Great, I'm That Parent with That Kid

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My kid, the Medium One, is four and a half. She is a joy and amazing and the best kid in the world and super fun to be around – except that she melts down a lot, more than any other four-year-old I know, and with different triggers than other four-year-olds I know. She is a perfectionist, and when she can’t fix something so that it is the way she wants, she goes ballistic, crying and screaming and sometimes even kicking.

I swear my husband and I have both tried and tried to help her with this. We point out that sometimes it’s good to have things not the way she planned, sometimes things turn out differently or better! Sometimes you can work around it to make something more interesting! We’ve worked on calming down so that we can do things that actually help the problem, like asking an adult for help, or figuring out a plan. I’ve modeled getting briefly upset about things going wrong and then saying, “Okay, now I need to figure out how to fix it!” (If she can quickly fix whatever it is, she doesn’t melt down. It’s when she can’t fix it immediately that she dissolves.)

She has also inherited my disposition to get really upset about stupid trivial things when I’m hungry, which just exacerbates the entire thing.

She just started a new preschool, which I thought was going well. Two weeks into the year, I was asked to meet with the teacher about her meltdowns. We talked about things we were trying at home, things they were trying at school, the food thing, etc.

I thought things were going better. It’s now been a little more than a month. I just got an email from her teacher tonight asking if both her dad and I could meet with the teacher and the freaking director of the preschool. ARGH. I mean, it was a really nice email and it didn’t really say they meant to kick her out or anything, it was more that she said she wanted to work together with us to address her issues.

But yes. I am That Parent. With That Kid. The one who is in so much trouble in the first month of school that both my husband and I have to effectively meet with the principal and a small part of me is worried that they might kick her out. Yay.

(Heh. Years ago, when the Medium One was a Little One, and I was a paranoid relatively-new parent, I posted a thread on the Dope about freaking out (mostly it was my parents who were freaking out, but they infected me too) about a kid who bit my kid. My kid has never bit another kid literally, but I’m putting this down as karma for that incident – now I get to see what it’s like from the other side! :slight_smile: )

I am actually abjectly grateful that we are doing this now and not, like her old preschool, letting it go on for months (yes, literally months) before they even bothered mentioning it to me. This would, in fact, be part of the reason we changed preschools.

2

I was THAT kid. I was never violent towards others, but I would get so incredibly frustrated if I couldn’t make something just exactly right. I used to agonize over things, thinking if I couldn’t get things just so, everything was irrevocably ruined. It was bad when I was little; it was much worse when I was a teenager. Being a teenager is hard, but being a teenager and a perfectionist is particularly heinous. I’m now in my forties, and things are much better. I still, regrettably, have occasional meltdowns though, but now they only manifest as tears and mental recriminations. I get frustrated by circumstances I can’t control and get angry with myself for not being in control. When I was little, my mom’s response to a meltdown was to spank me send me to my room. When I got older, I would preemptively go into my room before a meltdown and physically and mentally berate myself until I cried myself to sleep. I’ve never had mental health counseling, but I have always wondered if it would have helped.

I’m sorry your daughter is going through this and wish your whole family the strength and patience to deal with this.

3

Wow, Amberlei, thank you for sharing your experiences and I’m sorry for them – it sounds very frustrating for you. And I never thought about adolescence! … that’s going to be fun. I’m going to hope we can give her at least some coping strategies before then.

We don’t spank her (my mom used to spank me when I cried, and I never really saw the point in that – thanks mom, now I’m crying harder??) or otherwise discipline her for crying (now, the kicking, that gets disciplined), but we do send her to her room or to the “calm-down chair” under the hypothesis that she does need to calm down before she can interact again in society. I dunno. Maybe this isn’t the right way to do it.

4

I’m sure the school will have some great ideas on how to help your daughter. She just needs a little extra attention. Plus you have no idea how many meetings the other parents have had, or will have.

So relax.

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My daughter was that kid. Really not at all in control of her emotions, she had tantrums and lost it more frequently than most. She gets it from me - I’m 47 and still can lose it.

For her (and for me) it gets less frequent with age as you learn to control your emotions and find places to express them (screaming in the car) that are more socially appropriate. She’s fifteen now, enjoys her recreational outrage, can still be difficult and highly strung, but really is quite a normal person - and her highly strung and recreational outrage has found outlet in social justice work - you can be outraged about the treatment of transgendered kids in high school. That’s easy, appropriate and actually a positive use of all that emotional energy.

(And did I warn you about the biting karma? - the parents who complain about biters will someday wonder if their own children need an exorcist. I also believe in potty training karma - if you EVER claim credit for your first child’s prodigal potty training, you will end up with a four year old in diapers who thinks he’s the Picasso of shit when it comes to your walls.)

6

play some hard physical game, like Pick-up sticks or Jenga, where even the winner reaches a failure point. show when you experience failure yourself it is no big deal. the trying is the success.

continue exhibiting failure and resolution. though be clear that accepting failure does not become an excuse for not trying (the other extreme). let her see a struggle to succeed and being pleased at the attempt. this might also be show for short and long term projects (like a craft where it will take time over days succeed).

