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Originally Posted by 4evermom  Personally, I found age 4 to be much more challenging than age 2, and I didn't have a new baby in the mix. My ds became much more independent in the sense of wanting to be in control of himself and what he did, not in the sense of wanting to do things by himself.
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My youngest turned 4 in October, and I'm experiencing the same thing with him. My big challenge with him is getting ready to go anywhere...he takes *forever*. At the same age my oldest (now 6) was getting ready pretty much by himself. It took a little prompting to keep him on task, and there were things he needed help with, but he basically did what he needed to do. DS4, however, is constantly dawdling. I remind him to get dressed, and come back to find him tumbling on the bed or playing with the water in the sink. I've been spending more time than I care to admit yelling at him (as well as taking things away, putting him in his room, etc.), and then this week it hit me that regardless of what I would like, he is just not going to be that focused at this time. I've resigned myself to having to spend more time keeping him on task. He hates for me to do things for him (i.e., dress him, etc.) so if I'm standing right there I'll say "here, put on your pants, or I'm going to put them on for you" (or whatever). If he doesn't respond in a few seconds, then I move to start doing them for him and he will usually do it then. It's a royal PITA, but things are a lot more calm. And I'm noticing that he is getting better, bit by bit, because he knows that's what he has to do, anyway (at least, that's my theory
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Another thing I've been doing is just calmly enforcing consequences. He will dawdle indefinitely over his dinner, so I started telling him "dinner is over when the big hand is on the 5". I give him warning reminders and he knows how to watch the clock. Once the time comes, I calmly take dinner away and if dessert is being served that night, he doesn't get any if he hasn't finished (by "finished" I mean "eaten a decent amount", I don't necessarily require that he clean his plate). I will also give him leeway if I can tell he's been making an honest effort and just didn't quite finish, so he knows it's not quite so much about the time, but the effort. He put up a big fuss about this at first, but I just calmly told him that dinner time was over and next time not to spend so much time playing with his fork (or whatever). Now I'm noticing that he still tends to dawdle some, but a reminder will put him back on task moreso than it had been. I'm relieved of the frustration of watching him waste time (well, to some extent I am...I'm still trying!) because I know that when the time is up, he's the one that deals with the consequences and I'm not going to be held hostage in the kitchen forever. And those consequences aren't me yelling and screaming, or taking away every toy he owns, or putting him in time out for 6 hours because I keep adding on more time, or whatever. (I've never *really* put one of my children in time out for 6 hours, but once when I was out of control and one of them wasn't listening, I kept adding time on until I got to some ridiculous point and realized that, duh, what I was doing wasn't working
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Regarding cleaning up toys: for a long time now, I will tell my boys, "if you don't want to clean it up, I'm happy to do it for you". They know that this means the toy will be going away for a while, as that's what happens when Mom cleans them up. I rarely have to clean up toys, but I did recently have to clean up Legos. They're currently sitting on a shelf in my bedroom.
I know the last thing you want right now with a new baby in the house is feeling like you have to spend more time enforcing things, but I've found that overall I spend less time, and the time I spend is more calm.
: working in a daycare, ive seen kids are a lot more capable than we think.
