My mom (“Mimi”) is visiting for a while, and sometimes my daughter gets frustrated with her and starts yelling at her – “Mimi, DON’T SAY THAT!” “NO, DON’T DO THAT!” – especially when my mom tries to tell her to do something slightly odd without explaining why, or when she tries to do something for the Medium One that she already knows how to do, which is pretty often (my mom has some issues with this).
Now, I have nothing but sympathy for my daughter in terms of not wanting my mom to take over, but I agree with my mom that the yelling isn’t really acceptable either. (And my mom is usually pretty amenable when the Medium One explains herself – in a reasonable tone of voice – as to why she doesn’t want Mimi to do or say whatever.)
We’ve been trying to do natural consequences with her as a general discipline strategy, and for most things it works great, but I haven’t been able to figure out a natural consequence for yelling at her grandma. (If she yells at me, a natural consequence is that I refuse to help her or interact with her, but if grandma refuses to interact with her, it’s a win for her.)
She’s not quite mature enough socially/emotionally to consistently apply “Talk So Your Kids Will Listen” sorts of ideas – I’ve tried the “let’s talk about how we can fix this problem,” which does work sometimes but doesn’t seem to work for this particular problem.
(Part of the issue is that – I’ve posted about her before – she is just coming out of a period where she used to have a lot of problems with melting down, which turns out to be due to mild ASD; and so a) her communication, especially in regards to explaining things, is often a little disjointed in general; and b) we’re kind of used to her melting down, so I haven’t really been pushing discipline super-hard with regards to yelling in general, but this is more “normal” disrespect than the meltdowns and so should be addressed. Also exacerbating the issue may be – well, I have some evidence that (while I was gone) there may have been incidents where my mom snapped at her first, which in my opinion at least partially justifies the Medium One thinking it’s okay, but it hasn’t happened since I got back.)
I’ve got a loud 3 year old, and I think it’s not a consequences situation. I just remind her (again and again) that I can’t hear her when she yells, that it’s not polite and it hurts my ears. I also actually drop my voice a little so she needs to be quiet to hear me. Then when she repeats in a better tone of voice I do my best to acquiesce - teaching her that if she can be reasonable and polite she might get further. She’s still in caveman territory, just a rule she needs to learn. When she’s frustrated she’s too little to rationally think through consequences.
Is it the volume, or the words, that’s primarily the problem?
I can see a couple of ways you could go, depending on the answer to that. Like “stick a please on the front and you can be as loud as you like” - ‘PLEASE DON’T SAY THAT’/‘PLEASE DON’T DO THAT’. That sounds pretty unobjectionable to my ears, even from a 3 or 4 year old to her granny. And leaves her the ability to express the fact that she’s REALLY FRUSTRATED with whatever’s going on.
Or you could leave the words alone and try a ‘turn down the volume’ thing. Do you have any signals that you use? Volume knob, finger on lips, that sort of thing?
Basically it doesn’t sound like she’s all that far off a reasonable expression of her feelings. She’s using her words, she’s not calling anyone names - I think that has to count big plus points for a preschooler
Argh, I forgot to say, didn’t I? She just turned 5. So she’s nominally old enough to understand a lot more than a 3-year-old. Now, because of the ASD, she does often respond to emotional/social things approximately the way I’d expect a 4-year-old to respond (to the best of my knowledge).
I do like the idea of sticking “please” on it – my mom is WAY less likely to find it objectionable even if it’s at a raised volume.
It sounds as though you don’t really think the child is in the wrong, or at least that she has a good reason for behaving this way. Or am I misreading things here?
I may be old school, but rudeness is something that I think needs to be nipped in the bud. Because your child is on the autism spectrum, it may (or may not) be more difficult to explain why rudeness is not to be tolerated. But I would certainly explain (over and over, if necessary) that we don’t talk to people that way, we talk to people this way, et cetera. It may take a while, especially if yelling at Grandma has become a habit.
Another thought: is your child reacting to some sort of stress? Has yelling become an outlet to relieve that stress, or perhaps an attention-seeking behavior?
This (and also chaika’s comments). Don’t allow her to get used to yelling at people. It is not an acceptable mode of communication and won’t win her any friends during her life. It might be more difficult to make her understand, but consistency is key.
Yeah, part of the issue is that part of me thinks the Medium One is in the right
But! We have now talked about how yelling and rudeness should never be the first line of defense, and how we should always ask nicely first (and use “please,” as Aspidistra mentioned), and in general use our words and communicate what and why we want her to do/not do something. (This morning it was not brushing her hair, which I do gently and my mom does roughly.) This is hard for her to do herself at this point – she needs to be reminded and prompted – but she does understand, I think, that it gives better results.
I do tell her that yelling is okay if she’s tried other reasonable solutions, such as asking nicely, laying out her reasons, and finding another adult to back her up – because I don’t want her to grow up socialized to let people walk over her as many women do – but I’ve emphasized that this is a somewhat last resort.
(In general this is the tack I take for how she interacts with us and other kids, and for some reason I – and she – were just getting frazzled at applying it to my mom. So thanks Dopers for getting me back on track!)
