dd1 is driving me up the wall. I am so fed up with her behavior.....HELP please <begs>

[SheSellsSeashellsByTheSeashore]

She will not do what she is told. Every day is one long costant battle with her. She won't get dressed, she won't eat, she dawdles to school everyday despite the fact that we are late owing to her not getting dressed and not eating.

She says she wants to do her dancing because she likes the competitions and the shows, but won't do the classes, because she says they are too hard. I tell her she can leave, she says no. I tell her she has to leave she runs to her room howling.

She is bleeding well obessessed with her ds

She is argumentative and does things deliberately to wind me and DH up.

She wants everything now. It doesn't matter what shop we are in, she finds something she needs

She is 5 btw.

Hi,
we have be through this as well and these are the things that worked for us -

Explain at a "non argument" time how things are going to happen in the future with behaviour eg -

If you do not get dressed for school then you will go in your pyjamas (this one works)
i will not talk to you if you are shouting / arguing with me
If you do not tidy things in your room they will be taken out of your room and will not be returned
we put a gate back on DD's door, she has a set bedtime and then we do not go up again no matter how much she shouts
it sound strict when i type it out, DD has only books in her room, no toys (she has a tendancy to play at 2 in the morning!!)
but she is better behaved for it.
She has one warning for bad behaviour and then goes straight to time out if the behaviour continues
Good luck, it is hard, half term was crap for us but now shes back in a routine with school all is better!!

.

also thinking that maybe a star chart might work, if she is good for a week then she can have the DS for 30 mins at the weekend sort of thing.........
and we have banned computers in the morning, it just confused things!!

Hi loujay. She has been thrown out into the street to get dressed in the cold once or twice. Which means she gets dressed quicker. But it doesn't stop the behavior, she is the same the next day.

ATM we are doing getting dressed before breakfast, which means she is left with no time for breakfast and has cereal bars on the way to school. Of course this means that she tells the teachers I haven't fed her I am sure they are startig to believe her.

Taking things out of her room is a good idea, but she doesn't play in her room, she goes into my room waking up dd2, ensuring she is a nightmare due to tiredness.

A gate wouldn't work. She would just climb it. Her bedroom door won't open from the inside, so I could lock her in, but that seems unsafe and cruel?

Yes she has had star charts. She seemed to like them, but they did't work. Maybe I didn't give them a long enough chance?

So maybe, one reminder to get dressed and then dont mention it again, carry on as usual, she gets breakfast and if she is in her pyjamas just ignore it. Get ready to leave, have her school stuff in a bag and go to school as normal. (i have done this by the way) if she questions being in pjs just calmly say.........you will be getting dressed at school today............and leave for school)

star charts ime take 2 - 3 weeks to kick in. and you have to make a big deal over them even if they dont seem to be having an effect.........she will miss the ds if she has had none of it for a week or two!!

lol. I might try that one. Though she is a strange child. The idea of going to school in hr pj's might be appealing to her. It's worth a try though.

She fancies joining breakfast club at school, which would take away the eating problem but it is yet another expense and it's somethig she wants. I don't know if allowing her to go won't encourage further bad behavior from her, as it's rewarding the fact that she won't do as she is told on a morning.

The idea might be appealing to her, but when her friends start asking why she is still in her pjs......

We only had her star chart a week when she took it off the wall an ripped it up because "it wasn't fair" She didn't get a sticker when she felt she deserved one because she gave the toy back to dd2 that she had just snatched from her making her cry

Is she a butterfly or will she remember some of the things that she so neeeeeds? If so then the secret of star charts IME is the reward being something she really really wants.

DS's BF's mother found a very sneaky addition - what her DS really really wanted was to go bowling with my DS - so she told my DS (and me) all about the star chart - so her DS had mine checking up on progress on a daily regular basis. Peer pressure at it's best .

No she remembers what she needs no matter how ridiculous it is. I mean what is a five year old girl going to do with £25 leg of organic lamb ffs?

"One of the main reasons I work is to make sure she can continue with her activities and have trips out i.e. the cinema. And I feel like she is just throwing it al back in my face.

I know she is upset about various things, but so am I and I can't cope with this on top of everything else."

Seashells she's still quite little I think. Too young to be expected to be grateful for you going out to work, or really to understand the pressures you are under. Does she really do things deliberately to wind you up? Do you think you're expecting too much from her, as the older dd? Maybe she needs to be helped a bit more? throwing her into the street to get dressed sounds extremely harsh to me.

What works for my dd (who is a bit of a dolly day dream in the mornngs):

• agree on clothes the night before and put them out

• help her get dressed if she wants me to (she capable of doing it herself of course but sometimes she wants to be babied a bit or have a chat)
• we sit down to breakfast together as my kids eat more if I am there too. We get up earlier to have time to do this
• if she is ready on time she can have 10 minutes tv/ on the computer.

-toothbrush and paste downstairs so we can do it quickly before we go out of the door

Re: her asking for things, what about pocket money? Agree an amount and she can spend on what she likes, but when it's gone it's gone. I link money to helping round the house - so they don't get it if their room is a tip (within reason - it is their room after all).

