Need Advice On DCG Behavior

[ihop]

I've had dcg age 3 for a year. She knows all of the rules and follows them well. Is rarely in trouble for anything. She went a few days using her hands for hitting when a new child started but that's it.

This last week and a half she has been horrible. Mom says no change at home to set it off and that she is behaving fine. No new kids or anything at daycare.
She is the master at surrender to the baby but all week she has been screaming at the babies for coming near her, pushing babies down and taking toys, throwing toys, touching baby things, throwing raging fits at meal time if I dint serve what she wants. Getting up from time out and going back to play without permission. Telling me no when I ask her to do anything. Just everything.

I've separated her with toys to play alone and he screams and encourages the others to misbehave from the other room. Tried time outs. Talking to her bout why she is acting this way. She just says I dunno. When I ask if she things she is allowed to do things she says yes.

After her charging a child and pushing her down for a toy that dcg was done playing with and had cleaned up, I put her on the couch and told her I couldn't trust her to play safe so she needed to stay there until I could come back to watch her. When I let her get back down she was playing about 60 seconds before a baby crawled near her and she kicked to her and pushed her away with her feet.
Sending her home isn't going to help but I will next week if this continues for safety reasons but I am at a loss now.

Anyone have suggestions on what to do? How to talk to her about it?

[ihop]

Bump. Anyone?

[dalman]

It sounds like she is jealous of the babies, for whatever reason. But still, this is a huge liability issue, so I would have her shadow me. She would never be out of my sight. She might like having a little more attention, being that she is with you all the time, she will get the attention she is seeming to desire.

[permanentvacation]

How many kids are there that are her age? It sounds like there are more babies than kids her age. When kids are 3 and older, their play is more thought out, organized, and planned as to what they are going to do to act out their concept. For example, a 2 yr old and younger, just put Legos together randomly just to practice hooking them together. But a 3 yr old and older thinks ahead, decides that they are going to build a zoo for their animals, they are going to build an area for their lion, a different area for their elephant, etc. They then collect their legos and start building out their planned concept. Then along comes a baby who grabs up and destroys their elephant area! That REALLY ticks the older kids off! After a while, they get tired of the babies destroying their stuff and if you don't keep the babies away from them, they start being mean to the babies at first just to defend their toys from being destroyed by the babies, then just because the babies have gotten on their last nerve, they've had enough of the babies and don't want the babies anywhere near them.

It might be that the girl has been at your daycare so long, she thinks she's in charge and can boss the others around.

Often times, parents LIE about things at home. So, even though they said nothing's going on differently at home, you really don't know. Plus, something might be going on that the parents don't think the child knows about. Like if the parents are arguing after the child is asleep, they might not know that their arguing has waken her up and she really is hearing it.

Since she's been in your daycare for so long, she might be bored with the toys and activities there. Or she might be bored with the same schedule/routine.

I ask the children why they are doing the things they do wrong too, but sometimes, they truly don't know why they are acting out. Often times it's out of frustration over something, but little kids can't connect the dots enough to verbally tell us that since such and such happened, he's been more irritated and frustrated. At that age, they just can't figure all that out yet and verbalize their feelings yet.

Here are some suggestions of changes to try...

Separate the babies from the older kids somehow. If you don't have 2 different rooms you can use, rearrange furniture/toy boxes/toy shelves to give the children newborns through age 2 in one room and the 3's -6 in another room.

Be on the babies like white on rice to keep them from taking the older kids toys.

Get some new toys or do some new activities for the next week or so and see if that makes a difference.

I always keep some toys stored away until the kids start getting bored with the ones they have in the daycare room and then switch them. I bring out the same toys they played with 2/3 months ago, but since they haven't played with them for a while, it's like Christmas to them!

Do some activities that you haven't done in a while. It's summer now, so maybe have a picnic outside, one thing that was fun for my kids was a pretend picnic where the kids shaped paper into different shapes of food, like rolled a few papers together in the shape of corn on the cob, then paint the paper food the color of the food, then have a paper pretend picnic.

Maybe switch your schedule around a little just to get away from the blah of same stuff, different day.

Have you asked the child about her home life? You can't directly ask if there's any problems at home, but you can ask what she does when she goes home, who she plays with at home, where she plays at home, in her room, in the living room, you can ask if Mommy or Daddy play with her, if she plays outside in her yard, if she goes to the park, things like that. I often talk to my kids about what they did over the weekend or on some random day of the week, I'll ask what they did the night before after they were picked up from daycare.

[Unregistered]

maybe she's not been feeling very well

or maybe something IS happening at home that mom isn't aware of (or is hiding).


OR:

Is her mom pregnant? Sometimes babies can feel this kind of thing and act crazy. Even before Mom knows.

It's so hard to say...

[ihop]

There are three children her age and two babies.

[ihop]

I appreciate all of the feedback. Mom is definitely not pregnant. We have two play rooms with a gate. The older kids can go between rooms so they don't have to be with the babies if they don't want to but she chooses to stay in there. When I put her in the other room she still picks fights and yells at the older kids. Almost all of the children have been with me the same amount of time and I rotate toys often. Her home life it chaos but always has been.
She has school age siblings so I am starting to think she is acting out because they are around more. And to be honest are extremely aggressive.

[Unregistered]

Growth spurt? Maybe needs more food and more sleep? Put her for nap a bit earlier and see if it helps.

Generally if a normally good child is acting out that much, I find that exhaustion is the culprit.