Need some help with 5.5 yr old

[Phoenix~Mama]

I'm at a loss... DSD is 5.5 and just does not listen to instructions. She knows the rules, says she knows when she has done wrong, but will do the same things wrong over and over again.

But it's frustrating, and some of it is embarrasing, and some is safety hazards!

I would think at 5.5 she could listen to simple guidelines. But she likes to make her own plans.

Some examples:

We ask her to please sit correctly on her chair and not tip it as she can fall and get hurt. So of course she continues tipping it and falls and gets hurt and screams and cries. This isn't an isolated incident. This happens almost every weekend.

My parents have a jungle gym at their house but my Dad hasn't cemented it into the ground yet and it's in a sort of heap behind the stables. We were walking through the pasture and DSD saw it but we explained to her that she can't play on it yet as it's unsafe and will not hold her. She takes off at a run and tries to sit on the swing, and as we told her what would happen, it went down and she got scraped on her arm.

Maybe this is typical, but I just have not seen children of this age group blatently disobey so much, especially as we are explaining she will get hurt.

Other things, she is mouthy. It drives me nuts. Anything I tell her, it's "I KNOW!" (Well, if you know then why are you disregarding the rule in the first place?) I tell her to please not talk to me that way and she can respond nicely and use her manners.

She demands things all the time instead of saying please, and rarely says Thank you.

She also has an attitude that she doesn't have to treat her things with respect because she can always get more. (We don't do this, we tell her once something is broken, it's gone we are not replacing it, we are trying to teach her to respect her things.)

Like this past weekend I was helping her with homework and I could not find her new eraser that we just bought for her. I asked her where it is and she got her "attitude" voice on and said, "It doesn't matter JSMa I can get plenty more." No actually, honey you can't, we don't have a lot of money to keep replacing things.

*sighs*

We reiterate the rules all weekend long and tell her why the rules are what they are. We just seem to not be getting anywhere...

Help?

[~Charlie's~Angel~]

I think that the "rules" you are trying to instil might not be sticking if she isnt made to follow the same rules in her weekly home. KWIM?

Consistency is KEY with children, especially ones learning consequences and manners. If she is only being made to use please and thank you 2 days a week, but not 7, how is she going to realize that this is the aceptable way of doing things?

Im only assuming this is the issue, as I have a very very dear friend having similar issues with her DSD, who is now 12. Its not pretty.

[LynnS6]

Part of this probably is a blended family issue in that if there are different rules at different houses, she's probably testing a lot (more than usual) just to see where the boundaries are.

That being said, most 5 year olds in my experience are hard headed and opinionated. It's like a peek into their teenage years, complete with attitude and eye rolling. It can be maddening!

In some ways, the same techniques that work with a toddler work with 5s too. Because they're so verbal, I think it's easy to forget that they still are very much experiential learners.

Things that we do with our 5 3/4 year old daughter are:

• Make sure we tell her what to do, and not what not to do. So, 'don't tip the chair back' is better put as 'keep the chair on the floor'.
• Intervene physically (gently). So, if you say "keep the chair on the floor" and she keeps tipping it, I get up and gently put the chair on the floor. If she does it again, I take her off the chair, and find her one that one do that.
• Ignore the mouth and the arguing. If she says "I won't fall!" just repeat the rule "we keep the chair on the floor."
• Keep it short and sweet. I find myself giving long, drawn out explanations for simple things like 'put your shoes on'. What I should do is just repeat "shoes".

You might also think about giving her an allowance to buy her own things. It doesn't have to be much - 50 cents or a dollar a week (that you keep at your house until she spends, I wouldn't send it home to her other house). It's amazing how many fewer things my kids 'need' when they have to pay for them themselves. It's also amazing quickly they learn to keep track of their own things when it's their money, not yours, that's going to have to replace it!

If she says "that's OK, we can buy a new one" just ask gently "oh? Where is the money going to come from?" 5 year olds have a very fuzzy sense of money. Our 5 year old thinks that all I have to do is pull out our bank card and I can pay. She doesn't get that money doesn't magically appear on it. Our 8 1/2 year old does, but that's only been in the last year.

