Our neighbors, mixed European/American couple, have a 3 year old daughter.
My SO and I refer to her as “the beast”.
This child screams her lungs out in the backyard at every opportunity, we think just to hear her voice.
Any time we try to have a conversation with the parents, and when the attention is not going her way, she starts to whine, to whimper and then scream. The parents immediately focus all attention on her. It works every time for her.
When they come to visit, “the beast” stands on our furniture with her shoes on, asks for water (which she will then not drink), demands to watch a DVD (which she will then ingnore) and wants chocolate/ice cream/etc. which she then takes one bite and leaves. She was just here with the mother to see our Christmas decorations, grabbed one of the ornaments which she grabbed off the tree and dropped it. It didn’t break, but the mother didn’t say a word.
We also notice that when she is throwing her usual tantrum, once the parents pick her up, she looks directly at us with that little grin that says, “see! It works.”
Are we reading too much into this, or is this how 3 year old kids act.
Maybe we are “old farts”, but I am sure if I had ever tried an antic like that, my parents would have read me the riot act - even at age 3.
So, your verdict - brat child or typical 3 year old?
Sounds like a brat to me, but then again, I despise bratty children, well, all children in general, so my opinion may be biased.
I agree, if I had acted like that as a child I would have punished. harshly.
That’s what we thought…I don’t suppose you have a suggestion as to how to mention this to the parents, or is that an impossible task without alienating them?
(and Geogeek…good to hear from ya…drop me an email sometime…lost yours. And you are right, my parents never put up with that, and they had 3 boys. That’s why I was wondering if this was just a phase girls go through at that age that was different than boys growing up.)
What Abbie said. I’d also add that it’s normal for a three-year-old to try to be the center of attention at all times. It’s the parents’ job to make sure they don’t get to be, without making the child feel ignored or unwanted.
As to how to address it without alienating them… if you find out, please share your discovery with the rest of us!
Heh. Just go outside next summer and stick your arm in a beehive, it’ll be easier.
Seriously. You’re just gonna piss them off if you say anything. Especially if you don’t have kids of your own (or if your kids are grown, because don’t you know today’s kids are DIFFERENT?).
Chances are she’ll grow out of it, really. And it really might just be a phase. Most kids, mine included, go through short phases in which they act as if they’ve been raised by wolves.
As far as what to do when she’s at your place again, say no the first couple of times she asks for chocolate/DVDs etc. Something like “Why don’t we go (play in the traffic or other fun-filled activity) for 30 minutes, and then you may ask me again and we’ll see.” If she’s not really interested in watching a movie, she’ll forget. If she REALLY wants to watch one, chances are if she has to fight for it she’ll actually sit down and watch it: especially if you tell her “Okay, you can watch a DVD but if you don’t watch the *whole thing * the next time you come over you’ll have to find something else to do lemmepinchyourcutiewiddlecheekies.” Same goes for the snacks.
The first time she comes over and can’t watch a DVD, she’ll know you mean business. Weird thing is, she’ll adore you for it.
In my house the credo is “My house, my rules”. LilMiss used to have a friend that would come over and break things, steal, make a mess then refuse to pick up. I tried talking to the parent, but it wooshed over her head (“Well, she doesn’t do things like that at OUR house!”) The next time she came over she wanted to play with LilMiss’s PlayDoh. I said Nope. Why? Because the mess never gets picked up. Dolls? Sorry, after Barbie “lost” a leg they were put away. Can I have something to eat? Nope, your mom said you just had dinner. Basically, her only available option was to just sit on the couch. She quickly decided she didn’t want to come over anymore, leaving her mom to panic (Mom used her childs coming over as an excuse to hit the mall). After explaining VERY clearly why I treated her widdle monster that way- along with examples- Mom realized her baby wasn’t so precious.
I agree with Abbie- try to institute rules even with the parents there. It’s your house, not the kids playground.
Thank you. I thought about that today and I think if I direct my comments to her it might actually work.
But I have to tread on thin ice here…don’t want to piss off her parents as, well, they are the neighbors and it is easier to make nice than to have a cold war going on.
