Struggling with my three-year-old repeating phrases and pushing me to snapping

[howdoinot]

My three year old has this tendency to repeat the same phrase over and over, working herself up into a complete state with it irrespective of what my reaction is. So for instance if she wants a drink she’ll just keep repeating I want a drink, I want a drink, and will just keep saying it over and over getting increasingly loud and desperate and frantic until I give her a drink.

The problem is that I really struggle with it and eventually it makes me snap and then I lose it, roaring and screaming at her and saying things I don’t mean. We just had it in the car on the way back from somewhere. She dropped something and started screaming for it and I couldn’t do anything about it and twenty minutes on she was still at it and I just broke.

I tried Loop earplugs and they did nothing. It’s awful and it doesn’t happen a lot but I end up feeling terrible and she’s upset and it’s just horrible.

Don’t lose it with her. I know that’s easy to say but there are strategies you can use.
If you stay calm it’ll help you both.

OK but what strategies? That’s what I’m asking because I really don’t want to lose it with her, it’s horrible, but there’s absolutely no way of stopping her without either giving her the thing or by losing it. So I need to try to keep a lid on my temper but something about it just absolutely breaks me. I can feel a sort of panicked feeling rising up in me.

Tell her you will not give her whatever it is she wants until she stops making that noise.

Can be a sign of Neurodiversity. You need to find ways to cope asap.

This was one of the first signs that my son was ND. He wouldn't get worked up, he just repeated the end of his sentence several times, he didn't even realise he was doing it.

OP, I get that it's annoying, are you able to distract her attention. ie, Yes lets go get some water, which cup would you like... etc

Thank you but that doesn’t stop her repeating it.

She definitely gets worked up. It starts a reasonable question or request and just escalates. It’s not like she’s demanding sweets or toys in shops, she accepts no, but it’s as if she gets stuck in a loop

I think she may be neurodiverse. Go to the GP. Also ask for a referral for stress/anger management for yourself. How difficult for you, and for her.

Not just stress management but perhaps see if there is any support or advice from the autism society.

My son does this and gets fixated on stuff too like if we are going to a day out etc he will be like "I want to go on the tractor" And just say it over and over and over and can't enjoy the rest of the time until we get to the one thing in his head. He also does the drink thing too. I now say to him "what did I say? " "You said yes" "Yes so you don't need to say it again"
Then if it starts up I ask again what did I say. He definitely is doing it less now he's getting a bit older now so hopefully it just stops (he's 3 and a half)

I have a 3 year old that does the same thing, I think it's pretty standard 3 year old behaviour.

Your child doesn't 'make you' roar and scream at them though, your ability to regulate your emotions does that. Most parents occasionally react in a less than ideal way when they're overwhelmed, but your description of your reaction seems quite extreme. I totally understand the panic feeling, but you can find ways to cope in the moment. Take 5 deep breaths, step out of the room, even pop some headphones on for a bit if you need to.

For the behaviour, try modelling the correct way to ask for something back to them (so they shout "drink, drink, drink", you calmly respond "I'd like a drink please"). If they need to wait, use something concrete rather than just saying 5 minutes or whatever "yes, I will make you a drink as soon as I finish x". If they ask again, repeat once then swap to saying "I have already answered you". Same for if the answer is "no", calmly answer twice then just say "I've already answered that question" or something similar.

Edited to add: I had no idea this was a sign of neurodiversity! I do have a lot of ADHD and autism in my extended family and this behaviour seems completely normal to me, so maybe keep an eye on that?

@shakercream yes. It isn’t as bad as I remember her brother being but it’s just my reaction to it - it’s like we can’t see or hear one another. Distraction with her doesn’t work at all; she gets really angry as I think she knows what you’re trying to do.

@Tulipsriver that was the AI suggested title, sorry, I agree she doesn’t ‘make’ me do anything. But I do find it hard to manage and am sincerely looking for how I can help myself. It’s absolutely pointless trying to stop her; once she hears my voice it escalates things but ignoring her also doesn’t work so I think that’s the issue I’m just sort of stuck listening to her until she wears herself out and that takes a long time.

My son is 6 and does this, he is nd. It drives me mad! Over and over and over again. No advice just sympathies as I know how frustrating it is and I struggle with it too

It's not a child management strategy, but you could do with Classic 3M earplugs. Nothing compares with those, for me.

Then, on top of that, I'd wear small ear defenders at the same time. Both of those worn together will make this more bearable. Or your ear plugs might be ok by themselves.

I think the problem with the loop earplugs is I can still hear her and I do need to be able to hear, for driving (the car is the real trigger as I just can’t get away from it. I also don’t like headphones generally but would tolerate them if it helped.)

I think this is fairly typical 3yo behaviour. Mine certainly did it and initially I was like you. It didn’t help. You can’t change their behaviour it you can change yours. For me what eventually made a difference was considering it from their perspective. She asks nicely for a drink BECAUSE SHE IS THIRSTY and you don’t give her one for presumably some legitimate reason like you don’t have one and she’ll have to wait until you get home. The problem is SHE IS STILL THIRSTY. Hence she will constantly request her needs are met until you finally do get her a drink. She is little, and thirsty. Sure, at some point she has to learn to wait patiently, and she will. But not quite yet. Reframe your expectations. And take a water bottle with you.