Finally, you might think of ways for her to meet some of her sensory needs. It sounds like she really likes the feel of tipping the chair. Can you make her a balance board? (A 1 foot square of wood over a 3-4" square block, for example, makes an excellent balance board.) Or get her a balance disk to put on her chair?

[Thalia the Muse]

The "doing things where you're going to get hurt" sounds like it's just impulse control issues, which are pretty common at five -- you KNOW you're not supposed to, but it looks soooo fun ... Fortunately, falling off the chair and getting hurt repeatedly is the kind of thing that will eventually teach you not to tip your chair, no matter how stubborn you are!

I agree that providing some extreme sensory stuff at your house might help -- a tire swing or balance board or hippity-hop. A scooter if she doesn't already have one.

Five was a peak mouthiness age for us! We just tried never, ever to reward it and not to strangle her, and somehow we all survived it, only to hit another mouthiness age at eight, which is only now receding ... I cannot tell you how many times I have heard the words "I KNOW!" in a snotty tone of voice ...

[Phoenix~Mama]

Thanks for some ideas!

Ack! I forgot another key one that is the embarrasing element too.

Going through or taking other people's things.

Example, the other weekend my FIL's GF caught DSD going through her purse and she told her that it's not okay to go through other people's things like that. Which we have also told her about often. (things will go missing in our house, and are usually found in her room)

Apparantly DSD continued going through the purse even after she was told about it. FIL's GF did take the purse away then and told us about it later.

And making up stories/lies... Which can possibly get others in trouble.

Examples:

She told her Mom that H and I told her that her Mommy isn't Mommy and I am and that she must call me Mommy. This could not be any further from the truth. But H's ex called us up and reamed us out for it.

Then this weekend when her school work was done incorrectly again and she said it was because she asked the teacher to say the sentence again but that her teacher refused to do so. H meets with her teacher every other week and I have met her several times as well, as well as read her notes that she sends home to us... I have a really hard time beleiving that she refused to repeat the sentence for DSD.

DSD later admitted that she just wasn't paying attention (which is beleivable as teacher has sent notes home that DSD often does not complete work as she often gets out of her chair and crawls around or runs around the classroom.)

And she is constantly lying about wiping/flushing and washing her hands after going to the bathroom!!! Should a 5.5 year old be able to go to the bathroom on their own and wash their hands? We do remind her to do these things before she goes, and ask her afterwards and we caught onto her always lying and check her hands now and have to send her back in to wash.

[pianojazzgirl]

I don't have time to brainstorm ideas right now, but I did want to say that it sounds like normal 5 yr old behaviour to me (the things mentioned in both of your posts). I'll come back to this thread later.

[LynnS6]

Originally Posted by JSMa

And she is constantly lying about wiping/flushing and washing her hands after going to the bathroom!!! Should a 5.5 year old be able to go to the bathroom on their own and wash their hands? We do remind her to do these things before she goes, and ask her afterwards and we caught onto her always lying and check her hands now and have to send her back in to wash.

Our dd does the same thing with wiping/washing. Apparently it's too much trouble . It drives me batty. Actually she doesn't lie about it because I don't ask. I just say "I didn't hear any water running, go wash your hands." "But I did!" "Well, then you didn't do it long enough for me to hear, so do it again."

She also needs constant reminders about:
flushing
turning off lights
the fact that we do chores after dinner every night (hard to forget that one, but she does, every night)
putting her shoes away
stopping touching/tickling/pushing her brother when asked
whining

[Ravenlunatic]

I agree with what Lynn56 said, pretty much across the board. My 5.5 year old is just like your DSD... and she most definetely still needs bathroom guidance.

[Phoenix~Mama]

So what are some things you guys say to them to help guide them to nicer behaviors?

[pianojazzgirl]

Just a quickie...

To get dd to "remember" to wash hands after using the toilet I took her to our local fancy soap shop (of locally-made soaps - yay!) and let her choose whatever she wanted. She loved going there esp cause the man who owns the store was super nice and gave her some of the Valentines Day decorations that they still had up (it was the end of Feb). So I told her that she should try to wash her hands as often as possible and make sure that she always got them nice and soapy so that she'd use up her soap sooner which would mean another trip to the soap store. It worked!

