LO is 4 now and hasn't been tested yet. But her emotions have always been super intense... so much so that her mood swings exhaust me when I'm with her all day. When she was a baby (younger than 3 months), she wouldn't go near a man who wasn't her father without flipping out. This continued until she was two. I got a lot of judgmental stares from people in stores and such when people would try to smile at her or talk to her.
Luckily that ended, but now she sometimes flips out screaming and crying. I mean maybe that's just a regular four year old thing to do, but she went into a rage over blueberries on her waffles this morning. She asked for them, then changed her mind. My husband told her not to yell at him and said he'd throw them away if she wouldn't eat them, and she came upstairs raging and crying. I explained why she needed to eat them and she went back downstairs and apologized and hugged her dad, then flipped a switch back to her sweet self. It's totally exhausting for me trying to manage her big emotions (and my own lol). My husband insinuated her outburst was somehow my fault... crappy parenting. But it's not. Constant time-outs or something won't help her manage her emotions and expectations.
I know kids throw tantrums, but she never really had the terrible twos. She was just intense. And she's happy a lot of the day... but when she flips it's awful.
She's also doing this thing now where she won't listen at all when we tell her not to touch things. Like using my make-up or raiding the pantry or whatever. I'm not spanking her, and while I do time-out on occasion, it's really only when she loses it and it's making me lose it. She used to listen much better, strangely. Like from ages 2-4, I could rationalize with her and she'd mostly listen and not get into anything I didn't want her to.
Maybe this is just a normal parenting question, but still, you guys probably have intense children and intense emotions yourselves, so how do you help them learn to manage their emotions and keep the house peaceful?
(And get them not to raid the pantry and make cupcakes out of cornmeal and cocoa powder? It's hard sometimes for me to care when she does this sort of thing. She might make a mess, but often it doesn't hurt anything and she seems to want to experiment with mixing things together. I just want her to listen when I tell her to stay away from stuff that could be toxic. I don't trust her anymore.)
Last edited by islandofapples; 01/31/15 11:16 AM.
