Four Year Old FAIL
Dec. 7th, 2010 07:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleaI am at my wits' end with this Dillo child. We had a terrible night last night, with deliberate misbehavior and the customary fight to brush teeth and spanking and yelling and fighting. He can cry for 45 minutes, then start laughing at a joke as if he'd never been crying, which makes me concerned that he is fake-crying for 45 minutes. We fight - to the point of having to hold him down and force the toothbrush in - over dental hygiene almost every night. He is spanked most days. It has no effect on him and frankly doesn't make me feel much better either.
We need to change something but I don't know what. What seems to keep him fairly even keel is to pay constant attention to him when we are at home. Like, constant. Since we have another child, who needs intensive homework help every night, and we need to do things like cook meals and clean up after them and so forth, we don't manage this perfectly, and then he starts to throw things and break them, act up, and then I get mad and ignore him because I can't deal and we are in the downward spiral.
Every day he doesn't want to go to school and we are planning to send him to the YMCA Dec. 20-22 (where he has never done camp but has had swimming lessons, and I think for the Xmas camp they keep the ages together so Casper would be with him mostly.) He had already said he doesn't want to do that, and got so upset when Casper was trying to tell him it is fun that we had to direct the conversation elsewhere. I could take the whole week off before Christmas, but I can't take the whole summer off, and this is in a way a trial run for summer camp at the YMCA. I was planning to take the forms in today but I am torn now. But, as mr. flea put it, "Do you really want to stay home with him two weeks in a row?" (since I am going to be home with the kids the week of Dec. 27).
We are meeting with his teacher in a routine conference this morning but she's not the kind of teacher who will be much help in terms of dealing with him - she is old-school, not a modern philosophy of parenting type. In general he is doing well with the content at school - they think he is clever - and fine with the social part (which is the real work at this age). He has stopped having accidents for the most part and we never have a bad report of his behavior. He just acts up at home. And knows how to push my buttons BIG TIME.
We need to change something but I don't know what. What seems to keep him fairly even keel is to pay constant attention to him when we are at home. Like, constant. Since we have another child, who needs intensive homework help every night, and we need to do things like cook meals and clean up after them and so forth, we don't manage this perfectly, and then he starts to throw things and break them, act up, and then I get mad and ignore him because I can't deal and we are in the downward spiral.
Every day he doesn't want to go to school and we are planning to send him to the YMCA Dec. 20-22 (where he has never done camp but has had swimming lessons, and I think for the Xmas camp they keep the ages together so Casper would be with him mostly.) He had already said he doesn't want to do that, and got so upset when Casper was trying to tell him it is fun that we had to direct the conversation elsewhere. I could take the whole week off before Christmas, but I can't take the whole summer off, and this is in a way a trial run for summer camp at the YMCA. I was planning to take the forms in today but I am torn now. But, as mr. flea put it, "Do you really want to stay home with him two weeks in a row?" (since I am going to be home with the kids the week of Dec. 27).
We are meeting with his teacher in a routine conference this morning but she's not the kind of teacher who will be much help in terms of dealing with him - she is old-school, not a modern philosophy of parenting type. In general he is doing well with the content at school - they think he is clever - and fine with the social part (which is the real work at this age). He has stopped having accidents for the most part and we never have a bad report of his behavior. He just acts up at home. And knows how to push my buttons BIG TIME.