Need advice dealing with this...

amother

Fri, Aug 29 2014, 1:10 am

I don't know if this is normal 3 1/2 -year-old behavior or if we're having a parenting problem or a deeper emotional regulation problem (flipping out easily and then trouble returning to normal)...

I think example will be the best illustration - what should I have done differently here:
DD was GREAT all morning. I told her that we were going to have a peaceful morning at home because Mommy had lots of work to do (I don't usually even try this, but I had been doing a lot of family time, we took a big trip yesterday, and I was drowning behind in work) and then if everyone behaves we can go on an outing in the afternoon. She was really, really good. I did not totally neglect the kids while I worked, it was mostly mindless housework so I set them up with activities and was verbally responsive even if not very hands-on. Lots of positive compliments all day, they were really much better than I'd even dared to hope, did some nice peaceful coloring/crafts, nice peaceful playing with dolls, nice peaceful lunch eating!!! So everyone was relaxed and at peace and had a filling nutritious lunch and plenty of drinks, and it wasn't very late in the day (2:30). Seems to me like all the ingredients for a successful outing.

So I said (as usual, this has been our rule forever) that everyone who wears panties has to go to the bathroom before we leave.
She said (also typical) she doesn't need to.
I said (routine line, same thing every time) Well, just sit on the toilet for a minute, it's OK if nothing comes.
She said "My tummy says it doesn't have to make. It's telling the truth." (we have been having some truth issues also lately...)
I said (we've had conversations about this before) Our rule is to go try just in case. Mommy is telling you to go sit, you need to sit for ONE MINUTE, and then even if nothing comes we will go out.
She started to scream. It seemed to me at first it was just screaming out of emotional upset or whatever, I made some attempt to help her calm down and move on, but then she started a different type of screaming that was clearly yelling AT me - not a crying type of scream.
I, probably too rashly at that point, said no way am I taking an outing with someone who screams at me like that.
So she screamed again, louder.
So I said we're staying home and started to un-pack the snacks and things I had put together for the outing.
She promptly fell apart, frantically "we have to go! we have to go!" Now partly this is having difficulty accepting consequences and I should really have just let her be miserable in the hope she'd learn, but she also tends to be a little anxious and not so flexible, she gets upset by sudden changes in plans. Also, I've found in the past that as much as I want her to learn to accept consequences, when she reaches that level of hysteria, NO learning takes place - she just gets more and more hysterical and needs help calming down and by the time it's over she has no recollection of what started it and only remembers the trauma. So I never know what to do at this point! I am not a softie who doesn't know how to tough out a tantrum, but this feels different than tantrum (tantrum was perhaps the screaming she was doing before, about the bathroom) it's more of a complete collapse/meltdown.
Through her screaming and crying somewhere in there she actually went to the bathroom and came back out crying about how now we need to go, she went to the bathroom.
I want her to learn that she has to listen to what I tell her to do the first time, not only after a consequence has already been applied. She does this a lot, doesn't respond to the initial warning but then when it seems a consequence is imminent she says "but NOW I'll listen!" When we're not in middle of a hysterical meltdown I usually say too late, you were supposed to listen when I warned you (THEN she has a meltdown. SIGH.) So my gut instinct is to tell her too bad, too late. Instead I appealed to DH, who had come home early.
DH said she needs to calm down and apologize for screaming at me and then we could revoke the punishment, which in retrospect I realized was too harsh especially when she was looking forward to the outing while being good all morning.
At first she was stubborn. So I said OK, I am done with this, I'm going to the kitchen and started puttering around. She followed me, I ignored her for a couple of minutes, and then she said she had a secret and whispered in my ear "I'm sorry for screaming, Mommy."
I reported as such to DH and we decided to go ahead with the outing. We talked before setting out about how we are going to choose to be happy and pleasant, talk nicely without screaming, etc.

The outing was a disaster. Several times in the car I threatened to turn around and go home, and at one point I pulled over to the curb. There was more rudeness (kvetching/shouting demands instead of asking nicely even when reminded/warned), crying when told she could only have a snack after asking politely (like the bathroom, this has been standard policy for years. Why the sudden falling apart? Nobody even said you can't have a snack, only that you need to ask nicely) and then instead of calming down and asking politely she grabbed the snack of the child sitting next to her (that's when I pulled over to the side and she got the message and gave it back, sullenly)
I should have gone home right then but still, it seemed such a shame to turn what started as a nice day with promise of an outing into such a grumpy day.

So we told them the deal is that we will continue to our destination and stay for 10 minutes (which I translated as "a very short time" for those who might not understand minutes) and then we would decide, if everyone was behaving and not grabbing or pushing or yelling or crying or anything, then we would stay for a little longer, and so on. I figured that was a more proactive approach than saying "we'll have to leave if anyone misbehaves," doing it in small increments by default.
She was still super touchy but we were very careful not wanting to trigger her, trying to keep things positive, and everyone had a pretty nice time. Near what was going to be the end anyway, I had turned my back on this DD for a minute and a stranger kid told me that she pushed a smaller kid off of what she was sitting on. I was mortified. I said it was time to leave (which it was anyway) and felt bad that DD would think (accurately) that I was accepting some stranger's tale-telling about her but it was time to go anyway. Of course she had quite the fit about this too.

So now I'm a total bundle of doubt and guilt. I probably should never have left home, but wouldn't that have been chaval for the kids who had spent the whole morning playing so nicely so I could work? And then there's the issue of meltdowns, firstly why is she reacting so strongly to what are normal, OLD household rules (like using the bathroom and saying please, why do those elicit such dramatic reactions?!) and secondly what do I do when she gets so hysterical over punishments? It's not that she just learns the lesson and then avoids punishment in the future. I have tried this in the past and it just doesn't work, she still ignores warnings and gets JUST as hysterical each time. She is definitely cognitively able to understand the idea, that's not it. I'm just not sure this is the right way to go if she's so sensitive to punishment, but on the other hand how else do you teach a child that listening to parents is mandatory when they don't want to?