Hi EA Roaring Tantrum!

Perfectly normal 4 year old behavior. My daughter was tantruming around breakfast for 2 weeks. We stopped it by sending her to her room. I also started a three whines or fake cries, etc. and no videos.

If I was ou,I'd simple say, ok, good night then, and walk away. I do this with my 2 year old. Cooperate or I will go do something else. You won't have an audience! So yes, close the door and walk away.

I would first start thinking about moving her bedtime earlier. That out of control behavior only happening at night makes me automatically think she's overtired. Overtired is chemical and genuinely out of her control, you gotta get ahead of it. Start the routine 15-30 minutes earlier and see if that makes a difference over the next couple of days.

She is four - she's realized there are boundaries and she's pushing them. It's normal. She's trying to figure out what she can and can't get away with.

IMHO, I say turn the lights out and go about your business. Once she discovers that all of her bad behavior is not going to be tolerated and it's not going to get her anything but left in the dark alone, she'll stop. She just has to be sure that the consequence is going to be consistent because if it's not, you're in for a long ride!

Well, if you've had her tested and all looks good, then it sounds like she is just a 4 yo testing boundaries.

Have her brush her teeth after dinner, that way if she starts to act up, you can put her to bed without worrying about dental hygiene. if she starts throwing a fit, wash her face, wash off her hands, throw a nightgown over her head and put her in her bed. Kiss her cheek, tell her you love her and walk about. Do not return unless she gets out of her bed, then return her to it. Through the entire fit do not say a single blessed word to her after the initial warning to stop or bedtime stories and such will be foregone and "I love you" before you leave her room. Do not offer more warnings, more instructions. Nothing. When she gets no reward and she sees brother getting the attention for doing what he's told, she line herself out.

I never knew why it was called 'terrible two's', it really is 'horrible fours'. You are catering to her too much. Be short & sweet, stop letting her drag it out. No more extra talks.

ETA:
BTW last year my kids (4, 6, 7) bedtime was 7:30. Bedtime was getting hard for some reason, they always went to bed fairly good. I ended up moving it to 7:00 and it was sooo much better for them. I kept it the same this year (all a year older now) and it is still a good time for them. Most people cannot believe my kids go to bed that early but the best part is they don't wake up till 7:45, and that's with me waking them up.

I agree with moving bed time up.

Is this behavior just since preschool has started up again?? or maybe bro just learned to walk?? It doesn't really change how you deal with her, but if there has been a bit of a life change causing this it might make it easier for you to be calm about it.

Another option is to cut out sugar and see if that helps.

My daughter acted like that when she was hungry but didn't realize it. What does your child eat for supper? How long between supper and bedtime? Some kids are so tired after school that they can barely eat supper, and then they're really in need of some protein and fat before bedtime.

You might try substituting something with protein for the crackers (warm milk, cheese, peanut butter on apple slices, yogurt, etc). Of course, don't give her junk like cookies, but something with a little fat and protein.

She's playing you. She knows she has you upset and though she doesn't know why she's doing it, she just is. You have to stop playing the game with her.

I didn't see where you posted what time she goes to bed, but I do think that you should start putting her to bed earlier if it's before 9:00, or later if you are trying to put her down earlier (7:30 is too early.) I would think 8:00 would be good. As soon as you've given her a snack (which I do think is a good thing), take her in the bathroom for a brush and wash.

Do you have a CD player for in her room? If you do, put in some very quiet, boring sleepy-time music on low. Change her into her pj's and then tell her it's bedtime. No more stories or songs or talking. She has to EARN those. Have a calendar at hand with stickies and when she demands her song and story, tell her that she has to have 3 nights of stickers in order to earn one night of stories and songs. Tell her if she cries or yells or demands, she doesn't get a sticker. Then say goodnight and walk out of the room.

No going back in. No allowing her to come out. Turn the doorknob around if you have to so that she can't come out. Yes, it will be awful, but you are just allowing this to continue by cajoling her and letting her do this.

