Surviving your four year-old!

Lately Jack (age 4) has been really pushing my buttons! He's been argumentative, angry, bossy, defiant and just plain trying. He's told me he hated me (which neither of his big sisters have ever done!), threatened me, made mean faces, you name it.

I have read enough parenting books and been through enough parenting to know that children act bad when they feel bad. Still, it is very hard to take when a small boy keeps shouting at you and saying mean things! There is only so much of the Mary Poppins hat you can put on before you feel like beating him with it.

I know what the conventional wisdom is. Spank, yell, punish, show him who's boss. Be meaner back to teach him how to be nice. I'm not a fan of conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom was once that the world was flat and you should own slaves. That doesn't mean I didn't lose it and yell and act mean a time or two during this phase, but it wasn't my goal.

The behavior has been going on for several weeks and it was a long few weeks. In order to get through it, I read Your Four Year Old again to remind myself what was age appriate and what works for the age, modeled handling my own anger well, firmly told him that he could not treat me badly and left the room if he was nasty to me, offered lots of hugs, talked about his feelings and healthy ways to express them, dramatically increased his mama time, gave him more choices, read extra books, smiled lots, told him I loved him lots, complemented his good behavior and waited.

Of course I also lost it and yelled, told his dad to take over, vented to friends, and acted rotten myself a few times! I'm human, after all. :)

Fast forward to the past few days. I have my old Jack back now for the most part, just a little older and wiser. Today he greeted me with "Hi mom, how ya doin'?" and then made up a poem for me later (You may be big, you may be small, but you're my bestest friend of them all). The past few days he has presented me with artwork, told me many times how much he loved me, helped out when asked, apologized when he was rude to his sister…. He's been a mature, sweet, helpful, funny little boy.

This is a big time in Jack's life. He stopped being the baby in the family 8 months ago when his brother came along. He is learning to read and write and add. He is growing and changing. He's stuck inside during a very cold winter and not able to run and move the way his body needs to. He's got to share, compromise, negotiate and be patient many times a day, which are skills a lot of grown ups never master.

It can be so hard when little ones (or big ones!) go through stages that make us nuts. I can just imagine what it will be like around here when we have a bunch of teenagers! I am so glad that I had faith in him and kept working at helping him through it, instead of turning us into enemies.

And with that, I'm off to go play with said four year-old! Have a great day all!




To the Article Index

All works on this site Alicia Bayer unless otherwise noted.
Don't take it - that would be rude.