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What is his doctor supposed to do? This is a serious question. Unless you believe it's allergy related or a behavioral disorder.
How did he arrive at this behavior? At 4, you say he has "continuously" hit other kids "for a while now" but can you recall when he did not behave like this? Did he begin hitting after attending preschool? At some point he learned that nothing really bad was going to happen to him when he hit others and it seems he's not interested in nor does he fear any consequences of his actions. I mean, one day he's going to hit the wrong kid and get a beat down!
Possibly refer us to someone to have him further evaluated for behavioral issues...for his sensory issues, etc.
He started hitting when he started preschool. He never hit at home (until we started setting better limits, etc a few days ago) but he has always joined in on roughhousing and eventually hittng someone at school. He has a lot of trouble keeping hands to himself. The teachers at preschool struggled too. We do want to try to help him with theseissues before he gets to public school or its going to be tough for him...which is why maybe a referral to someone would be beneficial
Possibly refer us to someone to have him further evaluated for behavioral issues...for his sensory issues, etc.
He started hitting when he started preschool. He never hit at home (until we started setting better limits, etc a few days ago) but he has always joined in on roughhousing and eventually hittng someone at school. He has a lot of trouble keeping hands to himself. The teachers at preschool struggled too. We do want to try to help him with theseissues before he gets to public school or its going to be tough for him...which is why maybe a referral to someone would be beneficial
In honesty, this bugs me. And it is not just you. You see this all the time. You KNOW your discipline has been ineffective for a while. You KNOW it takes time for discipline changes to take effect. People have made recommendations for you to consider to make sure you are meeting his basic emotional needs. You have ignored all that. All you are interested in is how to punish him into compliance. And you are ready to trot him off to the doc for a dX. Your child MAY have sensory issues. MAY have "behavioral issues". All of this is going to be MUCH easier to diagnose (or eliminate) if the plain human child considerations are already handled.
It is a whole lot easier to put problems we have with our kids in the hands of the experts. But if I get a diagnosis of ... ADHD for example but the root cause is the aforementioned failure to understand his basic emotional needs, you are not going to see a resolution! And while the family suffers and it's a pain for the school, the REAL loser is the kid who never learns what he needs to learn. Never gets a feeling of belonging based on his good properties. Never gets to learn the feeling of being capable. And tends to be lost and confused a fair amount of the time, representing until his adult hood as misbehavior.
In honesty, this bugs me. And it is not just you. You see this all the time. You KNOW your discipline has been ineffective for a while. You KNOW it takes time for discipline changes to take effect. People have made recommendations for you to consider to make sure you are meeting his basic emotional needs. You have ignored all that. All you are interested in is how to punish him into compliance. And you are ready to trot him off to the doc for a dX. Your child MAY have sensory issues. MAY have "behavioral issues". All of this is going to be MUCH easier to diagnose (or eliminate) if the plain human child considerations are already handled.
It is a whole lot easier to put problems we have with our kids in the hands of the experts. But if I get a diagnosis of ... ADHD for example but the root cause is the aforementioned failure to understand his basic emotional needs, you are not going to see a resolution! And while the family suffers and it's a pain for the school, the REAL loser is the kid who never learns what he needs to learn. Never gets a feeling of belonging based on his good properties. Never gets to learn the feeling of being capable. And tends to be lost and confused a fair amount of the time, representing until his adult hood as misbehavior.
Ok, so your stance is that I am too focused on punishment/consequences instead of trying to determine his basic needs emotionally? So how do I address, then, the hitting at school and the issues with not listening and impulsivity? We talk to our son, take him out for one on one time, give him play time with us daily, encourage him to "help" with his younger brother, etc. etc. Yes, we have been inconsistent with discipline in the past. So I get why he resists the change now. I take it you have raised a difficult or challenging child because you are pretty passionate about your feelings. What are some concrete tips you can give me that you feel will help. And I have not ignored allthe others BTW...otherwise I wouldnt keep responding. Not trying to be sarcastic here at all. I would really be interested in knowing for example, what you would do and how you would respond if your child was hitting at school. Or hitting you.
