Help! I don't know how to parent my NT 3yr old......

[StarshitTerrorise]

She nags and nags for sweets or something and when I say no, she cries and stamps her feet and refuses to move and sometimes lies down. I walk off and she shouts 'my mummy's left me' and passers by attend her every whim until I have to go back and drag her out of their view.

On the bus on the way home I told her not to push past people to the back. She di just that and then shreaked when I sat near the front, insisting that I sat next to her. When I didn't she refused to sit down at all and the bus driver refused to drive until she did and she still did no sit down until I agreed to sit next to her.

I held onto her instead and the bus driver agreed to go but she spent the whole journey hurting the other passengers ears with her screams the WHOLE 15 mins home.

What I really wanted to do was chuck her off the bus!

Star, I know it's in AIBU, but you need to read the thread about the most pointless 3 year old tantrums. Its strangely reassuring.

Oh, I'd say ASD is much harder. MUCH. Not least because of all of the agency stuff and the pure anxiety caused by being misled, misunderstood and the very real high risk to the mental health of the ASD child.

DD is a bloody nightmare that comes with frustration, but not the worry to the same extent.

My three NT were a doddle compared to ds in particular. One thing I regret is not appreciating their simpleness at the time. It seems a lifetime away since I dropped a child in school in a morning and picked them up at teatime without any communication between school and home at any point. It seems a lifetime since we got up in a morning and decided on the spur of the moment to visit the coast.I miss the spontaneity and the lack of worry and planning that we had back then.

Moose, thank you for that link! Good grief. I certainly feel better.

I'm probably expecting far too much from her because she is NT.

You're welcome Star.

Reading some of those stories made me feel a lot better as well.

I have similar problems. I think ds2 is nt, but he was brought up very much in the shadow of ds1 and emulated him a lot and I also believe he has a few traits. Plus he is a real pleaser and always tries not to upset anyone so has always been such an easy child and never did the tantrum thing. We've just found out that he's been in constant pain with his joints and muscles for as long as he can remember, but never told a soul. It was only when the pain became too much to bear recently that we found out.

Dd is the total opposite. She is a full on livewire of fun, opinions and attention seeking behaviours and has the whole house wrapped around her little finger.

Sometimes I am at a loss to know whether I am expecting too much of her - or not enough!

It's not easy this parenting lark is it?

I think that's the hardest thing, Star.

DD2 (4.8) has so much pressure on her to be a 'grown up' girl, despite the fact that had she been born when she was supposed to be born, she wouldn't even have started school yet, instead of being at the end of her first year!

I sometimes look at her and think poor darling, she's expected to be 6 Even though I am conscious of it, and try my best to expect less of her, when the morning stress comes and I'm trying to get them out of the door, who is it I expect to be sensible, sort herself out, etc? DD2.

Lougle... feel exactly the same towards my nt twin son, I am guilty of sometimes expecting too much of him. He shows empathy towards his brother well beyond his years (he's 4) and it's clear to all that he feels a great responsibility for him too, however much we try to discourage this... he just does.

I can really relate to this thread!

My NT 3 year old drives me utterly round the bend with his constant temper tantrums, whinning and rudeness, I am totally at my wits end!

Strangely enough, I can understand my DD who has ASD, I know what her triggers are and why she has meltdowns; it makes sense to me that she is trying to make sense of an often confusing and frightening world, by my DS is just a little despot, intent on being manipulative to get his own way.

His behaviour also upsets DD....TBH, he has the ability to upset the whole house!

All my techniques which work well for parenting DD aren't appropriate responses for DS; they just don't seem to work.

I'm tough consistent, if I say something, I follow it through all to no avail.

Its like being a first time parent all over again and I am floundering...need

Today I may the ultimate mistake. I woukd NEVER make with Ds.

Dd was refusing to walk because I hadn't looked at something for the 8th time, so I walked off. She screamed 'I want my mummy!' I waited, she still didn't move. A crowd collected around her.

I went back for her and she screamed 'no, don't smack me mummy' ffs which suddenly appealed. So I replied, 'I don't smack dd, but give me your little bag as it is going in the next bin we pass'.

Grrrrr. It was a stupid thing to say. No way was I putting the bag she adores in the bin and it was a mean thing to say too.

So I didn't put it in the bin, and my threats are now worth less!!!!! Aaa agh

Oh Star, she's on a roll at the moment isn't she. Sounds like you need the MN mantra "this too shall pass".

I think we've all cracked and made threats we have no intention of carrying out at some point, especially when under pressure and with a bunch of nosey parkers rubber necking an audience to boot and you have the added complication of pregnancy hormones to add into the mix at the moment as well.

Don't worry about it, just pick some smaller issues to clearly follow through on over the next couple of days and you'll soon be back on course. Being NT they aren't so good at remembering every tiny little detail of every single experience like our dses would, so you can fudge things a bit sometimes.

No they're not All you do is tell your DD that you were a bit cross and you shouldn't have said that. Next time you have a situation (ie. in 10 minutes!) choose something smaller that you can follow through on and are willing to follow through on. Then you say 'dd I'll do x...and I mean it!!'.

She'll either believe you, in which case you didn't do any harm in going back on your threat earlier, or she won't, and she'll realise you really do mean it when you follow through, in which case she'll think 'ok, mum meant it this time!'

You won't break her by being inconsistent occasionally, honestly you won't. I know it's so alien when you have a DS who needs absolute consistency at all times to learn, but NT children are freakishly adaptable and able to work out the subtleties of situations.

DD3 is incredible at sussing out what's going on. There are times when I am at the end of my tether cross, and I shout at her (not ideal). She responds, very sensibly, by doing whatever I've told her to do at a fast rate of knots. Then there are times like the other day:

I wanted just 4 minutes to read something. DD3 was not going to let me. She was coming in my bedroom (DH was getting ready for work & pottering with them to allow me a few minutes). I asked her, then told her, then ordered her, then YELLED at her to just 'shut my door, shut my door, shut my door' . Her response?

"Mummy...."

WHATTTTT??????

"Do you want me to shut your door? "

Now, how did she know that this time she could win me over? They're dead clever :)

Lougle put that so much better than I did!

When interrupting, ds1 has recently taken to doing the 'Sheldon' thing of tapping on my shoulder going "Mummy .... Mummy ... Mummy" exactly three times. When he first started he was just being insistent and determined to get my attention, but it hasn't taken him long to notice that I can't be mad when he does it (because it is so darned Sheldon-like that makes me grin, every single time ).

@ zzzzz

I do agree though.

Lol, thanks everyone.

And thank you Lougle for explaining NT ability for inconsistency.

This lunch time I had a bath with her and she was an angel, 'washing' the baby and telling him a story and telling me all about her new friends at the nursey in which we have just been offered a place for her.

And you're probably right zzzzz, she will likely turn out like me. Stubborn challenging little thing!