[pianojazzgirl]

I also agree with a pp who suggested telling her what to do instead of what not to do. And keep it short and sweet. So once you've done one longer explanation of why not to tip her chair back she should understand what you mean by "chair down please!" or just "chair!".

And with my dd if she speaks rudely (which she unfortunately does often), I will either explain "I don't like to be spoken to like that" and then I give her the polite words to say (ie. "may I have a drink please" instead of "gimme a drink right now!"), or I simply say "drink please?' if she's just demanded a drink in a whiny tone (this is enough to remind her to rephrase it politely).

[RiverSky]

Sounds like totally normal 5.5 year old behavior to me. I think you expect too much of her. She has a very troubled home life, being split between two homes, and yes, that will cause extra poor behavior, but sheesh, my guess is she's only reacting to the weirdness that goes on around her.

5.5 year olds need bathroom and hand-washing reminders. Figure out a way to make it fun, like buy her a special foamy hand soap dispenser just for her. I have known of a few 6 year olds who would not wipe their own bottoms. I have an 8 year old who still tries to get away with not doing it on occasion.

I think daily chores for a 5 year old is mean. She is in school all day, needs to do homework (shockingly ridiculous in itself) and needs to get to bed early. I think you are expecting too much. I can understand paying her to tidy her room or make her bed, or dusting the house on Saturday, but honestly, at five, I think it's the parents' job to clean up for the 5 year old whose job it is to play, sleep, eat, and go to school. Having grown up with a stepfather in the house, if he had ordered me to do daily chores from a young age, I would have had a huge amount of resentment towards him. Now, if my mother had asked for such a thing, I would have thought less of it, but still, she never would have, as she didn't feel that children were meant to be slaves and didn't give us chores until we were much older.

The stories and lies that you mention sound like a warning signal to me, one that she is stressed from her stressful homelife. Children can acutely sense when there is dischord between parents, not to mention the abuse and disfunction that you have described many a time.

When she was sneaking through the FIL's GF's purse, where were all the adults? Why was no one supervising her or in the same area? I don't get that. You also didn't mention what she was looking for. Did she want some gum, perhaps, that FIL's GF has given her before? Or some other special treat, like candies or something? I think a playful approach, at the time, would have been far more helpful. Was she being babysat by the GF or something? "Hey sweetie, what are you looking for in my purse? My purse is private but if there is something you'd like, a treat or something, tell me and maybe I have some to give to you." Or maybe she wants to try on some lipgloss or powder or something or check out a shiny compact she has seen the GF use?

Regarding kindergarten and DSD's teacher, it seems obvious to me that DSD did not understand the homework, or she forgot it. She's under a lot of stress. She is 5. Not all 5 year olds remember what their homework is. Actually, I think few do. My son was allegedly the "smartest" in his kindergarten class (according to the teacher and his perfect report cards) and he would forget parts of his homework sometimes, too. Kids do that! It's not the end of the world. Actually, I think it should be a crime to send homework home with kindergarteners, but that's another story. A kindergartener should never be punished for having trouble with homework, or even not doing it at all.

[Thalia the Muse]

I don't think that having some reasonable household responsibilities, like picking up one's own belongings, constitutes using children as slaves.

[hakeber]

Originally Posted by Thalia the Muse

I don't think that having some reasonable household responsibilities, like picking up one's own belongings, constitutes using children as slaves.

I think this is typical of 5 year olds anyway and excerbated by the blended family issue. Depending upon how long this has been her situation, she may be really worried about people leaving her or upturning her life and may be seeking out reassurance that even if she is HORRID she will still be loved and the adults in her life will stick around.

I know my siblings and I all went through degrees of this when our parents split up and remarried other people. It was like the grown ups had changed all the rules, and I remember feeling distinctly like I could not trust much of what they had to say...I was 8 at the time. I bet a 5 yo would manifest those feelings in a very different way.

