Home school advice

[RusGoverness]

I'm home schooling a 5 year old whose parents think she may have ADHD. She has huge problems with anyone else getting any praise or points in games. If things don't go exactly her way she completely breaks down and it takes a long time for her to calm down. This includes her being found in hide and seek. Is there anything that I could do to help her deal with disappointment or anger?

At five, this little girl is likely to be encountering many situations which she finds hugely frustrating. She may have to queue in the supermarket, survive for a while without a favourite toy she has misplaced, or have her teeth brushed. There are plenty of opportunities for her to learn to deal with difficult feelings. My view is, if you can take reasonable steps to avoid unnecessary additional frustration, then do so.

If she has huge problems with competitive games, why not just leave those games until she is older and more mature? Tell her you don't like hide and seek because you see how much it upsets her to be found. Suggest a different type of game instead.

Even though I was (I think) a fairly average if highly competitive little kid, my parents refused to play games with me on the grounds that I wasn't old enough to handle them without anger and floods of tears. They recognised that the solution to this particular problem was waiting for me to mature. There was no magic cure for me. As I got older, I naturally learned to handle competition and frustration.

It's quite likely that this little girl has more extreme reactions than mine. That's all the more reason to suppose that some situations are just more than she can handle now. Save your energy for managing the situations which cannot be escaped, such as the lost toy.

Thank you!