We have been having some challenges for over a year now and his preschool teachers brought in someone for special education assessment that did see he has sensory issues and may have ADHD present (he is still too young to be diagnosed). i am not in a hurry to get a DX nor am I in a hurry to put him on meds. So I am not just blowing hot air when I say that there may be other things going on. In fact, it was his school that brought it up originally and we have seen it continue for over a year now.
Ok, so your stance is that I am too focused on punishment/consequences instead of trying to determine his basic needs emotionally?
Go back to page 4 and re-read the conversations about resources for learning about these topics. Several very good ones were suggested.
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So how do I address, then, the hitting at school and the issues with not listening and impulsivity? We talk to our son, take him out for one on one time, give him play time with us daily, encourage him to "help" with his younger brother, etc. etc. Yes, we have been inconsistent with discipline in the past. So I get why he resists the change now. I take it you have raised a difficult or challenging child because you are pretty passionate about your feelings. What are some concrete tips you can give me that you feel will help.
Learn. Honestly. I am not screwing with you. There is no bulleted list of summation that I can give you that will supplant learning.
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And I have not ignored allthe others BTW...otherwise I wouldnt keep responding. Not trying to be sarcastic here at all. I would really be interested in knowing for example, what you would do and how you would respond if your child was hitting at school. Or hitting you.
Well I would start with how I would deal with it at home since that will greatly impact what he does at school. And I already told you EXACTLY how I would deal with hitting.
Go back to page 4 and re-read the conversations about resources for learning about these topics. Several very good ones were suggested.
Learn. Honestly. I am not screwing with you. There is no bulleted list of summation that I can give you that will supplant learning.
Well I would start with how I would deal with it at home since that will greatly impact what he does at school. And I already told you EXACTLY how I would deal with hitting.
Ok can you humor me and repeat it or cut and past what you previously said?
When you say "learn" what do you mean? Learn what? Tactics for heading off or redirecting negative bx? Learn how to build better relationship with him? I truly am interested in what your line of thinking is but to tell me to "learn" doesnt say much.
Edit: ok, I see what you suggested for hitting other...walk away from it. So no time out, no separating him from the group, nothing other than just walkng away? We already verbalize that we dont want to play with others that hurt us.
We feel at our wits end wth our four year old son. I know (hope) its a phase but we have run out of ideas for dealing with our older son. Like I said, he is 4. We also have a two year old who just went from easygoing and agreeable baby stage to yellng, screaming, fighting with brother, teething, super cranky stage. This is almost easier than dealing with how our four year old is behaving. A few examples include:
*Doing something purposely he knows or was *just* told not to do. I say "dont take that from your brother" in the car then see him in the rearview mirror doing exactly what I said not to.
*Not listening (kind of goes hand in hand with #1). I know he is 4 but at what point do you stop using this excuse. The kid is smart, borderline crazy smart. He can tell me, in detail, about people and places and events in our life from a couple years ago but he cant tell me why he terrorizes the dog when I have told him over and over not to?
We have taken toys away, tv time away, Ipad time away (he watches Curious George). We have not gone and done fun things, like swimming at the pool or to a festival, because of how he has acted and we tell him why. We have done reward/sticker charts to encourage positive behavior. We verbally tell him how proud we are when he behaves good and we make a big deal out of it too. Time out is the only thing that seems to work but even that fails after a while on really bad days for him when all he seems to want to do is get in trouble. We have tried trying to get a jump start to a good day by saying "today if all goes well we will go to the pool" for example, but I almost wonder if that actually backfires and sets him up to fail. We can repreatedly remind him "if you dont listen today we cant go to the pool" and he now will actually say "ok, I dont want to go" back to us....which is odd because something like going to the pool is his favorite thing to do.
I have noticed, the more structure the better behaved. Like preschool days when he is on a schedule. Weekends have become almost dreaded here because by 7am he is wound up and he starts to get involved in mischief when he KNOWS it will get him in time out.
Any ideas, tricks, tips, book recommendations, motivators, people who want a 4 year old *just kidding*, are all welcomed because I need some advice!
My daughter is going through this with her 4yo daughter. She also has 2yo son she dotes on.