Even when we do something like move house ds is a pain in the butt for three weeks(she says in the most loving tone she can muster).

I think there are a lot of good ideas here to work with, I would just say stay strong and do try to have a family meeting with her birth mom so you can all get on the same page, having different rules for my mom's and my dad's was really hard to process and I was 3 years older than your DSD. It does weird things to your brain and makes a lot of life feel very arbitrary.



One suggestion: when I have a long drawn out process, like getting ready for school, I have made picture instruction charts for ds to check off as we go and the visual reminder helps him stay on track for following instructions.

I wouldn't view her as being disobedient as much as being well...five.

[shishkeberry]

Your DSD sounds a lot like my DS, minus the lying. Thank goodness I haven't had to really deal with that, yet. I'm a very impatient person on top of that, so there are a lot of times that I strangle my pants or the couch cushion instead of DS's neck. :

I have to remember that we just recently moved from a bad home situation that we lived in for two years. After my ex left me, I got evicted from my apartment and was forced to live with my best friend and her extended family for two years. My best friend has a daughter that is only a few months younger than my DS. In that house, the DD was queen and was allowed to do whatever she wanted (I'm sure she still is, actually). The grandma would seriously yell at any adult that tried to reprimand her. She was clearly favored over my DS and I think he's still working out his own issues over that.

[Phoenix~Mama]

I'm not sure where you got the idea she has daily chores to do, because she doesn't.

But we do expect her to help clean up the toys she gets out to play with. I don't think that's treating her like a slave. She is a member of this family and I see nothing wrong with her helping clean up a mess she has made. My DD is already starting to learn to pick up her blocks and put them back in the tub. She thinks it's fun. lol

As for trying to get her Mom to have the same rules as us... it won't happen. This has been going on for 4 years now. Her Mom and us view things that are age appropriate very very differently. She is allowed to play on the Internet unsupervised at her Mom's house... she isn't even allowed to touch the computer at our house. She watches a lot of TV at her Mom's, including Hannah Montana, icarly, Zach and Corey's Suite Life... we feel all those shows are not age appropriate what so ever and do not allow her to watch any of them at our house, and limit her TV time to begin with.

We honestly don't ask for much. We ask her to please sit and eat her meal without getting up and going to play every 5 seconds. We ask her to respect people's belongings and to not touch things that are not her's. We do expect her to use her manners and not to whine and demand things of us. When she doesn't, we remind her of the right way to ask for something.

I guess nothing much to be done different... just keep reminding her.


Oh and as for the purse. FIL's GF hasn't been in the picture very long and has not given DSD anything from her purse ever. FIL's GF was in the room with her at the time. It was during a picnic at FIL's house, most of us were outside. DSD went inside to go to the bathroom. She knows right where it is and we didn't feel we had to go in to help her. FIL's GF just happened to be inside at the time and saw DSD going through the purse.

This is just one example of her getting into things that do not belong to her. She has also come into my bedroom and taken my ipod and hid it in her room. She takes things from DD's room often and puts them in her room.

[hakeber]

Well I think that's the answer. Sounds like your DSD's mom is doing a lot of what my mom did which was punish the father by allowing her house to be the house of endless privilege (regardless of age appropriateness) so she has a sense that she IS mature enough to do XYZ (because her mom lets her), and when you say no it makes her feel like you are treating her unfairly, so now EVERYTIME you say no to something it is up for scrutiny and proving you wrong.

I have SOOOOOOO been there as a child of divorce and remarriage, just I was sneakier about it, because I was a bit older.

There will be lots of testing and other things going on....can I make a suggestion?

Perhaps talk to her about why the rules are different at your house like she is a ten year old (since she is watching shows geared towards the tween set anyway she will probably appreciate it), and rather than say you don't think the shows and other "freedoms" her mom gives her are appropriate for HER age, use your younger daughter. Say you don't want the shows on for your dd's sake, and that you really need her help in modelling behavior for her. ask her to be a part of the solution for your problem with your DD, rather than hold DSD up as the anti-model to DD.

