Unstable kindergartner - what to do?
DD is in Kindergarten and has always been a little on the emotional end (read drama queen). Lately it seems as though the smallest things crash her whole world. She will completely break down at things I think are so small.
Examples:
She dropped her tooth brush last night and completely lost it.
She will ask the same question over and over and hear the same "no" until I lose my temper and yell at her and then she will completely lose it.
She will crumple up on the ground in a little ball and bury her face. She will run back to her room and ball up in her bed and cry. She will cry if she spills something because she thinks she will get in trouble. Basically she overreacts on everything and it is so difficult to console her.
We have attempted to tell her that it is ok and normal to mess up sometimes and we try to help her fix whatever she has done wrong. Of course at times we have yelled at her and overreacted.
DH thinks she does this mainly as an act to get pity, which of course it breaks my heart and she knows it, but I stick to my guns about punishments and discipline. I just don't know what to do. I want to teach her a healthy way to express her feelings, but I just don't know how. We talk about her feelings a lot and she can verbalize them very well. How can I make them not seem so intense for her though without desensitizing her?
Re: Unstable kindergartner - what to do?
I tend to think it's not entirely abnormal.
DS is in Kindergarten and overreacts to a lot. For instance, this morning he was upset that the glowstick that he got last night was out of glow. Like over the top hysterics.
We've been working on curbing this a lot - both of us. I think sometimes I give in to the hysterics because I don't want to hear it - or it's in public or whatever. So, I'm trying really hard not to give in and I'm also trying to point out to him that it's starting and he needs to calm down if he wants any interaction from me.
Some of it is attention seeking. He has a 2-year-old sister who throws wonderful tantrums - he learned a lot of his skillz from her
Is she getting enough sleep? I notice this happens way more when he's tired. Good luck!
Oooh - I agree with what PP said about letting her guard down at home. DS is seriously Mr. PerfectPants at school. God forbid he gets off green, doesn't know how to do something, etc. It's really important to him to be "good".
I have DEFINITELY noticed a "letting go" once he gets home - like, I can be a kid again, hooray!
Someone gave us a great book - "It's Hard to Be Five" - it's by Jamie Lee Curtis. The main character is a boy, but it still might work for your daughter. We've read it every night since we've got it. It's about figuring out how to deal with growing up, yet still staying a kid. The first line of the story is about how the "good old days are gone, by 1, 2, 3, 4..."
https://www.amazon.com/Its-Hard-Be-Five-Learning/dp/B000AI4K1C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288189971&sr=8-1
It is so encouraging to hear similar stories! We have also had the glow stick meltdown. She is definitely a perfectionist and on her best behavior for other people and most of the time in school. I never thought of home being her "release". It drives me nuts because I feel like I'm doing something wrong, but it sounds like it is much more common than what I thought. I'll definitely check out that book. As much as she loves to read, I'm sure she would love it!
Her teacher did tell me one thing that shocked me at our parent teacher conference though. She said that DD has been hitting, which is a side of her that I've never seen! Apparently if she is doing something like cleaning up project or working on something, and another student tries to help her, she gets really possessive over it and it ends up being a power struggle and she HITS the other student! I've never seen her hit another kid. Her teacher suggested giving her some things at home that she has control over so she may be less inclined to try to control things at school.
Seriously...I think kids are perfect little models for all psychotic diseases....
Around 2...its bi-polar...they can go from happy laughing to on the ground screaming in .06 seconds.
From 3-4 its defiant oppositional...they will argue and ignore you when you ask them to do ANYTHING.
etc, etc.
And yes, my DD was the EXACT same way in Kindergarten, and started off first grade the same way....emotional and sensitive. Like some serious depression that would cause tears me telling her "honey, your striped shirt with green and orange stripes does not match your striped pants with lime green, pink and purple stripes...can you find some jeans or plain pants?" OMG...I have crushed her into a million pieces and she is sobbing and hysterical.
It SEEMS to finally be getting better lately. The only thing I changed was having 10 minutes of each day where its just her and I...no other kids, and we chat about whatever she wants to chat about. Sometimes its about something that happened at school...sometimes its just about something she wants to do on the weekend.
I think you've gotten excellent advice. And as DandR said in the reply above, I agree that between now and the middle of first grade a LOT of these rough edges get smoothed down.
Although my son is also in K, he turned 6 in August. We waited for him to start school because of this issue. Holy smokes -- he was SO sensitive and wiggy this time last year!! Now, he can still burst into tears over something that is really small every so often (the glowstick being out of glow power is a great example!) but it happens FAR less frequently than it did a year ago.
This time last year, I would estimate that he cried at least once every.single.day. Now it's maybe once every third day.
And ditto the whole "gotta let off steam now that I'm home in a place where they'll still love me even if I'm 'off green'!" My son is super-conscientious about being a good kid at school. He prides himself on his massive collection of "gotcha tickets" and the extra recess he earns by staying 'on green!'. He saves ALL his shenanigans for the evenings.
And my daughter went through this "smoothing the rough edges" phase as well, but in a different way. She wasn't sensitive and over-reactive like my son. She was SUPER-fixated on rules. Man, if someone broke a rule in class, it really got to her.
She was a bit of a tattle-tale, too. Not in the "I want to get you in trouble" way, just in the "hey, teacher, someone's breaking a rule and I figured you'd want to do something about it" way. Thank God her preschool and kindergarten teachers understood that she was being anxious, not bratty!
Now, at 10, she still has a strong sense of justice and fairness (her dad and I call her The Judge!) But she's able to handle this part of her personality in a more low-key way. She's just generally less emotionally extreme than she was at 5.