she wants to go someone’s house after school. It can be literally anything. And I’m not a parent who gives in at all! If anything, I feel like I’m constantly saying no because she is constantly asking for things that she knows I’m going to say no to.

It’s almost like it’s on purpose? I’ve told her loads of times about why things are a no, but it makes no difference at all. Like for example, she knows we can’t get ice cream every week, but sometimes we will on a Friday as a special treat. I’ve told her this, time and time again. But she’ll randomly come out of school on a Monday like she’s decided ‘this is what I’m going to have a breakdown about today’

Like obviously I know that”s silly and she’s only 4 and is probably very tired from school. But when you’re the only parent having to restrain a screaming child pretty much every single day I just feel like I’m going crazy. I always praise her when she does something well, like taking the ice cream van example, if we walk past it with no problems and she’s happy, we do high fives, well dones, etc.

I just feel like I’m drowning some days. I have a 2 year old as well, and they both just tantrumed at the same time over dinner, one wanted more drink (though he’d just had a massive one) and my DD was screaming that she didn’t want anymore food but wanted afters (again, literally every day I tell her no afters unless she eats more of her dinner. I say it calmly and matter of factly and don’t rise to anything as she screams. I genuinely don’t know how to have a peaceful dinner time as she does this EVERY single time)

Need some words of advice!

My guess would be that she's put in so much effort into doing well at preschool, she's absolutely ready to explode when she gets out. So it's not 'on purpose' exactly, but it has to go somewhere, and anything will do as a trigger! You're her safe person, she knows you'll still love her afterwards, so you get the full force of it.

I'd be looking at it from two angles. Firstly, why is she finding preschool so challenging, more so than the other children? How is her communication and her awareness around her own emotions? At a calm time, perhaps on the weekend, could she tell you anything she finds difficult at preschool (could be a whole range of things, quite loud/busy, lots of sharing/waiting turns, lots of transitions between activities to manage, a particular child she's struggling with)? I'd also talk to the teacher about if they've noticed anything she's perhaps struggling with (and if they haven't, could they please keep an eye out?). If you can find what's triggering it, then you and the staff can look at ways to help her with it.

Secondly, how can you help her manage her intense emotions, and in the case of after preschool, manage that release that she needs? What helps her calm down or deal with difficult emotions more generally? Cuddles or cuddly toys, sensory toys? Jumping on a trampoline? (We have a small indoor one, excellent for getting frustration out as well as general excesses of energy that are causing problems.) Swinging? Is she hungry, by any chance? My eldest is mid-growth spurt, and can be absolutely falling apart after nursery – get a snack down her, and she's suddenly happy and reasonable again.

Once you've figured out what sorts of things generally help her, you can use them both as a preventative – try to build them into her day regularly, especially before/after things you know are likely triggers – and as a rescue attempt. So it might be that you pick her up from preschool and immediately hand her a snack (this would be a nice, easy solution), or perhaps you sit down somewhere for a quiet cuddle or five minutes with a fidget toy and let most of the busyness of pickup time go by before you go anywhere, or perhaps you add to the busyness by her needing to do some star jumps and running on the spot and sharing a couple of bear hugs with you before you attempt actually going home.

On afters, have you tried serving the sweet with the main? We don't do this for 'big sweets' like birthday cake, but on an ordinary day when the sweet is some yoghurt, or one small biscuit, or a few chocolate buttons, we let the children choose when they have it. A few chocolate buttons is not going to fill them up if they eat it first, and it both takes the argument out of it and avoids setting up the sweet food as a reward for 'suffering' through the main.

Sorry, I've written you an essay!