dd who is 6 was diagnosed with dyspraxia in august how do you deal with behaviour issues

[festivehellokitty]

hi

my daughter displays the following issues with her dyspraxia

can have awful tantrums and gets physical and very upset especially if she cant have what she wants!!

how do u deal with this?

doesnt listen

It's hard, because every child reacts differently.

DS2 is 5yo, and lately we've been really focusing on his reaction to things. He gets one warning, generally couched in an invitation to sit down with me and calm down (with a view to talking about it when he has calmed down somewhat), or he can go to his room to cool off. He has a 2yo brother, so we cannot allow him to get physical with him (or anyone else for that matter). We're trying to keep the boundaries pretty clear that if he is upset and needs assistance calming down or talking, he is welcome to do so in the room we're all in, but if he is going to get physical and tantrum then he needs to take it out of the main room where everyone is and go to his room (and once he's calmer, we'll talk to him then, unless he's so overloaded at that point that one of us needs to go with him to his room to help him to calm down). We've slowly seen an ever so slight improvement, but are anticipating fallout over the holidays as Christmas is always so chaotic at school that he tends to fall apart more frequently in the build up to the New Year.

DS now 16 used to have meltdowns regularly, usually because he didn't want to do something, had been told 'no', or general frustration at making himself understood or holding himself together at school.

We essentially did as Triggles suggested. It is really important to maintain consistent boundaries and have appropriate consequences and rewards. It is more difficult when you're outside, or well intentioned family members attempt to bribe good behaviour with inappropriate rewards, but stick at it. It does get easier as they get older.

Try keeping a diary to see if you can work out if there are any particular triggers to the behaviour, do the tantrums/meltdowns last longer, are they more violent when x happens as occurs to y, can she control the behaviour in different settings, with different people, for example DS would never throw a tantrum at school, but would start hitting and kicking me as soon as we got out of the school gate (age 5/6).

We also found that Retained Reflex Therapy had a positive impact on his behaviour.

You could have a look at Co-occurrence of linguistic and behavioural difficulties in early childhood: a developmental psychopathology perspective