It is really a shame as they are nice people, but IMHO, really whipped by this kid.
Maybe it is a stereotype from me, but I know when I lived in Germany, many parents believed children should be allowed to “express themselves” without limits. It was a real philosophy on their part, and maybe we are just fuddy-duddy’s. Still…glad it is winter and we don’t have to be near this child, or hear her all day and night.
But you are right. It is our house and we can at least talk to this child and give some limits…but in the nicest of ways…
Brat. Definitely. Little Case will be three next April: he can be a boisterous handful and a noisy nuisance, but he absolutely knows the rules, especially at other people’s houses - he mostly chooses to break them at home, where only Missus Case and I can see how bad he REALLY is, but he knows they’re there.
Unfortunately, it takes a lot of hard work to instill them - saying “Please” and “Thank you”, TV only in the morning, sharing toys with other children, not calling the neighbours’ children “monsters”, “robots” and “chimpanzees” {in his private world, these are terms of approbation}… these have to be reinforced constantly, especially with two to three year olds, and from the behaviour of some kids and parents I’ve seen, a lot of toddlers would benefit from a firm “No” sometimes: as for how to broach this to other parents, though, don’t even go there…
In other parenting news, I fought my first lightsabre duel with Little Case today: the lightsabres were made from shiny silver and gold wrapping paper, with toilet-roll handles. It was a draw - I had the height and the reach, but once he got inside my guard he could hack away at my legs with impunity. Poor Missus Case - two boys on her hands.
I’ve got a toddler parenting book which is called “Discipline without shouting or spanking”. There would be many other similar books, but this particular one takes over 100 pages to explain its toddler parenting ideas. Its “temper tantrum” section is 4 pages long so I guess I can’t quote it all here.
I’ll just quote (mostly) the bold bits:
There are also sections on “Whining” and “Wanting their own way”.
So the bag of non-spanking/non-shouting strategies is quite complex. It can’t be summed up in a few sentences like "try time out, reason with them, etc."
So if you’re just trying a couple alternaties to spanking like time-out and that doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean that spanking is necessary, since you haven’t fully grasped the complex alternate approach. (which takes many dozens of pages to explain - I mean books about it are that long)
I’d recommend giving the parents a copy of:
“Discipline Without Shouting or Spanking: Practical Solutions to the Most Common Preschool Behavior Problems” by Jerry L. Wyckoff, Barbara C. Unell
“The Pocket Parent” by Gail Reichlin, Caroline Winkler
Check a site like amazon for similar books - that have high customer ratings.
Those books are against shouting and spanking and your neighbors perhaps are too…
Of course you could promote shouting and spanking but the parents mightn’t want to hear about it, and shouting and spanking (punishment) can be less effective than positive reinforcement and ignoring things - or at least people like the behaviorist B. F. Skinner thought so. (Same with the author of "How to Win Friends and Influence People) Of course, you’re dealing with a 3 year old here, who mightn’t be very rational, but the authors have had lots of experience in dealing with their own toddlers and other people’s toddlers.
There’s also
“Parenting the Strong-Willed Child, Revised and Updated Edition: The Clinically Proven Five-Week Program for Parents of Two- to Six-Year-Olds” by Rex Forehand, Nicholas Long
Basically if you search for one of this books on amazon, look at “Customers who bought this book also bought:” and then check out the customer reviews for that book (there may be dozens of reviews…)
Perhaps a good idea would be to get at least one of these and just say you’d like them to borrow that book and have a look at it because you think it could help stop their child screaming so much so that their child would be more considerate. You could tell them that if their toddler is screaming now maybe they’d keep on screaming as a teenager so they might want to reduce this screaming problem. (something like that - basically nothing too long-winded - it could be just said when you’re leaving or whatever)
Difficult to decide without knowing the child. Possibly, neither.
