
Originally Posted by
schuss
At 2, kids understand that they want some things more than others, but are easily distracted.
At 3, they want them, remember and don't understand why cake all the time is bad. Just gotta work through it with patience as Schralp said. 3 is basically your friends drunk at 3 in the morning - they possess some level of reasoning and awareness, they just aren't actively using it unless reminded and have zero clue around emotional regulation. Help em out and give them tools to understand themselves.
If you've read the rock warriors way, the observer position is a good place to start.
All that said - fucking threenagers.
Well said.
We did BATTLE with our younger daughter through 4.5 years, especially about bedtime. Then two things happened that were game changing for us:
1. Right around 4, I became a bit alarmed at how frequently my daughter started getting ear infections. Then it occurred to me: I walked up to her and whispered her name to no reaction. Tried a bit more volume, no reaction. One ENT visit later and she was scheduled to get tubes in her ears because she was constantly all gummed up and the MD said she was likely short 40% of her hearing and in constant discomfort . A few weeks after the surgery and she was noticeably different. She was quite likely in pain or discomfort and simply didn’t know any different which was her fuel to a 3 year old emotional tender box.
2. We really leaned into empowering her to recognize when she was out of control of her emotions. After that, usually in the evening, she would often start to melt but also state she was having “big emotions”. Her own recognition helped immensely. We gave her some space and she learned to calm down. Moral of the story is that you pointing out their behavior is the longer road. Then them learning to recognize their own emotions and resulting behavior changes everything.
Grace will always be high octane but now it’s high energy fun, which is a lot better than the alternative.
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"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring."
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