7

Not saying it is the same with your kid but something similar was a symptom of my daughter’s Asperger like difficulties. Her perfectionism and frustration would burst out in school causing outbursts and tantrums. She’s in 8th grade now and it had only been in the last few years that she has been able to use her coping mechanisms to keep that from happening. Except with her big sister.

8

Yep, my autistic daughter does the same, but one not terribly abnormal behavior does not a disorder make.

When it gets really frustrating, it helps to remember that by the time she’s 20, or 30, or whatever, there’s no WAY she’ll still be doing this. So you can remind yourself that you already know that this is a temporary phase and will end eventually. It’s just a matter of getting her there.

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Ahahahaha, Dangerosa, you probably did warn me at the time. I certainly knew I was courting fate :slight_smile: Well, here it is!

I do try to model getting frustrated and getting past getting frustrated and coming up with plans to fix whatever the problem is. (I don’t want her thinking that one shouldn’t get upset or shouldn’t get frustrated, because obviously people do, and I want it to be okay for her to have emotions. Just… how can she not have so many of them? :slight_smile: Okay, that sounded terrible.)

She actually does have a lot of Asperger-like qualities – delayed social development, seems to treat other kids as inexplicable little forces of nature in general, tries to do a lot of things by rote, but at the same time surprisingly good mathematical skills (although she was tested and they said she was normal) – so maybe this is just another thing I chalk down to that?

It’s nice to know that other people have had these problems and have gotten past it. Thank you.

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If it’s concerning you, get her tested. If you get a diagnosis, you’ll have more tools to help her adapt.

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I did, and they said she was not autistic.

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Cool. Nice to have that settled, then. Moving on…

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You are pretty much describing my daughter’s clone. She never has had a diagnosis of Asperger’s or Autism. It was more like she’s got some of this and a little of that. So they basically just put her down as having unspecified special needs. Not that I am saying your daughter is the same. 4.5 is a bit young to be concluding anything.

Sometimes it seems that the spectrum is broad enough to include just about all of us.

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I relate only too well to Raspberry Hunter- my son is wonderful, but he was kicked out of a private kindergarten, and after he completed 1st grade at another school, we were told he wouldn’t be welcomed back the next year.

SOME things will definitely get better- but you’re likely to encounter new problems, too (we sure have).

The only thing I can tell you is, don’t take it personally.

That sounds obvious, but believe me, I’ve spent years constantly beating myself up for not being able to control a little kid! It’s hard not to take every incident as a personal affront. No matter what’s happening, try to remember that it’s probably not her fault and it’s definitely not YOUR fault.

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yeeees, this is my daughter! It’s like, I can totally understand why they don’t diagnose her with something specific, as for the most part she seems to hit all her milestones, is reassuringly verbal, etc., so she doesn’t really fall into an autistic or Asperger category, not really. But all her caregivers (and I, when I’m around other kids her own age) have noticed something is… just slightly… off about her compared to other kids her age.

I… I needed to hear that. A lot. I don’t think it’s her fault at all – sometimes she is able to control herself, and sometimes I can see her try and just totally fail, and I know she really is trying – she’s a good kid, a really good kid, she tries really hard to do what we ask of her, I feel lucky that she’s my child.

But your post made me realize that I beat myself up a lot. If I only tried the right parenting/teaching technique, or said the right words, or maybe I said something without realizing it to her that made her think she needed to be a perfectionist… and rationally I know it’s silly to think this way, especially given that we’re on the third caregiver and none of them have apparently had lasting success either, but still. (I think I also worry people will judge me – what’s wrong with her parenting that she can’t get her kid to behave?)

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Simple. Get her a SDMB account and a direct link to The Pit. She’s in her most creative years, I look forward to her first post :slight_smile:

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She is probably too advanced for this board :smiley:
Anyway raspberry hunter I can relate, my son is almost 4 and a half and autistic(not saying your daughter is) and he used to have horrible frustration meltdowns.

Thing I found helpful was to expose him to frustrating situations, but not let him get totally overwhelmed. He really has improved through this, like he can now wait in line at his favorite fast food place without throwing himself limp on the floor.

Basically I just exposed him to increasing amounts of mild frustration, and it has built up I guess a tolerance over time.

18

You’re probably already doing it, but make sure you let her know that you know she’s trying, and you’re proud of her for it. It’s hard enough failing at something you’re really trying at–feeling like nobody knows or cares about the effort you’re putting in just amplifies that exponentially.

19

I ran across this article today. Maybe it would help her?

http://www.mobiledia.com/news/188186.html

Good luck.

20

I’m not a parent, but I was a young female perfectionist. Modeling problem-solving is great. Little girls tend to emulate their mothers unconsciously (at least I did, looking back).

When I think of one thing my parents never did for me that may have helped (may not apply to you at all, please don’t take offense if so) was to praise effort rather than results. For example, go out of your way to compliment how hard and long she worked on coloring, rather than saying how beautiful the picture is. Tell her how proud you are that she spent 15 straight minutes working on insert academic activity, rather than telling her she’s so smart for getting the right answers. Acknowledge that her half hour of piano practicing shows how persistent she is, rather than praising how good the music is starting to sound.

Just a suggestion, hope I don’t come off as condescending.