Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy my daughter the drama queen...

It's been a long week. Miss 4 (nearly 5) has been such a drama queen. Every little thing has turned into such a power struggle. Even gymnastics, which she adores, turned into a drama yesterday with 10-15 minutes worth of drama, catastrophising, whinging before she eventually joined in... ugh! It's so exhausting. I do try not to participate in the power game, but I'm out of ideas. Anyone have a drama queen? What strategies have you tried?

jojo (exasperated!)

I have no suggestions, but I have a 4 nearly 5 major drama queen at my house. I feel your pain. She is driving me nuts.

Have you read

Mary Sheedy Kurcinka > Home
Best selling author, speaker, and licenced parent educator. Books: Raising Your Spirited Child.
Love and more love,
grinity

Yes, we have quite a bit of drama...when it really reaches a fever pitch it's usually because something else is up such as an oncoming illness.
We were just participating in a ballet thing with the kids and one of the moms said her boy was out due to strep throat. I was like 'Oh.' Only one other mom there said 'We need to know, I need to know - when my daughter gets sick it's like...it's like...psycho or something!' I had to totally agree, my kids usually loose a lot of emotional control just before an illness.

I also read several books in a series called 'Your x year old', such as 'Your 4 Year Old', 'Your 5 Year Old', and so on. They are older books but seemed to have some good advice. One thing they mention is that when approaching the turn of a new year children's psychological development tends to be moving quickly, more tumultuous, harder to understand and difficult for both parents and kids. Approaching mid-year things smooth out, a child gets used to recent changes in body/mind and is able to be more cooperative, etc. Don't know if other moms here would agree, but it did seem to jibe with what I saw with my ds. (Also don't know if I'm describing that well)

Good luck to you, give it a week or two, or a couple of months...should see some change, right?

Thanks for the reminder Grinity. Raising a spirited child used to be my bible with my first daughter, but I haven't read it in years. But I started re-reading it tonight and I can't believe how relevant it is. Thanks! And thanks for your observations Chris. It's Miss 4's birthday this week and I think there's a lot going on inside of her. I just hope it settles soon... jojo

Chris,
It is the same with dd6. When she is getting sick she is all out of sorts emotionally. And it is always after she's gotten sick that we think back and say "duh, we should have seen this one coming."
We also find that we have a drama queen when she is really bored with her life. By this I mean that she isn't being challenged at school, and we've not been doing any activities at home. Then anything can set her off, and it is usually at the strangest times.

this might be a bit old for her, but maybe worth a try? my 7 year old has been seeing a counselor for a few months now for school-caused misery superimposed on a major drama personality (loved Kurcinka myself!) She's teaching him cognitive therapy principles outright, and taught him recently about catastrophizing. Now that he knows it's a mental error, he doesn't want to do it and we can quiet fits quite often by just asking if he's catastrophizing.

My 3 yo, though, isn't old enough to have that help. With him, it's more about trying to avoid his triggers and give him space and language for it all. Some kids are just difficult to ease into the world! I wish I were doing a better job with my middle kid. I can avoid triggers, but I'm not doing very well at teaching him (and his dad) to smooth the volcanic emotions. With him, for what it's worth, his pride often gets caught up in it. If I can interpret him to him as having a reasonable feeling, then we can discuss what will actually happen. But if you act angry, frustrated, in any way add energy to the system, he blows. And once he blows, it takes a while to come down. 15 minutes sounds to me like she's doing very well, honestly. Hard for parents, of course, but doing well and going to be fine. A few months ago, my 7yo sulked at a party for a full half hour b/c he was convinced someone pushed him on purpose. He missed a quarter of the party refusing to join in!

Montana - for the 3 year old, why not try:

Raising a Thinking Child, By Dr. Myrna B. Shure

I was fasinated by this book, but my only was a bit too old to get much benifit from it by the time I read it. I've been wondering what age of gifted kid 'wouldn't' be too young for this, so if it does or doesnt' help, please let me know, ok?

Best Wishes,
Grinity

This sounds so exactly like DS6! And based on the reviews of Raising Your Spirited Child I've ordered the book - I have a feeling it'll turn out to be something we should have had a couple of years ago.

I agree re the 15 minutes - DS6 missed most of a birthday party last year when he tantrummed (is that a word?) for over an hour after a request to put on sunscreen. Admittedly that was during a very bad phase for us.

DS5 asked me why I have "that purple colour skin" under my eyes (aren't they sweet) - I said "BECAUSE OF YOU MY DARLINGS!!!"

