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Parenting

Desperate plea - 5 year old pushing boundaries

2 replies

JeanBodel · 15/11/2012 19:29

I really hope someone has some advice on this.

My son is 5 and a half. He's at the bottom end of the class and has struggled with the jump to Y1 work.

He has always been beautifully behaved - until the last month or so. Suddenly, we're getting silliness (running around, shouting, throwing things - just overly boisterous mucking about) - both at home and at the childminder's. This has now started to deteriorate into outright rudeness and defiance.

Our general parenting style is along the lines of 'How to talk...'. No naughty step but we occasionally send to bedroom to settle down. Now he just looks at me and says 'no'.

I think I've been spoilt because he's always been so compliant before. I know he comes home from the childminder very tired - his behaviour is noticeably better at weekends. But we are at our wits' end.

(Truth be told, the whole family is currently barricaded into the front room because he is rampaging around upstairs and won't leave his sister alone so she can sleep. I am not proud of this; things have really fallen to pieces tonight).

Please please help! TIA.

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ilovetermtime · 16/11/2012 06:58

Hi jean, sorry to hear you're having a hard time. It's not very clear from your post whether you discipline him or not. If my 6 year old was rampaging around he would be sent to his room and told to stay there until I said he could come out. I would explain to him that if he did come out then he would lose [insert privilege - in his case tv] for a day. I would also explain that this was his choice to make so don't start whining that mummy is mean!
If he comes out I then calmly explain to him that he's lost a day of tv and put him back in his room and tell him that if he comes out again he'll lose another day of tv or another privilege. This usually works fine, although the first few times might be a bit of a nightmare as he'll probably think that you won't follow through on it. Obviously you must!
Sometimes, if he's tired, he'll still push it, but after 5 or so trips back to his room I'll sit down and explain to him that this little performance is not hurting me, in fact I'd be happy if he never watched tv again, so does he really want to carry on, or would it not be better for him in the long run to just do as he's told? This has always worked for me (fingers crossed!).

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ilovetermtime · 16/11/2012 11:32

Or... you could try and find out why he's behaving like this and solve it that way? If it is because he's tired, could you try getting him to bed earlier?

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