Quote:
Originally Posted by
CarrieMF 
It is typical 4yo behaviour to want you to colour things the way they want it to be coloured. The problem is we aren't mind readers. It does not sound to me like he needs an evaluation. It sounds like he is crying for your attention & he's found that doing certain things gets him attention, even if it is negative attention from you.
Stop giving up when he is telling you what to colour or that you are doing things the wrong way. being near him is not the same as doing the activity with him. When you are doing something with him, treat him like a little person & ask him how you should do xyz instead of doing it the way you think it should be done. Ask him what he thinks you should do. give him some control & it will overlap into him not needing to take control in other things.
This. Have you tried, over an extended period, to give him "good attention" and to not give him "bad attention"? What I mean is he plans to do something over a long period and does it does not sound like an impulse control problem to me. Sounds like screaming for attention, whatever attention I can get, because new baby is around. Example: He does something drastic like ruin the car. Instead of getting mad, you give no attention. You are totally neutral. You messed up the car, here you clean it up. He pretends he can't clean it. You show him once, you tell him to do it, and you go about what you were doing. But then when he does something positive, you give attention. Wow, that was so nice of you to share XYZ with your baby sister. You were so gentle. Thank you.... He colors a picture and says you should as well. So you do it, and also say what great lines or colors he chose or whatever. Point is if he gets no drastic feedback for the negative stuff, but gets lots for the positive, he might try the positive route more often. And good luck it is so hard when you have a baby and a small child at the same time. Hard to juggle. It does get better though!
so I can't say painting our car would be completely out of the question.
) because she wanted to turn her bed into a fort (and apparently she also wanted bangs). I was shocked because she'd never before done anything destructive at all. It happens! 
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