Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Parenting & Discipline

Thank you CAMom!

I totally agree. If I make a decision and it is clear, I don't change my mind about it because then he will argue about things all the time. I make it very clear to him that that is the decision and it will not change and if he continues on he needs to leave the room because I don't want to hear it. If he won't, I will leave the room. Usually he gets it because he knows I don't change my mind about things like that. If I haven't said no or yes yet, there is some room for negotiation. My DS4 can be dramatic as well at times. Oddly enough when he was littler he was much better. He was great until 3. In fact, at 2 he would put himself in time out all the time. It was quite strange. I wish it was still like that sometimes.

Yes, Shelly. Learning NOT to say yes or no immediately was the hardest part of this for me. Once I got that down, I just dug in my heels on my decisions. I'm stubborn, so that part was easy.

There's a GT neighbor boy whose mom apparently allows debate after the decision, and he is EXHAUSTING to be around. I wind up barking at him a lot when he's over to play because he behaves in a manner that I find to be very disrespectful. My kids don't do that, and I'm now convinced it's because we don't allow discussion after a decision is made.

Best parenting decision EVER!

You either train your kids to respect you or you train them not to. There's no other option, really!

I wonder if my special ed teacher friend thinks my son is disrespectful to me. She probably does and maybe he is, sometimes, but he does it in a joking manner that makes me even laugh sometimes and I can't yell at him if I am laughing. When he disagrees with things I do he finds ways to point out to me that I am either wrong or too hard on him. He did it again. We were eating lunch at a scouting event Saturday with my special ed teacher friend when my son noticed a grammatical error on something he was reading. He asked me to look at it and tell him how it should have been written. He knows that I am self conscious around teachers. I looked at it and told him that I was having trouble reading it because the print was too small. He didn't believe I couldn't read it and said "Well Mom, just try harder. If you just try a little harder I know you can do it." Then he told my friend that's what I tell him all the time. Later, at home, he teased me about stretching the truth and little white lies, and my husband joined in because he thought it was funny.

We have just come home from dinner at a restaurant that took 45 minutes to get us our food! (we had our dd6 and dd1 with us). They were amazingly well behaved until the food came. Then dd6 spilt her apple sauce all over herself (don't ask how) and started crying about it. She tried really hard to control it and covered her mouth so she wouldn't be too loud and everything. Well, we made it through the meal, got them home and all _____ broke out. Now, I know that the wait was long and we'd reached melt down time but the show DD6 put on tonight almost seems to have become a habit, and I don't know who's going to loose it first - DH or me.
Those of you with OE emotional ones, how do you handle the hysterical crying and wailing and drama over the littlest things (like brushing teeth and hair) when the child is tired? We are ready to tear our own hair out and nothing seems to work to calm her down when she gets like this. In fact it's almost like trying to calm her down makes it worse.
Like many of you it does seem to be getting worse as she gets older.

I would read "The Explosive Child". It has great insight into how to look at kids, especially ones who have that tendency for small things to become huge issues. The book uses no labels and just discusses the traits that cause children to blow up and how to work with the child to teach him/her the skills needed to ensure that it becomes less.

ADDED: If you do decide to read the book, don't put it down just because the case studies seem much more extreme than your child. I did that the first time I started to read it. Now that I'm getting past that point, I'm realizing it's good information for any child who has those issues to any degree.

**jots this one down**

We use "and the Oscar goes to..."

**jotting this one down as well**

The "because I am the parent and I say so" doesn't work with DS5. Maybe this will. It's rare that we have issues, but when we do, they are HUGE, and he has to know the reason I have made the decision(s) I have.

Ugh. DS5 just had a major meltdown today when he discovered that he left one of his favorite toys at our friend's house, and they live an hour away and i'm not going there today. When the crying went on for more than 10 minutes, I said, "very impressive! how much longer do you think you can cry?" I'll have to tell him about the oscars so i can try the oscars line on him next time.

I finally got him to stop by having him look in a mirror and said, "now, whatever you do don't laugh. The sad face in the mirror will help you to keep crying, but if you laugh, it's all over."

I am signing up for "The explosive child" on my library list. Thanks for the resource!

I have to add when we are in the throws of a meltdown with DS6, it is often enough to just acknowledge his feelings or to help him put words to his feelings. For example when he was having all his issues in PS, coming home crying every day over little things, I said to him, "I am sorry you are feeling so frustrated. It must be really hard to have all these overwhelming feelings about things others don't see as "big deals". This took my perspective of 'his overreactions over little things' out of the equation and gave him the sense that no matter what I was here for him. We had to deal with the emotions at the time. Later we discussed how we could deal with it better next time. Today at the table he said about his little sister having a meltdown, "I remember feeling overwhelmed a few months ago. It felt like a giant volcano building inside me and all of a sudden it would blow. I couldn't stop it. Now I know I need to let out the steam once in a while to keep it from blowing." Talk about insight....