4 Year Old Hard To Deal with at school

[Janie277]

Hi Everyone!

I am looking for advice for my 4.5 year old boy. He attends a preschool and a Montessori school. The Montessori school he has attended since he was two and this is his second year at his preschool.

My husband and I both work so he spends three full days and two half days at school.

My husband and I each take a half day to have quality time with him and then spend the evenings and weekends with him. Since we work we try and spend as much time with our child as possible but do have occasional sitters and at times only one of us is home due to work events or travel.

Our child has always had a harder time listening at school but this year has had a hard time. He also has strong emotions and is strong willed. Most of his emotions he turns into anger. He does show these emotions at home but he does them more frequently and more extreme at school.

At home we have done time outs and redirection of feelings. We keep our emotions neutral as he reacts worse with negative reinforcement.

The problem we are having is at school he will get sad or mad when asked to clean up or follow and instruction and start saying hurtful things or punching a kicking- often at the teacher. He will take a long time to cool down and use words such as hate or wanting to hurt the teacher or other students. At school they give him space and talk to him about his emotions.

I know 4 year olds go through these types of emotions but it worries me as having two schools repetitively tell me he is having a hard time makes me feel like he stands out and is a problem. It’s hard as we spend a lot of time working with the teachers and partnering with them to help him be more successful without anything sticking or changing.

He is our first and currently only child and it makes me feel like we are not doing something correct as parents. Have we spoiled him? Do we not spend enough time with him? I would love any advice on how to help him through this time in his life and help him have a better reaction to direction from his teachers.

Thank you!

bless you, this sounds very hard.

Not saying this is the same, but my son had similar challenges when he was a little younger and has autism.

I blamed myself a bit but my younger child is very different and that helped me understand it’s the child too.

things that have really helped us

• the explosive child book
• Mainstream state primary (used to a much broader intake)
• reducing demands and overstimulation
• for my son, excessive screen time and especially using a tablet is really detrimental to his behaviour. That’s not true for all kids like him but knowing this and removing the trigger really helps.

Hi, this sounds very similar in some ways to my own DS. He was later diagnosed with ASD and the ed psych said he had clear PDA traits. We found the PDA website really helpful for strategies. We had tried all the behaviour books and trends but they made things worse, if anything. He was a sociable, funny and lively little boy at primary school and nursery, but much of the play had to be on his terms and he too lashed out when asked to do things he didn't want to do. He often took his anger out on himself, wishing he'd never been born, trying to hurt himself. He didn't want to be a "naughty boy" but found he was always in trouble. This got worse as school got more structured and demanding.

It helped us to see his demand-resistant behaviour as coming from fear/anxiety rather than defiance. We used humour a lot, and took pressure off with demands. e.g. "We need to put these things away. Can you help?" or giving a controlled choice. "We need to do X and Z. Which do you think we should do first?" or "Look at this mess - I bet we can't tidy it all up in two minutes".

We used social stories that we wrote ourselves to help with understanding how to cope when things have gone wrong. We used large egg timer things (30 minutes / 5 minutes etc) so he could see when the next transition was coming. This was less pressure than being told repeatedly. We were very flexible.

We found that, when he had lashed out at a teacher, if anyone tried to deal with it immediately, he would go straight back into the feelings he had at the time and got more distressed. We revisited these incidents when he was much calmer and happier. It took a few days when he was five, but only minutes once he was a teenager, for him to reflect and apologise.

You know your DS best and some of these strategies may work or they may not. We did a lot of trial and error. However, as a teacher myself, I have used all the strategies with lots of children struggling with demands, most of whom had no diagnosis of SEND, and they have worked well.

We kept in close contact with teachers so we all shared techniques that worked.

It is a long time since I have had a four year old, so it may be that it is just a phase. I just wanted to reply because I recognised some of the behaviour. It sounds like you are doing a great job supporting him.