I believe my granddaughter is acting out for the attention. Then the more she gets in trouble, the worse she gets, because what she really wants is just for Mommy to hold her and love her more than she appears to hold onto and love her little brother.
She also smacks him when mommy isn't looking, and that supports my belief even more. It's almost like a competition.
Ok can you humor me and repeat it or cut and past what you previously said?
When you say "learn" what do you mean? Learn what? Tactics for heading off or redirecting negative bx?
No. Not tactics. Strategies. You are focused on the negative. You are focused on behavior. That segment of your learning, I guess, is on learning effective limit setting. You can start there:
(or seek any reference in your local library about effective positive discipline.)
Also learn about how you are probably setting up resistance with your own actions and attitudes. I cringe every time I hear a parent meekly saying "Do you want to clean up your room?" NO the kid does not want to clean up your room? And then get frustrated when they don't. He doesn't listen to me! yes he does!! You asked him if he wanted to! The number of fights that parents pick with their kids without realizing it, thinking that their kid sees things from the same lense that they do is amazing. We ALL do it until we realize what we are doing. (Except my Dad. He was a natural empath. Alas, that I did not get that gene.)
And with this, you are not just developing a skill to not set up resistance right now, you are showing him that he can trust you. That you can understand him.
But so far, we have still been dealing largely in behavior. And if you stopped here, you would be better off. But pictire not just having someone who you have a hard time getting to behave, but someone who is an asset in the job of raising himself.
But eventually, you need to understand the crucial c's. These are not just the basic needs of kids but of every human being in the world ever. You need to understand your role in creating the behavior. What the child needs. And some great ways to
This author has 2 venues, a book and a training series. I bought the latter. It was excellent.
It was an easier road the the Discipline for Life book. Though I had the good luck to go to that particular author's training series when I was day care provider (at a handy discounted rate)! But I did not know about it when I started this journey when my first born pain in the butt was a toddler.
These may not be the right ones for you. I can say that they were very helpful to me with my very difficult toddler. NO ONE could handle him. Not me. Not his child care provider. Not his grandparents. Truth be told, no one liked being around him. He was a turd. But he was smart, not stupid, as I strongly suspect your child is too. He was learning what we were teaching him with our ACTIONS not our words. Because our words mean so little to them. What do they mean to people who have just recently learned language if the actions say something completely else?
If your mind stays at "How do I get him to do X" or "How do I stop him from doing Y", and does not come to understand the full scope of what effective discipline entails, then my magic crystal snowball says that you will continue to ask those questions when he is in elementary school, middle school, high school. Right up until you say thank god he is out of my house.
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Learn how to build better relationship with him? I truly am interested in what your line of thinking is but to tell me to "learn" doesnt say much.
It is not about you. It is not about your relationship. It is about HIM. And what he needs to succeed. About him feeling like that is part of his participation in the group. About his being capable
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Edit: ok, I see what you suggested for hitting other...walk away from it. So no time out, no separating him from the group, nothing other than just walkng away? We already verbalize that we dont want to play with others that hurt us.
What do you expect vocalizing to do if the actions you use don't support it? If your husband said over and over with his mouth that he was faithful but cheated and continued to cheat, which would you believe? His vocalizations? Or his actions? If your boss told you he was giving you a raise, but your paycheck never changed, what would you believe?
Thanks, I appreciate the clarifications and also the links you provided. I have How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and am currently reading that as well as Parent Power which was recommended by his doctor. The others I will look into later today.
The hitting thing is a challenge for sure. His teachers have him sit in time out away from the group for this and when he doesnt listen or is disruptive.
Thanks, I appreciate the clarifications and also the links you provided. I have How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and am currently reading that as well as Parent Power which was recommended by his doctor. The others I will look into later today.
The hitting thing is a challenge for sure. His teachers have him sit in time out away from the group for this and when he doesnt listen or is disruptive.
Yah, it is tough at school. They don't have as much recourse as we do at home. Good luck! May your diligence pay off with peace in your home and a wonderful family life for years to come.
Note: some people would rather concede the things being punished/taken away rather than be manipulated
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