Does she get enough time with you in the evenings? Is her reluctance to go to bed linked to wanting attention?

What she 'really really really needs' atm is to be able to join breakfast club so that she can have a breakfast club reward chart at school .

Is she in reception seashells?

so maybe she needs to complete a star chart at home to prove that she is a big girl and could go to breakfast club?

Could an outing with said Leon be a possible reward? See my previous comments about peer pressure (clearly will only work if Leon does not view her as a PITA )

Yes I do firmly believe that she does things deliberately to wind me up. Though I know that she is too young to realise about the money/work side of things.

But I know she does things deliberately because she will do things like mak sure I am watching and then attempt to kick the cat, or walk up to dd2 and shout 'boo' after I have told her to play a bit quieter so as not to wake her.

I usually sit and have a coffee with her while she is having breakfast, but I don't help with her getting dressed as I am busy getting dd2 and myself dressed.

She gets pocket money, but not a set amount each week. Maybe I should change that. ATM if she is being particularly pleasant she will get £1 to put in her jar. She won't spend her own money, she saves. If it's a choice between spending her own mony or going without she will go without.

No Leon views her as a pita, apparently he is her boyfriend and she 'shares' him with her friends. From the sounds of it they take turns torturing the poor boy. Though his mum reckons he secretely enjoys all the attention

Star chart to 'earn' breakfast club would be a good idea though.

Well I would get up a bit earlier and get myself ready before she gets up so that I had more time to help her as well as dd2.
I think her bad behaviour is wanting attention tbh, rather than winding you up.

She sounds overtired too from your descriptions - I would definately not send her to a breakfast club. Does she do a lot of after school stuff?

She used to dance three times a week two 1 hours sessions and one two hour session but we have dropped Thurdays class and she only does Tues and Wed. Though she is going today as her comp fee's need paying and she wouldn't get ready to go yesteday so I sent her to her room and told her she couldn't go.

I have made it very clear that if she messes me about today re: getting dressed and going iinto class I will not pay her fees and she won't be allowed to do the comp.

She also has just started half an hour riding on a Sunday afternoon.

She tells me if I leave her at dancing she will go in and do the class and that she is only being naughty because I am there. But I don't feel comfortable just leaving her in the dressing room. Though there are other mothers who stay and I am sure they wouldn't allow her to leave unattended.

It could be an attention thing, but she gets penty. Most of my free time is spent me and her one on one. Though I have to admit that the housework/laptop occassionally gets more attention than she does, particularly on a tea/supper time

lol - I just knew that she was 5 from your OP - I have a 5 yo too, and you are describing him to a T. He too has been through a phase of battling against things we tell him to do - the more urgent the telling, the more likely he is to rebel. We've found that routines help enormously. We got over the getting dressed thing by having a no PJs downstairs rule. You simply get dressed first, then the day can begin. It helped enormously, and took away so much stress.

We also had the "I don't want to do Karate lessons, but I don't want to leave", with ds1 - a little older - for whom I had a chart. Classes are twice a week (we have to pay a month in advance). He had to get six ticks out of eight - ie he was allowed to miss two classes a month for whatever reason. If the chart dropped below six ticks a month, then that meant that he would leave the class next month - not because he wanted to/didn't want to, but because he wasn't attending enough. We had 6 good months of attending, then he decided that he really had had enough, so he was allowed to stop.

It is hard when you have a little one as well, as a 5yo does need lots of attention too, as well as praise for being a big girl and helping out.

I definitely find that pocket money helps avoid asking for things - ds has his own money and if he wants something he has to shell out for it. 'If it's a choice between spending her own mony or going without she will go without.' Fantastic, isn't it? That's the start of them realising what things are worth, and starting to appreciate them. If ds does decide to buy something, after hours/days/weeks of deliberating/saving up/comparing prices on the itnernet he appreciates it sooo much more.

Don't want to suggest that I have all of the answers - ds2 still keeps us on our toes, but I do feel that the really stressful challenges he has presented us with, as a healthy energetic 5 year old, are less stressful for us now that we have found a few systems to have in place, so that I don't have to take the challenges personally. (Banning the ds for a while also helps enormously. I can see the appeal of them, but those things wind kids up enormously. They are powerful whilst playing. They are superheroes who can make anything happen. Coming back to reality is much harder if you have been in that imaginary world. I'd love to ban all consoles from our house, but have compromised by allowing them on a strictly timed basis and withdrawing ds/ps time as a punishment which I know reaches parts other threats never reach!)

HTH - best of luck

Blimey. Glad I am not the only one - DD1 5.5. We tried the marble jar for a few weeks and felt we had turned a corner. But this morning back to Square 1 - wouldn't get dressed, mouthy, unpleasant (I hate you, you hate me, my teacher hates me, no one likes me, I will never earn a star at school, I will never get a marble ever again, its not fair that DD2 gets one etc etc etc). Its so exhausting and unrelenting. Shes had a tough few days as her sister just turned 3 and had tonnes of attention and is at that lovely age.

I am concerned about the negativity and am scared she is like it at school. I think she has friends - but she doesn't have a best friend. They were all paired up from pre-school that she didn't go to.