@AnotherVice i do give her drinks, of course I do. But sometimes I can’t give her what she wants and yes I get she’s three but I’m genuinely asking how to manage my own feelings in these moments. Telling me I can avoid it by just saying oh she’s three and giving her a water bottle is kind of not the thing I’m asking.

Have you tried repeating the sentence back to her, to kind of confirm you've heard it?

Sympathies, it does sound draining, my DC are older now, so I could be misremembering, but it does sound reminiscient of the older two when they were around that age, they are both ADHD. And now I think about it, I don't think DS3 (who we think is NT) did it.

However the other thing that is familiar to me is you finding it really difficult to block it out, to the point this makes it difficult to drive the car or remain calm yourself - this makes me think of the way I felt when DS1 particularly was that age, when I had undiagnosed/completely unmanaged ADHD. Could that be a factor for you?

The panicky feeling that rises up is essentially a fight or flight response. The way I describe it is that it feels like my brain is drowning.

Thank you for telling me that. When we get to abc we can do/get that.

then

yes I know you have told me that , you don’t need to tell me again.

lets sing a song /see if you can see a cow in a field /a red car / etc

so distract ideally

@Blondeshavemorefun thanks but I am confident there is nothing I can say that will get through to her. Just hearing my voice sends her into a rage and if the ‘loop’ is stopping it I speak it starts it up again. So I have to sit in silence and just take it and it leads to that fight or flight thing @BertieBotts mentions. I hate it!

And I feel so awful as normally she isn’t like this, she’s normally so lovely. But when she fixates on something it’s so difficult to love her on from it. Today was because she’d dropped a hair clip and I couldn’t stop the car to get it for her and she just kept screaming I want my gabby clip over and over and over for nearly half an hour.

(I wrote this a while ago and got distracted - I hear that verbal responses don't really help so these probably won't either, but I'll leave them in just in case).

Some other things which I found would sometimes help along with repeating the request back to them was to explain when I would be able to do the thing. So something like

"Hmm yep, you want a drink darling, I know. When we get home, we can get a drink."
"I want a drink"
"That's right, I'm driving home right now, so that we can get to the drinks. We are on the Coventry road. We will take the next right to go towards home."
"I want a drink when we get home"
"Yep, as soon as we get home we can get one. I'm turning right now. Just checking if any cars are coming - safe to go. Now we have to go up this road, round the roundabout, past the shops..."

Even if they didn't actually move on from the same sentence, it helped because it felt less like an endless loop and I was sort of narrating the progress that I was making towards the goal. Maybe on some level it helped them understand that I was actually working towards it as well. Actually I still use this with DS2 who is now 8. I don't need it anywhere near as often but he will still repeat requests, like he's barking orders at a computer, rather than wait patiently or come and see what it is they are doing. It's like he genuinely doesn't consider that you have human speed legs and thinks that you can and should instantly teleport to his side to fulfil his wish. Or that you might be doing something else which is important or might not want to drop everything to help him.

Sometimes the thing from the How To Talk books would help - giving wishes in fantasy. I remember DS1 was 3 when I first read this. I was a bit scared to use it at first because I thought that he might not understand that it was pretend and would get more upset because I was talking about giving him what he wanted but not actually doing it, but actually I found it often worked well. So I'd say things like "Ah I wish I had a special robot arm to get your toy for you." He often seemed delighted that I had understood the intention of his request even if I wasn't actually fulfilling it and would join in with coming up with more uses for the imaginary robot arm.

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But mainly the thing to help you explode less or be less stressed out by it might be to try to reduce demands of the day to day routine for both of you - things like planning outings to avoid scenarios where you're both hungry and tired on the way back. Though I appreciate sometimes it just happens and you can't always plan to avoid it.

IME the fixated looping on one thing can be quite dysregulated behaviour, esp if trying to engage with it just fuels escalation rather than helping. When my DC would be at that level of dysregulation then nothing would help either and we would quite quickly wind each other up with the slightest thing. The best book/resource I found to understand dysregulation, how it happens and what to do is Big Baffling Behaviours by Robyn Gobbel.

Deep breaths. Lots of big loud external breaths, always help me when I’m feeling like that. I find it often rubs off on DD too and she also calms down from my breath work

My granddaughter is just three and does this. When she kicks off, I don’t think she can even hear Mum. There are four children, 6,4,3 and 1. Mum tries very hard not to throttle her, and has done all of the obvious things: good cop, bad cop, rationalising, talking, shouting, ignoring, blah, blah, blah. The most effective thing is removing her from the room until she calms down. She then apologises and Mum says thank you, but why are you sorry? This seems to be relatively successful (mostly). A lot of people have leapt straight to neurodiversity and I don’t doubt this could be an issue. However, we are wondering how she will get on this term because the two older ones are now in school. The lack of competition might help.
Children screaming when you’re driving is soul-destroying 🙂 good luck 🙂

@BertieBotts you always give such thoughtful and helpful advice on these threads.

Surely if she’s dropped something in the car you’d stop when appropriate to get it?! Why wait half an hour, makes no sense to me at all