Behavior Regression?

Melissa17

I have a 6 month old and knew when she was born my 3 year old may regress in some aspects of her behavior.  Those issues resolved and then she was back to my happy, cheerful and helpful child.

Fast forward to now- she is 3 1/2 and her sister is 6 months.  I feel as if we have hit behavior regression AGAIN.  She has meltdowns because we won't help her do things that she normally does by herself (and has been doing them for months by herself).  When DD2 starts crying and needs something, DD1 starts to cry (fake) because she wants the attention.

I try to do things with DD1 and spend time with her, but it is hard to find the time and then honestly, because she is acting so "wonderful" I don't want to spend time with just her.

Advice?  Words of encouragement?

I do stay home with the girls and DD1 is in preschool 2 half days a week.

AZ123

DS1 did the same thing about crying. He would resort to crying when we couldn't understand him or he wasn't getting his way. We quickly learned it was a behavior he could control and was seeking attention but in a negative way (we didn't want to reinforce it). I started working with him. I'd tell him to stop crying, talk slowly so I can understand. When I'd see the tears about to come, I'd stop, look him in the eye and say "Don't cry. Mommy just needs to understand. Take a deep breath and then tell me slowly what you want."

Crying because the baby is crying - haven't experienced that one but I would tell her she can go sit in time out until she can get a hold of herself. Yea, that's right, I'm a tough cookie when it comes to tears. They really can control it. If they start crying too much in time out, I'll tell him if he keeps crying he can't hear the buzzer go off the microwave telling him its time to come out of time out.

kmhunt11

Someone posted recently that their older child seemed to regress whenever the little one was hitting a milestone (crawling, walking, etc).  My LO will be here in 8.5 weeks- we'll see how she reacts!

Melissa17

kmhunt11:

Someone posted recently that their older child seemed to regress whenever the little one was hitting a milestone (crawling, walking, etc).  My LO will be here in 8.5 weeks- we'll see how she reacts!

Interesting - dd2 started crawling and we started her on solids.  

jsugrin

I think the help me stuff is pretty normal 3 stuff, my oldest just grew out of it and my youngest is just hitting it full stride (he alternates with mama has to do everything for me and I'm totally helpless, yay me).

I found that 6-10 or 11 months was our hardest time because baby was on the move and into #1's stuff.  #1 had just gotten used to #2 an the routine and then damn baby had to switch everything up on him. He was not happy that #2 was into all his stuff in a totally disruptive way, that he couldn't actually play with him at all and only wanted to destroy things. It was honestly pretty much a management thing until #2 was walking and able to be more interactive, more of a buddy and not just a little terror .

One thing I have to remind myself, and remind and remind is that when they are acting so awful and I want to sell them to the circus is when they need my positive attention, love and support more than any other time.  Sure there are times I hide in the bedroom as soon as DH walks in the door but most of the time I push through it and DS comes around and it's wonderful.

I will say that as soon as we started getting close to 4 my 3 year old terror seemed to change for the better every single day.  It's amazing how hard 3 is but luckily 4 really is so much better.