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My daughter has been bored out of her mind and recently after seeing a friend who does school at home and her Daddy leaving for 6 weeks that she isnt going to behave in class. She is going to act crazy and misbehave when the teacher is trying to help the other kids. On days she goes to school it is spilling over to our house where she is mean to her sisters and brother and disrespectful. She is tired and always acts better after a nap. They have moved her to first grade reading and she will be doing first grade math also. It has been a recent change but hasnt help as of yet.

The teacher says Trina can be a joy and a terror in a flip of a switch. She cant control her and wants to have this meeting but I dont know what to expect as Trina is my oldest of 4. Any advice would be helpful. Thank you.

I don't imagine that you have control of the fact that Daddy is gone for 6 weeks, and unless you're interested in homeschooling, you need to send her to school. They've addressed the boredom in school with the change to first grade subject acceleration.

The thing that you do have control over is that she's tired, and you know that she acts better after a nap. Overtired children are fussy/tantrummy/miserable . . .

If she can nap every day, or even just an extra day or two out of the week, that might improve the situation. The other thing you can do is to put her to bed earlier -- even 20-30 minutes earlier might do the trick. Overtired children don't sleep as well, which keeps them overtired.

Great book:
Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth

Written by a physician who specializes in pediatric sleep; very science-based; no kooky gimmicks.

parenthetically: (we use melatonin from time to time in our house, it's well studied in kids and comes as a 2.5 mg chewable)

Good luck!

She goes to bed at 7 and we do naps after school most days. But she hates going to bed so early so she trys to fight it. I am trying to fight the tiredness level. Thank you. She shares a room with her little sister. I am going to try to let her go to bed at 7 and put her sister down after she is asleep. Maybe that will help.

For what it's worth, my kids only fight bedtime when they're overtired. Usually if they're tired (and not O.T.), yawning, zoning out, etc., they can't get to bed soon enough.

Just wondering, because this exact thing came up in my practice with another kid recently, was she napping daily, then started a kindergarten where the kids don't get a nap time?

edit: never mind, I re-read your last post and see that she naps. I'm kind of tired myself :-)

Thats ok. I am up for any help. I know she has never slept through the night on a regular basis in her life. She also has reoccurring night terrors. I do everything to try to reassure her even without the night terrors she wakes up and plays too. But she has never besides when her Daddy wasnt home for a couple of months right before summer had this many problems. But she was starting to have issues before he left and I know that didnt help any. But I dont have control over his work schedule so I cant change that. If we could I know both of us would.

The Weissbluth book changed our lives.

Thank you I will read it. I am up for anything.

I agree that the sleep issue is definitely the one to tackle. Once your child learns to sleep through the night, a lot of these issues will go away. A 7pm bedtime seems pretty early for that age (unless she has to get up at 6am), and with the naps, I'm not surprised she can't sleep through the night.

I'd suggest that you don't try putting the younger kid to bed after the older one is asleep, because the older one is likely to resent that, and one of the ways she might rebel is to keep herself up later and later.

Inexplicable bouts of irritability is how my daughter announces her lack of sufficient sleep, so they go hand in hand.

How is her diet? Just thinking sugar, cafiene, dyes, etc or a food sensitivity can cause sleep issues and attitudes that change like flipping a switch. Has she ever been tested for allergies?

She eats anything and everything. No sugars other than fruits and the very occasional piece of candy, cake or ice cream. It is not even once every 3 months. She hasnt had cafienated drinks in her life and even non caffinated soda's she has had maybe 3 or 4 times in her almost 6 years of life. I havent started looking at dyes, but since it has been suggested recently by friends I had just started looking for the red dye 40. She has excema, and allergic to bynedryll, but that is it for allergies so far. She doesnt get seasonal allergies like her younest sister, her brother and I do. But she has never been tested.