Sorry I am back with this problem. Puffin, she is an only child and I tried a transition routine but things are not going so well. Some of the behavior is spilling into weekends and days that I stay at home with her. We even tried keeping her home 2 of the school days last week. No help! She has turned into a defiant little imp. She has started to throw things and create unnecessary mess, not in a mean way but just to push our buttons. eg, she painted a big section of the family room wall with her blue glitter paint, she tears and throws tiny pieces of paper everywhere, she wrote on the window shade, she uses apples as tennis balls, etc, etc. She has this impish smile on her face while she is doing all this. I have tried everything from gentle persuasion, to distraction to yelling in frustration. She has ended up in tears on a couple of occasions (which hurts me because this kid hardly cries-she has a very sunshiny personality). But more often than not, she just ignores me and my DH completely and keeps on doing her thing. Is this just a normal 4 yo behavior that is best to ignore? DH is all for more discipline but I would really like to understand the root cause of the problem and address that. Any help is much appreciated!
Is it possible for her to go 1/2 day? If so I would seriously consider that. A full day for 4 yr. olds is long and very stimulating. I really like the book Transforming the difficult child for approaches to deal with her challenging behaviors. The book Hold on to Your Kids is great as well--even though it is aimed at parents of older kids, I think the influence of peers is clear even at a pre-school level. I really believe that the desire of kids to behave or not is strongly tied to the strength of the attachment to parents. (ruling out SPD or similar) In the meantime I think as few rules as possible that you enforce consistently is the key. (I realize that is easy to say...) but I wouldn't make a rule unless you are motivated enough to follow through on enforcing it.
