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Parenting
Tantrum help for almost 5 year old
My DD was born with a brain injury and for the most part, is totally fine. Her one issue is a speech delay. She is in a speech class 2x a week and it is really helping. She has always been a very high energy, very emotional person and that added with her frustration with the whole speech thing - she has always been one to tantrum very easily. She will often get frustrated and start to lose it before she even finished what she is trying to say/ask. We have always worked with her on getting her slow down, take a deep breath and then try and say whatever she needs to slowly but it doesn't always work. She has good phases where the tantrums are rare and then bad phases, like right now. She had 2 or 3 major tantrums yesterday - one at school was to the point that her teacher had to almost hold her so that she didn't hurt herself. She just loses it and it takes her a while to be able to calm down. At home, we can often just let her go as we know that once she gets the energy out, she will be totally fine and it will be like nothing ever happened. Anyone deal with anything like this and have any suggestions? We are at a loss of what else we can try to teach her to help her control her emotions when she feels this coming on. Her one teacher (she has 2 main teachers and then an aide who is actually a licensed teacher) told me yesterday that she was amazed at how fast her range of emotions can change.
Jenni Mom to
DD#1 - 6-16-06
DD#2 - 3-13-08
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Re: Tantrum help for almost 5 year old
I was going to ask the same thing.
Also does she qualify for any kind of therapy because of the brain injury? Maybe a school psychologist or guidance counselor would have some suggestions about helpful techniques.
Do you know what starts the tantrums? Maybe start recording so you can see if there are common things that send her into a tantrum? Or patterns - like she's more likely to have a tantrum close to meal times (may mean her blood sugar is low) or before bedtime (may mean she needs more sleep)?
If there are any patterns or common triggers you can work to address those things. Like if she gets really upset when someone takes a toy work with her speech teachers to give her some words to use in that instance like "Please Don't!"
At this point, the only thing she has qualified for is the speech therapy. When we did the Early Childhood testing, she passed all others area with flying colors. Granted that was done when she was 3 1/2 and she is now a few months shy of 5 so I wonder if anything has changed? I will talk to her teacher and see if she can recommend anyone within the school that might have some suggestions.
Honestly, I have yet to see a pattern. Yesterday at school, she had cut her finger and told her teacher while they were walking from the gym back to their classroom. Her teacher responded that they would wash her hand when they got back to the room and then she lost it. We think she wanted the teacher to tell her she would get a band-aide. Yesterday morning, she was asking me to buy her something but I couldn't understand as she was not telling me the name of the object but just kept saying it was purple. It wasn;t that I didn't understand, she was just not saying clearly what she wanted. This morning with my DH, she just woke up on the wrong side of the bed and anything that my DH said to her, set her off. The other morning when I was taking her to school, she had been totally fine and when we were in the car and all buckled in, I told her I had to back the car out and then take the trash can out before we would leave for school. She had a major meltdown because she didn't want me to stop and take the trash out. With most of these - she is totally fine, loses it and then 5-10 mins later, she was totally fine like nothing had happened. There are some that last longer, like one last week when I picked her up from school and she had asked if I brought her dinner (I do that on the days we go right to gymnastics class and we all eat together before class at the gym). This was not a class day so I told her no that we were not going to class. She just lost it, on the floor screaming, etc. We were down the hall from her room but she was so loud, one of her teachers came out to see what was going on. This tantrum lasted a good 20 mins. I had to basically carry her screaming to the car and I just kept telling her she could scream and cry once we were in the car (had to get out of the school since it was very disruptive to the other kids).
Not sure of the name but it was the back, lower part of the brain. It effects vision although she has perfect vision. We had been told when she was in the NICU that she could have perception type of issues (like she can see perfectly and see a desk but not be able to know that what she is looking at is a desk even though she can see it) but she doesn't have any of those issues from all the testing that she has had. Her main issues are the speech and emotional stuff. The emotional stuff could very easily just be her personality and not related at all but we will never know.
Hmm, that's really tough. Maybe it would help to work on emotions with her? There are millions of good kid books about it and I bet her teachers could help you. That way she'd have another tool to help her express herself without tantruming?
We deal with tantrums in my 4.5 year old sometimes but we know what it is caused by (accidental exposure to gluten). And helping her find a way to express herself has helped her. Like she'll say "I'm sad about that" and just getting that expression out gives her time to refocus her energy into communicating instead of freaking out.
hmm. Does she have a neurologist you could consult with?
Are there consequences for her tantrums? My son rarely loses it now but when he does there are definite consequences. Not for crying, obviously but really out of control stuff gets a lecture, an enforced 'quiet time', lots of hugs afterwards of course but also the next time we leave the house there is another big talk about expectations and consequences.
yes, we do this too. 'do overs'.
yes, we do this too. 'do overs'.
Do you see a neurologist? I would suggest seeing one to see the extent of her brain damage and see if there is anything really wrong - I say "really" b/c you say that everything you were told about what she could encounter is not what is happening and yet you are concerned about other issues that may or may not be related, I would see a neurologist and find out solid answers and then if there is nothing wrong or nothing that should cause behavior/emotional issues I would talk to a child psychologist or developmental pediatrician.