I promise you that if you nip this in the bud NOW, she won't go to bed in a fit of anger as a teen. Preventing this attitude as a teen has to be done NOW, so stop feeling guilty, and mean business.

If you would like, run this by your ped and get his or her "permission". If your neighbors call social services about the yelling, refer them to your ped. Show them the psychologist's report saying your child has no special needs. Tell them this is a disciplinarian approach without spanking. They will respect that.

By the way, my own ped told me to turn around the doorknob so that my son couldn't come out of the room. I didn't end up having to do it, because he finally stopped coming out after I took him back enough (not very nicely either - I was Darth Vadar), but I would have if it hadn't worked. It stopped in 3 nights.

By the way, stop talking about it with her. You are giving her MORE of a reason to do this because she is getting lots of attention for her behavior. It's just like if your husband "smothers her in hugs" when she's acting badly...

Be strong and don't feel guilty. Being tough is the only way to stop this quickly.

Dawn

Can you tell us what time is bed time? I'll third moving up bed time. I did that tonight by almost 45 minutes.

ahh, the 4s were always the worst for us. I would move her bedtime up. She sounds tired. Also look at what she is or isn't eating. But I think 4 was the worst year for tantrums for my daughter, and they would go on forever. She just could not get herself under control. She could go on for hours. And then she couldn't figure out why. Now that she is older, a tantrum generally means that she is tired, hungry, or scared about something and she can't seem to find away to express it other than blowing her top.

I could have written your post. My daughter used to throw temper tantrums like you wouldn't believe. We did the same thing, she was evaluated by a psycologist and found to be normal. No one could grasp how severe her temper tantrums were. She was also good at school.

I tried everything in the book to stop the tantrums. Sorry to say nothing worked. What helped a little was to not engage in power struggles. If she didn't brush her teeth, well fine, It's not the end of the world. I would say something like "don't brush your teeth, but I don't want to hear any crying when your teeth rot away" . Or, "if you want to have a tantrum, go right ahead, I don't care, but you won't get any crackers, hugs or kisses tonight" etc...

It gets better with time. However, your daughter is probably like mine, very head strong and stubborn. Qualities that may benefit her when she gets older. Just frustrating for you right now.

Good lUck

We're going through this with our 11 year old! Except it's not tantrums, it's just everything else. Sore foot, headache, thirsty, hungry, there's a noise in the room, can't sleep, nightmare (when she obviously hadn't been sleeping yet!) You name it, it's been thrown at us!

She also won't do her bedtime routine. Or she does it s-l-o-w-l-y.

This is what worked for us. Now, granted there's a difference between an 11-year-old and a 4-year-old but this might work!

We moved her bedtime up. With all the excuses and stuff we needed to move it up so that she'd get a decent night's sleep.

She brushes her teeth right after dinner. In order to get her to do this, we ALL brush our teeth right after dinner. You might need to do this after her snack. Do stop giving her crackers, crackers are carbs and they are probably just amping her up.

Then we all change into jammies. I call them my "comfy clothes" so it doesn't sound like we're in our PJs. I don't mind lounging around in my comfy clothes at night. She doesn't mind doing it because we are ALL doing it.

We stopped bedtime stories or any kind of bedtime anything. It just made her want to keep doing it instead of sleeping.

At the appointed time, she goes in her room. Earlier in the day we've set out clothes for the next day and made sure there's water next to her bed. She just hops into bed and we kiss goodnight. We ignore all "my foot hurts" etc. Everything is answered with "go to sleep, that will make it feel better."

Then we turn all the lights off in the house and go into our bedroom. My husband and I get our alone time and we often watch TV or read. It's nice and relaxing. We've found her more eager to be in bed when she knows that we're in our room.

We are very matter-of-fact about bedtime now. Doing extra snuggling is what we would LIKE to do when she's upset, but that seems to draw attention to the upset and make it worse. We used to think she needed more attention or more snuggles. That always made it worse! We do all our snuggling together on the couch, with lots of love to go around.

Bedtime is short, matter-of-fact, and no-nonsense.

Good luck!