screaming

[Mothernature]

Ok, dd does something that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention and my blood instantly boil. She will be crying about something and instead of just crying she screams. I really feel like she is trying to call as much attention to herself as possible. She even does this at home when it's just me and her though. Today it all started when her balloon burst. She screamed for 20 min. about it. It takes every ounce of self control I have to deal with this behavior gently. How would you deal?

[HippoMommy]

Find a happy place, find a happy place. . . . .

After I've tried "mirroring" -- articulating what I think DD is feeling, simply sitting with her and saying something soft like "yes, yes, you're upset, yes, you're angry." -- sometimes I'll say "Mommy needs a time out. I'll be back in two minutes." Then I set the timer for two minutes and walk into another room. If DD pursues me, still screaming, I'll gently tell her that I'm in time out, so I need to be alone until the timer goes off. Then I try to just relax. When the timer goes off, I go back to her and see if she's done screaming. Even if she's still screaming, that little break usually helps me get calmer.

BTW, I don't use time out with DD as a discipline. I don't put her in time out. I only use it on me -- "Mommy is in time out so that she can calm down."

I really try to be gentle and loving and non-rejecting with it.

[lauradoc]

I finally just started saying: It's okay to scream, but if you must scream, you must do it in your room so that the rest of us do not have to hear it so loudly. After several days, the screaming all but stopped.

I felt that the scream was starting to become a knee-jerk response to extreme frustration, and I wanted to work with her on expressing the frustration in words.

[annarosa]

I think it's OK to say to her ' it's okay to scream. I would like you to scream and then stop much sooner so that we can talk" or something like that.
you can set some limits without feeling you are over-controlling her or shutting her down or something.
20mins just sounds too much - isn't she exhausted afterwards.
how about suggesting kicking a ball around in the yard instead or having a pillow fight between two of her stuffed animals or something ??

[Denise K]

I definitely have used the "Mama needs a time out" thing with screaming. I have to lock the bedroom door, and it is a bummer, but I jsut get too flipped out to find any good responses.

But Ds doesn't scream as much these days--I think it helped to be given the choice a hundred times, "screaming hurts everyone's ears. You can be quieter, or you can scream in your room." And I think he has learned some other skills he just couldn't learn earlier.

I think Ds screamed/screams most when he doens't know how to put his feelings into words, whether he's angry or frustrated or sad or whatever--I used to try to get him to tel me what he felt, but that jsut made him more stressed out. He can't stand reflective listening, either... Talking about it when there wasn't screaming going on helped more--setting up the choices, or explaining the time-out thing. Hard to talk when it's happening, huh. Earplugs might be an option if you want to stay available but not get hurt or crazed by the noise.

Oh, and at one point it helped to have a "screaming bag"--I made a sort of nosebag out of thick towelly fabric, with handles, for him to scream his screams into. Whether that works, I thnk, depends on the purpose of the screaming.

Some days I jsut went outside with him, to give the noise more room.

Screaming is what forced me to acknowledge that I can't control my child, and sent me on a search for other options--so I guess it was a good thing....:LOL (Eh? What'd you say?)

[Mothernature]

Well, those are some good suggestions. I tried the scream in your room thing, but I still had my dander up and ended up bullying her into bed. I need to separate my emotions from this. That is soooo hard. In the moment I just want to rage out on her. I guess we just need to weather the storm and then discuss options to screaming. Maybe she could scream into a pillow if she truly can't get on top of it. I agree with the earplug thing.

[AndiG]

Lisa,
my four year old is a recovering screamer. Honestly she has my temperment. I still scream in my head at things all of the time. Occasionally I scream out loud (like when she slammed her brother's head in the bathroom door by accident last night)

We did stick with the screaming in your room thing and for us it did work. Took a solid week. We did end up having to physically carry her to her room a few times at first and now we simply ask her to go to her room. So she goes screaming up the stairs and sometimes she calms down and sometimes she doesn't. It doesn't mean she doesn't scream anymore. But sometimes if she's screaming and I say "you're going to have to go to your room if you don't stop that" and it seems to snap her out of it.
I don't mean to sound cold. I haven't ever left a child to CIO at bed time but on the other hand, socially I believe a four year old needs to understand the social repercussions of screeching in someone's face. (Case in point, she shreiked in her kindergarten class once or twice and has been told to cool it by the teacher, who didn't appreciate the screaming either)

how old is she?
Is it any consolation to tell you that she screams a LOT less now that she's four than she did at 3.5.??

[Denise K]

Originally Posted by Mothernature

I tried the scream in your room thing, but I still had my dander up and ended up bullying her into bed. I need to separate my emotions from this. That is soooo hard.

Oh, that could be me. I find that any "solution" to a conflict that relies on DS staying somewhere (time-outs, to your room) isn't a good idea for me because he won't stay on his own, and if I start forcing him physicaly I get more and more angry. Bad scene. So that solution is more useful now that he is older and will sometimes actually accept that plan. Usually he just quits screaming when I tell him his choices.

And separating your emotions..... yes yes yes. And yes, that IS sooooo hard. Becky Bailey's "Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline" (silly title, awesome book) is a great resource for exactly that kind of thing, if you're feeling drawn that way. That's what I'm using to figure out what I DO want to do with discipline, now that I have found out what doesn't work. A parenting-book-junkie friend says "This is a hundred times more useful than anything else I have read."