WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY does my 5 yr old cry all the time!? - Page 2

[nichole]

how about a reward chart?

[aniT]

Originally Posted by gabbyraja

~Kid Cooperation
I've owned this for about 6 years. I've done Grandma's rule. She would literally rather sit in a pile of dirt the entire day than to clean it up. But it's probably a good idea to read the book again. I also ordered a copy of Playful Parenting through the library exchange, but it hasn't arrived yet.

~I'm just wondering if your DD would respond better if you give her a time frame in which to do things of her own volition?
Oh, absolutely not. I mentioned the word flighty before. I SWEAR she's like a bad blond joke! And she's not blond. You know the one where when you say something in one ear it blows straight out the other ear? That literally happens, every day. I COUNTED the amount of time it took for her to forget what she was doing today (the third time it happened. AFTER I had her repeat it to me). 4 seconds. 4...seconds..
Even with that said, I have tried giving her a time-frame (I want X done by X time) but it didn't even sort of work, not even with several reminders..

~Or you could ask her to help and give her two options so she gets to choose.
All this gets me is a pouty, mumbled, angry "Neither!" So I use the "I gave you a chance to choose and you didn't so now I get to choose" which just gets a tantrum.

~I would not make helping mandatory. If you take the pressure off, she will start helping again.

Tried it. Tried everything you suggested and all it gets me is a "Not me!" She's got my 2 yr old saying "not me!" Grrrr.

~LilStar-Your post was DEAD ON! This is the only, and I mean ONLY thing, that has ever worked. And you'd better keep it to fewer than 4 steps, or it's going to be lost in that aforementioned 4 seconds. I think it frustrates me so much because my 2 year old can follow more steps than she can. And he even does all kinds of things without being told! He hears somebody needs a towel and he jumps to get one before anybody else can, etc.

~It hardly sounds like your daughter is "flighty"! Sounds like she's quite intelligent actually, by manipulating you guys that way!
I try to think so, but seriously. Tonight she was at the dinner table (hubby at work) and I was nursing the baby. My 2 yr old was going to waste food, so I asked her to "please take the pan to the kitchen and put it on the stove". She got up, grabbed the pan, dissappeared into the kitchen. One...Two...Three...She reappears, pan in hand, and puts the pan back on the table in the same spot from which she removed it. I said "Eva, put the pan on the stove, please". She startled like she was sleep walking or something and said "Oh!" and took the pan to the stove. AHHHHH! WTH is that?? That's what the whole freaking day is like. She literally does that ALL DAY. I counted 4 times today alone. We're careful what we say in front of the kids, but we frequently say behind her back that she lives in Eva Land. Sigh... I thought it was a toddler thing and she'd grow out of it, then I thought it might be related to food allergies (we have multiple food allergies in each child), but nothing has made it better.

She is crying because Julian called her a name, because she's frustrated with her lessons (we homeschool), just about anything. Multiple times she's said "everyone needs to be quiet! Everything you say is just making me angrier!", through gritted teeth, when nobody has said anything TO her. I asked her a question tonight and she spit the answer at me like I was a stupid A$$. Yesterday I asked her to stop trying to pull my 2 yr old back into the house and let him go out into our (fenced) backyard and she yelled at me that he was going to want to swing and she wasn't going to push him any more. Never mind that I hadn't asked her to push him...

We make it clear that it is not ok to be disrespectful to us, and treating us like that is disrespectful. We rephrase things she says in the way we would like to hear them. Etc. But she's just so angry and/or emotional. By the end of the day some days, between the baby, my 2 yr old and her, I just can't put up with her crap anymore. It's like somebody has got to stop, and the 2 littles can't, so she needs to get a handle on herself. Am I expecting too much of her? Am I using my litmus standard (my 1st, who's so even tempered and easy-going) unrealistically? I seriously don't know if maybe my expectations are out of whack, because it sure feels like it's not me but her...

Anyway, thanks again and I welcome more feedback.

That sound a lot like my 10 year old DD. She has ADD. This is why she can't focus.. can't remember what she is told, forgets what she is doing in the middle of it. .She takes forever to do anything when she does do it. For instance it can take her 5 hours just to unload the dishwasher. I also have to give her step by step instructions.. once step at a time. If I give her more than one step.. she forgets.

ADD children often have mineral deficiencies.

I would suggest you see your health care professional to check into deficiencies and the possibility of ADD.

[Juvysen]

Originally Posted by gabbyraja

~It hardly sounds like your daughter is "flighty"! Sounds like she's quite intelligent actually, by manipulating you guys that way!
I try to think so, but seriously. Tonight she was at the dinner table (hubby at work) and I was nursing the baby. My 2 yr old was going to waste food, so I asked her to "please take the pan to the kitchen and put it on the stove". She got up, grabbed the pan, dissappeared into the kitchen. One...Two...Three...She reappears, pan in hand, and puts the pan back on the table in the same spot from which she removed it. I said "Eva, put the pan on the stove, please". She startled like she was sleep walking or something and said "Oh!" and took the pan to the stove. AHHHHH! WTH is that?? That's what the whole freaking day is like. She literally does that ALL DAY. I counted 4 times today alone. We're careful what we say in front of the kids, but we frequently say behind her back that she lives in Eva Land. Sigh... I thought it was a toddler thing and she'd grow out of it, then I thought it might be related to food allergies (we have multiple food allergies in each child), but nothing has made it better.

Sorry if this has been mentioned... but um... einstein couldn't even figure out how to tie his own shoes or get himself dressed as a child. Turns out he was just stuck in his own head. You never know what could really be going on in there, but she sounds distracted, not flighty.

Just throwing that out there.

If it's a distraction from her own intellegence issue, though, I think you're going to have to take a COMPLETELY different route. The regular parenting stuff isn't going to work. Maybe figure out what she's interested in and work THAT into her chores? Something that brings her interest into it.

I'm no Einstein, but I certainly live in my own head and am not much of a housekeeper. The times that it DOES interest me is when I learn a new way of doing something or I get a new thing to do it with (or if it's really visibly obvious I'll usually drag myself over to deal with it).