And yesterday DS6 tells me it's the worst thing that's ever happened to him, he hates me, he'll kill me, he wishes he wasn't even alive. The cause of so much distress? - DS5 was sick/vomiting, so DS6 couldn't go to soccer practice.

Montana, I think we could benefit from some cognitive therapy here too - catastrophising features far too much.

And really, don't you think that if anyone should get to feel sorry for themselves it should be the mother whose face was vomitted on! Bleugh - while checking seat belt straps - point blank.

O.M.G. That is just too much! You poor thing! Definitely sounds like a worst-day-ever. Time to move to australia!

Gotta look up catastrophising...I was just the other day thinking about the vivid imagination my son has really setting him up for some extra dreary imaginings. Is that sort of what that means?

oh, BKD...that's HORRIBLE!!! Ergh. Before I was a parent, I would vomit if I saw vomit. Sigh. It was a reason I thought I might not be a good one. My worst thing yesterday was the baby tossing a cup of icy water down my shirt at a party - FAR better. I know, b/c I've had the full frontal vomit, too!

The cognitive therapy...I have to say, I'm impressed. She swears up and down the block, his shrink, that she didn't put these words in his mouth, but a couple of weeks ago he came and told me that, even though people seem to like being happy, for him, he was used to being sad, so it was comfortable to him, so in a strange way, he liked being sad better than being happy. I was amazed at that kind of insight, so early in the process. It helps a lot, to have someone outside point out things like unreasonable expectations, overgeneralizing, work on noticing how intense a feeling he's having (sent him home with a thermometer to mark). He was anxious and depressed from school, badly, but he also has (had??) this rigid mindset...what he thought was the WAY it WAS, and literally years of playing Best Thing, Worst Thing at home at night to point out that there are good parts of even the worst days hadn't cracked it. The psychologist who tested him and made him feel better about being smart can get him to think about these things. He respects her and wants her to like him, I think. And it helps, having this framework. I can talk to him about his brain being in the habit of being upset, and how now that things are better in school, his brain is still going to LOOK for things to be upset about, b/c that's how his brain feels comfortable (I am still just blown away that he could see that and say that about himself); that that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with his life. He has ordinary, every-day problems now, like every other person, and they aren't going to wreck his life, and all he has to do is give his brain time and practice noticing the betterness of his life and it will, eventually, stop TRYING to make him sad. And that seemed a big relief for him. It's as if it gives him comfort and empowers him, while making 'him' not responsible for the tricks his brain gets up to. It's a weird, but apparently very useful trick. I'm enthused, and cautiously hopeful. I really really really want to get him some more resilience. I think it'll make an enormous difference to his happiness.

just re-reading your post...it reminds me of DS7 getting carried up the stairs for bed this Christmas (when he was barely 7, granted), howling "you're killing me! You're KILLING me! You're making a TERRIBLE MISTAKE!" And he wished he wasn't alive at 4, when kids teased him for not being a fast runner. Boy, does that trait worry me! That's kind of the crux of the thinking I want to break open and replace with more productive thoughts!

and final btw...we ALL have purple eyes around here. We're the family who doesn't sleep. Oh. Ok. Not so final. Grinity, I have that book around here somewhere. Got it when oldest was 3...was interested but didn't get around to implementing other than occ. trying to talk about all vs. parts, etc, and haven't read since then. I'll pull it out again and see what I think and let you know...assuming I don't get sucked back down into my life and not resurface for months!

Hey Chris - I see catastrophising more as a reaction that turns everything into a catastrophe, the worst thing ever imaginable... And when this happens three times before breakfast, you know it's gonna be one of those days!!! Technically it means to automatically think that nothing will ever work out; that the worst will always happen. Sometimes it's just one of those mindsets that visits once in a while and then goes. It's a very depressing house guest...

jojo

have you looked at the learned optimism stuff? It might be helpful or encouraging.

http://www.amazon.com/Optimistic-Ch...silience/dp/0060977094/ref=sip_rech_dp_8

http://www.amazon.com/Learned-Optim...mp;s=books&qid=1243350548&sr=8-1

and Seligman's website, full of interesting questionnaires to evaluate where you are on these things...

http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx

GS9 has seen an student counselor at school for most of the time he's been in school. There is a new one each year, they work for a year as an internship. I had several reservations about the one he saw this year, beginning when she said, "people aren't naturally pessimistic, they don't want to be pessimistic". I'm sorry, but I think some people are born that way. Most people don't want to be around a pessimist, so it's to their advantage to learn how to cope with their initial response to life, but I think they can learn to be more optimistic. GS9 is making much progress this year, and more rapidly since he stopped seeing the school counselor!