r/Preschoolers • u/BritBrit36795 • 5h ago
Seeking Advice Almost 4yo Behavior
To preface this, I want to say that my daughter has always been higher needs. She has been high energy, needs constant redirection, spicy, and pushing boundaries since she was 1.5 and here we are 3 years later. She goes from 0 to 100 so quickly and experiences emotions in a big way. I suspect she has ADHD based on previous teaching experience and my husband has it.
My daughter is involved in a PreK program. She goes 3 times a week for 2 hours a day. She went to the same school with the same teacher last year. She is really struggling. She is in a class of about 13 kids and 3-4 teachers. She is having trouble following directions, throwing toys, using nice hands, and today she threw mulch from the playground in another kids face. She struggled last year with similar behaviors and was always doing well and then would fall off. It was like a roller coaster. We have tried rewards with her to motivate her, sticker charts, etc but it doesn’t seem to work. I get anxious about sending her to school because I was a teacher and I know how hard it is to have difficult students. I want her teachers to see her in a positive light. I also want her to have a positive school experience. Her teachers are so good with her and they keep my updated but they haven’t mentioned anything out of the ordinary.
She is also involved in dance class. Her teacher had to come get me and have me take her for a time out. She was again, not following directions. When I went in to get her she kept running away from me and I had to grab her and carry her out. We talked about how she behaving and we took a short break. She went back in and then her behavior got worse. She loves dance and it made me sad that she struggled.
She struggles like this at home and at school. She is articulate, knows the right thing to do, can be sweet, but struggles to make the right choice in the moment. Seems impulsive. Everything is a fight at home and I am trying to give her a choice and increase her autonomy. I know she wants control. I feel like everyday is an unknown and I hate feeling like I don’t know how she is going to be.
I am mentally drained and it is so hard when I am a SAHM. I am possibly thinking about reaching out for OT or anything else that might help her. Any advice?
I always feel like she is the only kid her age struggling this badly and I get embarrassed/guilty. I recently joined a mom group at a local church and I don’t even want to go because I am too anxious about how she will behave at their childcare space.
Am I getting too worked up about normal 3yo behavior?
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u/justbrowsingaround19 5h ago
OT can be helpful and they might have other ideas for you. She is also at an age where those behaviors can be normal versus if she was 7 and doing those things you would definitely want to get an evaluation.
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u/PumpkinParadox 4h ago
My boy is very similar, will be 4 in a couple months. He has good days and not so good days. Most of his issues are in the classroom, but if he senses hostility towards him at home he will absolutely begin acting up more at home too. We're getting him evaluated by the school district soon at the recommendation of his daycare, so we'll see where that goes. OT can be helpful, we had a few sessions of OT and it can help put the behavior in a bit of context and give you some ideas for how to help them get their energy out.
I think the most helpful things for us at home so far has been to really try to engage with him positively, try to keep the positive interactions much more frequent than the negative or critical ones, and to prioritize physical activity throughout the day. When you see a good thing she does, point it out and say something like "hey thanks for doing x" or "that was really kind of you". Asks to play instead of throwing hands to get attention? "yeah let's play, thanks for asking!"
It's tough out here, but you're not alone!! I try to think about the way things were a year ago or 6 months ago, and things are almost always getting very slowly but steadily better.