Suggestions for delayed consequences for 3 yo?
My 3 year old DD is having trouble listening in preschool. Specifically, she has trouble staying seated with the group during circle time and does not listen when her teacher reminds her to return to the group (she plays somewhere else in the room on her own). She also has trouble staying with her class when they move from room to room throughout the school and has a tendency to wander away from them so she can go look into the other rooms at "the babies sleeping." I have agreed with her teacher that she will get a treat/reward when she has a good day and a consequence when she has a bad day, but I'm having a hard time finding a consequence that works. Timeouts don't really seem to work with her - and we use them more as a cooling down period than a consequence. I have been taking away a toy or three, trying to take her favorites, but she seems to be unaffected; it's like out of sight, out of mind and she forgets they are put away. In fact, today, she offered me more toys to put away in my closet! Any suggestions for a consequence that might hit home? The only other thing I can think of is to take away her lovies at bedtime, but I am really not comfortable doing that since I think she really needs those comfort items to sleep.
I do want to add that when she has a good day we make a huge deal of it - lots of hugs and kisses and praise, a reward of some kind, we call Daddy at work and call her grandmother to tell her all about how good she was. If she ever has a whole week of good days I will reward her with something big like a special trip to lunch with Mommy or some sort of shopping or whatever.
Re: Suggestions for delayed consequences for 3 yo?
Does she ever watch cartoons? Taking my DD's evening toon away is like torture for her.
Ds mostly has a bad day when he's tired or been off schedule. If he's been disobedient at school (ie. hitting, pushing, not being a good listener) then he gets "on yellow" at school. If he gets on yellow at school, we come home and he's not allowed to play with any toys. He is allowed to sit quietly and read while I make dinner. We eat dinner as a family and then he goes directly to the bath (we remove all bath toys) and then goes to bed without us reading him a book prior to bed. This works well because he HATES not being able to play when we come home and he HATES when we don't read to him before bed.
We don't do any of this in anger, it's more of a "You must be tired since you weren't able to concentrate and be a good listener today. Because of that, we will read quietly when you get home and go to bed early to allow you to catch up on your rest and have a better day tomorrow". He usually whines and melts down on the way home (more evidence he needs rest) and then complies when we get there.
At school, his teachers instituted a "Treasure Box" and asked the parents to contribute. We all brought some trinkets (bouncy balls, hair clips, plastic cars, sticky frogs, crazy straws, plastic animals, etc) from like the dollar store or the party favor section at walmart. They put them in the treasure box and if the kids stay on green all day, they get to pick a treasure each day. They LOVE getting to shop at the treasure box. He loves those junky toys and loves being able to come home and show his dad what he earned that day. It's been a great positive reinforcement of good behavoir.
One thing you should consider is that she might not be ready for preschool. If she continues like this for a couple more weeks i would consider pulling her out and starting again next spring or fall.
I agree with this. I'm not sure this warrants something as serious as taking a toy away or a timeout, especially since this is developmentally understandable.
However, in general I could have written what you did about timeouts not working, taking toys away (he also offers more of them to me!), etc. But, just lately we HAVE been taking away his favorite bedtime comfort stuffed animals. It really is the only thing that seems to faze him at all and make him think about his actions. I will be honest--the first time was pretty tough. He cried for a long time about how sad he was, etc. and we reminded him that if he had made a better choice (his was for hitting his sister), he would have them at bedtime. Once he got in bed, he was fine and seemed to understand a bit more the gravity of it. We have done it a few times since. It seems to be losing its effectiveness a bit now (he'll just grab another stuffed animal and be fine), but the threat of taking them away seems to help and bit and stop him from the bad behavior (again, usually hurting his sister).
ditto spenjamins, I'd have a hard time discipling a 3 yo for wandering off/not sitting in circle time regardless, but doing it HOURS later seems even more useless. Now if she was doing something genuinely dangerous or hurtful, I could see taking a harder line, but seriously. .. . she's 3, she has 5 minute attention span.
I think the teacher needs to adjust her expectations especially for a kid just starting school.
3yr old are too young for delayed consequences. My son has some behavior issues due to autism, we have a social worker come to the house for an hour each week to help me with his behavior issues. This is one thing she talks about that she sees teachers do a lot at the school age level and it doesn't work because even at 5-6 yrs old even normal kids are ready for such a delayed consequence for anything. I don't believe these are issues the preschool should be expecting YOU to fix as the parent who isn't there, these are issues that THEY should be fixing then and there. That is really what preschool is about, learning to be part of the group, play with peers, things like that. I would probably look for a different program if it were my child.
One of my twins was distracting other kids during circle time. The teacher gave him a book to read and that seemed to help that day. We chatted about the situation and now, if he is being distracting, he sits next to circle time, at a table and reads a book. He has also been moved to the back row so if he moves around or lays down, the other kids don't notice. He is one of the youngest one in his classroom and this is their first time in a structured environment so I'm not surprised he was resistant at first!