How to deal with crying whinging 4yo

[twotimes]

I'm increasingly coming to the end of my tether with my 4yo (nearly 5) ds who cries so much. He cries over everything; if he asks for something and you say "in a minute"; if you say no; if you say wait; whatever you say except for "sure you can" ends in tears and screaming. It is seriously driving me and dh crazy but cannot get him to stop.

Does anybody have ANY ideas that I can try because it drives me crazy. The irony is he doesn't cry at school. He came home with a massive bleeding cut to his knee and I asked him what the teacher did, he said nothing. I asked "didn't you tell her you hurt yourself?" He said no. I asked, "didn't she ask why you crying?" He replied "I don't cry at school." What am I doing wrong. Absolutely everybody comments how mardy he is and besides feeling a little embarrassed myself, I don't want him growing up with that reputation of being a cry-baby or mardy.

Sorry for the long ranting post but just had a nightmare time at my grandmothers with him.

I say "Go and do that upstairs. I don't want to listen to it. Go. Now."

And I make them go upstairs unless they stop. And by make, I do mean physically carry, and hold the door shut on any screaming tantrums

Low level whinging can sometimes be cured by turning comedicly and bellowing "I'm sorry, Ds, I cannot hear you. You're just not whingy enough!"

oooo panda lol

She's a clever girl isnt she and very self aware

I have no advice at all but best of luck :0)

Something tells me she is going to be fine ;)

hughesrob I don't think you're being controversial at all actually, I think it's sensible and I do ask him what does he want. The whining/ crying starts when I have said no. I get BUT I WANT ONE!!!!!!!! and trust me I don't back down I'm quite the opposite, when I've said no I get quite stubborn (I guess that's where he gets it from )however dh is another story. He tends to back down and give in quite easily because "he can't stand the noise", but he has agreed to stop that and hopefully we're getting on the same page.

Wow Panda, your dd would give supernanny a run for her money and if it helps, I don't think she got it from you, she could have got that from anywhere, tv, nursery, other parents etc.

Anyway Day2 has again been very good, I've managed to anticipate when he's going to kick off and to be honest the main thing has been me staying calm. He kicked off this morning because he didn't want to go to school and I managed to get him out the door without a major meltdown and when he got home and wanted to go to the park I only got about 5 minutes of whining and then silence for about 20 minutes before he got bored and ran off to play with dd. I'm beginning to wonder if I was over-reacting and that over-reaction was causing a bigger one from the ds ???

we had a small incident this morning but i found that by remaining calm and speaking to her at her level and insisting on her speaking properly we managed to get through the whining quite quickly

she still hit and kicked me and DH but naughty step sorted that one out and we are making a new reward chart tomorrow morning to copy one on supernanny so i am hoping that with this being reward nrather than stickers that she will respond better to it

twotimes she has changed to this child virtually overnight it has coincided with her turning four and me going to work full time (i was previously working evenings and weekends part time and she was with the CM most of the daytime hours my hours have changed her routine very slightly but only as DH was in between jobs and picking her up earlier etc.) i really do think supernanny would have her work cut out but im biased

when she is being good she is a wonderful, funny, quirky little girl and she is like this about 70% of the time but at the minute her tantrums are getting very bad and her 'nice' times are dwindling down

i just feel as if it is my fault and my (childless) sister says it is because i am working until 10 most weeknights! this is a necessity and also the exact same time i worked until when doing part time since last october so she is basically blaming me too ahh well if all goes to plan we will have an angel child soon if supernanny's methods are worth their salt

Ok so throughout the week managed to control ds' behaviour. this weekend went to the il's for a big family thing and OMG . so I managed to keep things calm for a while whilst he played with his 2 cousins. then in the early evening he was dancing in front of the tv to some music channels when his older cousin decided to turn it over; well, my darling crying, whinging 4yo turned into the spawn of evil, he went off on one crying and whinging before using his brand new dinosaur gadgety stick thingy to scratch a 42inch plasma hd tv screen , dh removed him for about 2 minutes to tell me what was going on (I was in teh bathroom with dd whilst all this was going off) a few minutes later I heard a really thundering "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOIN" from bil, ds had gone over to his 7yo and hit him for turning it over! Cue ultimate chaos which ended in me breaking his new toy and throwing it in the bin. All the hard work down the drain he seems to have gone a whole way backwards and has gotten even more whinier.

Sorry just been a really stressful weekend. It felt even worse because out of 7 children only my ds kept getting spoken to for crying and hitting/pushing. Just feel like the worst mother in the world!