You may also consider giving in on SOME of the stuff to reach a middle ground. Why not let her play on the internet with a Child firewall set up and a grown up in the room? There are a lot of fun educational sites out there for her to play on. Most 4+ YOs we know are allowed some computer time. I'd prefer the PC to TV ANYDAY, way easier to control the content.

And perhaps some of the shows on Disney TV can be watched when your LO is down for a nap, because, she's already watching it anyway, so not letting her do it at your house is so arbitrary to the mind of a 5 yo. It only makes sense not to let her watch it if A) you don't want your younger dd to watch it, or B) she wasn't already watching it. Now that she has seen these shows it becomes nothing more than a way for you both to exert your power in the relationship, and IME it looks to the child like you are doing it not at ALL for her benefit but rather for the benefit of trying to prove to her MOTHER that you are right and she is wrong.

Snooping and stealing, I really think this is tied in with testing boundaries and permenancy.

I wish when I was a kid going through this that people had treated me more like I was going through something, too. I got the distinct feeling that everyone else was entitled to anger and rule changes and frustration and power struggles and it was all "for my own good" and no one included ME in those decisions. Just because she is 5.5 doesn't mean she doesn't deserve to be spoken to like an equal participant in the restructuring of her family...I'm just saying.

If her mother isn't going to budge, maybe you and her father should be the bigger people and try.

[Phoenix~Mama]

Because honestly she isn't emotionally mature enough to hold a conversation like a 10 year old. I'm not saying this to be mean or anything, it's a fact and it's totally okay.

I don't think we should just allow DSD to watch shows that we feel are totally inappropriate and make us uncomfortable in our home just because her Mom lets her. DSD doesn't fully understand the shows and isn't developmentally ready to pick up the lesson in the show... instead she picks up the negative. Like last year she started calling classmates losers because she heard it said on Hannah Montana. Her Mom grounded her from the show for a week because of it and asked us to honor the punishment during her time at our house. We told that would be easy since we don't allow her to watch the show anyway for this very reason.

We have tried the whole modeling, part of a big sister's job bit in regards to several behavior issues... she does the same things anyway.

As far as the computer. The only computer in the house at the moment is my computer. Some of my work is done on the computer and it's an expensive piece of equipment. I have a hard time allowing my H use my computer as he isn't very computer savvy. I'm sorry, but this is a rule I will not budge on. I will not let children go play with an expensive peice of equipment. My plan is to try to save up for a cheaper system for the kids when they are bit older and have shown respect for toys in general. DSD bashes toys around and doesn't care if they get broken, so sorry not letting her near my computer.

DSD does have a V-Tech game system with educational games, so that I think is a good compromise as far as still have games to play on a screen.

[Super~Single~Mama]

Can you maybe watch the shows WITH her? And then you can talk about the "message". Maybe that would be a constructive way of her getting a "treat". And maybe she can choose one show for the time she's with you (instead of watching all of them)?

I totally understand that they are not age-appropriate for her, but all she's hearing is no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It would be frustrating for anyone, and I would really encourage you to find a way to let her choose something, or for you to say "Yes!" to an activity that she wants to do/enjoys without compromising your parenting style, or only compromising a little bit.

I understand the computer issue though - and I agree with you!

[Smithie]

"Consistency is KEY with children..."

Indeed it is. And one kind of consistency that a child (blended family or not) can internalize is that whining/lying/mouthiness is tolerated by one caregiver, while another caregiver insists on mutual respect and consideration.

If you love a child in an unselfish way, then you will guide that child in habits of behavior that will make them socially successful. One adult in a child's life may set low standards for them, but that shouldn't meant that all the others scramble to get on board with the permissiveness.

But really, JsMa, I think a lot of this is grating on your because of the generally high levels of tension and stress in your household. All the behaviors you describe are developmentally normal, and if you were happy and at peace I suspect that you wouldn't be deeply worried about them, even though you'd be constantly working to help your DSD develop better habits. My almost-6 year old does many of the things you listed, and while I don't lower my expectations I also find it pretty easy to shrug off the daily frustrations from the endless litany of correction.