Perhaps the parenting is weak, unthinking, and inconsistent, as in your examples, but the child may also have an emotional or developmental disability that causes her to be far more difficult to handle than average children. This is a bad combination, as I have seen in many instances. However, calling the child a “brat” and belittling the parents’ abilities does no one any good, except perhaps the person doing the judging might feel a bit better about themselves. No two children are alike and some kids just don’t respond in a “normal” way to “These are the rules and the consequences are harsh.” As in… “I would’ve never dreamed of doing that, my Mom would’ve killed me”. Well, some rare kids dream of, and actually do, some pretty outrageous things, even if the punishments are draconian and consistent. It takes a courageous and extraordinary person to parent this type of child. Perhaps your neighbor child is one of these.
As a social worker for families with small children, I’m pretty much called in to suggest parenting approaches, so people generally don’t get offended. As for a neighbor making suggestions, I just don’t know how you’d do it. People definitely get touchy and defensive about their parenting, especially if someone alludes their child is a “brat”. Others have given good ideas about getting the message across subtly, such as modeling consistency in front of the parents, who may actually get the hint without losing face. And, as JohnClay pointed out, the issue is really quite complicated, especially with a child whose temperament may be difficult. Simplistic answers work for those children in the average zone but other kids may require more ingenuity.
In my own family, I try to show consistency to my teenage niece and nephew, who don’t listen to their parents much at all. It’s actually easier to do with other people’s kids than with my own. My family called me the Gestapo during a family gathering because when Nephew (who actually is a lovely child - and happens to have the disability called Autism - but I wasn’t up to tolerating any shit that day) kept saying “I’ll do it in a minute” to his Dad who asked him to move over so others could see the TV, I shut off the TV and said, “I’ll turn it back on after you move.” He moved, and that incident made me the Gestapo. :rolleyes: (it was pretty funny actually) But, I think my brother may have thought it was all right, and it provided an example of dealing with Nephew differently than allowing him to endlessly negotiate.
They have taught her this behaviour by responding when she wants them to.
When she’s in your house, your rules apply. If the neighbour don’t like it, perhaps they should invite you to their house. You do not have to tolerate this. Refuse any requests she may have - she’ll just have to sit. It is not up to you to entertain her and if she can’t sit quietly and amuse herself, she’s got more problems than this one. If she screams, suggest they take her home because you have a difficulty listening to it. You are allowed to do this. It’s unfortunate, but sometimes when people have children, they expect the rest of the world to bow to them. It’s just not the way it is.
I have a neighbour with three little ones…they come in my yard all the time when I’m outside: I have outlined the rules clearly (I have a small pond and it was necessary). I have send them home twice in four years - they were not listening and, since it’s my yard, they go home. And it’s instant. I do not yell but speak clearly: “you cannot yell in my yard - I don’t like it and if you want to keep yelling, go home.” Sometimes they actually do go home and sometimes they stop and stay but at least they have the choice.
Definitely brat. Some friends of my parents had this problem. So one day they let the child have the tantrum and ignored it, continuing to talk to their guests. After a while the child stopped and plaintively said, “You’re supposed to be paying attention to me.”
I hate to call a three-year-old kid a brat, when it’s most probable that she’s an ordinary child who has never been given the guidance she needs. The poor kid has been trained to do this in order to get attention; this is what works for her, and she doesn’t know anything else. She can’t be expected to think of politeness and consideration for others when no one has ever asked her to–the first thing any child tries is screaming, and it works great for her, so there she sticks.
All children are born programmed to think of themselves first and only. Civilization has to be drummed into us for years, and this little girl is missing out. If the parents don’t start doing something about it pretty soon, she’ll grow up wondering why she doesn’t have many friends. Sadly, they probably won’t change, and she’ll spend the rest of her life wondering why she’s unhappy and why she can’t get a good job–while they wonder why their kid is so rotten and selfish. They probably don’t know any better either.
Maybe you could leave a copy of a parenting book on their front doorstep for Christmas…or hey, how’bout Miss Manners guide to raising perfect children?
My favorite trick when a child is ransacking my home is to grasp them firmly by the upper arm, get down close to their face, and (while squeezing g-e-n-t-l-y on the arm) whisper, “Sweety, please don’t do that-- I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
