Wwyd?

[Josiegirl]

Dcg(comes with a sibling) is 3 1/2. She has speech delays and suffered some pre and post birth trauma. Basically she's a happy little girl. BUT she's not getting the fact we cannot pinch or push or scratch or kick. She went through a biting phase but doesn't do that anymore. But she's just not getting over these mean behaviors. I've looked for causes and it could be many different ones. Attention, anger, being tired or hungry, no reason at all sometimes. At pick-up one day she was giving hugs and pinched someone, so she had to go say sorry and pinched her again.
It's every day. As soon as she does it, I'll sit her at the table with crayons and paper, tell her she cannot play with her friends if she does that. Yesterday, I put her on the couch for the last hour, with books, and wouldn't let her get off. I try to keep her separated after the first incident but it's challenging. I'm potty-training 3 dcks at the moment(attempting to anyways). If I bring her to the bathroom every single time, she'd still get someone, even just in passing. I put her at the kitchen table to color or in TO, and she'd still get someone in passing.
I've tried holding her hand and keeping her with me but honestly?? To do that all day long is exhausting and unrealistic. I've thought about blocking off a space just for her but wonder if that is more harmful than anything. She needs to learn acceptable behavior and isolating her from the dcks all day long isn't going to help IMO.
It's getting terribly frustrating for me and I feel bad that every single day when the parents pick up, it's the same ole story. Clearly, I need new ideas cause my old ones are not working. :confused:
They are having her evaluated in Sept. Her speech therapist is trying to convince the parents to enroll her in prek. I'm wondering more and more if that isn't a better option for her?
I'm hoping when the SAs return to school, the louder atmosphere may calm her down a bit and our days will be very different but then again I won't have the 11 and 12 yo dcgs to help me. I just don't know.
Any advice or wisdom??
Thank you....

[Gemma]

I'm going through the very same thing with one of my dcks!
I've tried all the things you said you've tried and nothing works! He gets a fresh start every morning, but if I see even an attempt to cause harm to others, he gets alone activities for the rest of the morning!...he gets another chance to play with friends in the afternoon.
dcm and dcd both know I'm taking it one day at a time, hoping to make it to the end of the day without calling for pick up....I told them to look for alternative care, just in case that day comes, where I can't take it anymore, but you know what? ..talking to the family and knowing I can end this with just one phone call, has made things so much easier to bare, unless he gets worse, I don't think I'll ever Term.

big hug to you, hopefully you get some great advises from the others!:hug:

[spedmommy4]

Dcg(comes with a sibling) is 3 1/2. She has speech delays and suffered some pre and post birth trauma. Basically she's a happy little girl. BUT she's not getting the fact we cannot pinch or push or scratch or kick. She went through a biting phase but doesn't do that anymore. But she's just not getting over these mean behaviors. I've looked for causes and it could be many different ones. Attention, anger, being tired or hungry, no reason at all sometimes. At pick-up one day she was giving hugs and pinched someone, so she had to go say sorry and pinched her again.
It's every day. As soon as she does it, I'll sit her at the table with crayons and paper, tell her she cannot play with her friends if she does that. Yesterday, I put her on the couch for the last hour, with books, and wouldn't let her get off. I try to keep her separated after the first incident but it's challenging. I'm potty-training 3 dcks at the moment(attempting to anyways). If I bring her to the bathroom every single time, she'd still get someone, even just in passing. I put her at the kitchen table to color or in TO, and she'd still get someone in passing.
I've tried holding her hand and keeping her with me but honestly?? To do that all day long is exhausting and unrealistic. I've thought about blocking off a space just for her but wonder if that is more harmful than anything. She needs to learn acceptable behavior and isolating her from the dcks all day long isn't going to help IMO.
It's getting terribly frustrating for me and I feel bad that every single day when the parents pick up, it's the same ole story. Clearly, I need new ideas cause my old ones are not working. :confused:
They are having her evaluated in Sept. Her speech therapist is trying to convince the parents to enroll her in prek. I'm wondering more and more if that isn't a better option for her?
I'm hoping when the SAs return to school, the louder atmosphere may calm her down a bit and our days will be very different but then again I won't have the 11 and 12 yo dcgs to help me. I just don't know.
Any advice or wisdom??
Thank you....

They are having her evaluated in Sept. This is a good first step. Kids who have experienced birth trauma can experience delays that appear during the pre-k years. As long as the therapist is referring to a special education pre-k and not a childcare center pre-k, that could be a a very good option for the little girl.

In the meantime, here are some suggestions. DCG is going to need explicit teaching and lots of practice on socially acceptable ways to interact with kids. For a typical kid, you can get away with separating for hitting. A typical kid learns from older peers. A typically developing child wants to continue playing an with associate the hitting with removal from the play area. A child with social delays may not.

So tell her, using really simple language, what is appropriate. For example, dcg, he wants you to be soft. (then show her soft) Dcg, say please or my turn for the toy. Or, he wants to play by himself, let's play with x.

She may need a lot of practice around these skills. I have one like this and I spend some time sitting next to him during morning free play and afternoon free play. I find it's practical I can designate an average of 15 minutes in the morning and afternoon, and I have seen huge improvements.

As for apologizing, it may not mean much to her right now, depending on her language skills. For my little ones with language delays, I usually take them with me to check on the injured child. We ask if they are okay and get anything the child needs to help them feel better.

HTH

[Josiegirl]

Thank you!
I can't wait to see what the evaluation shows. Sometimes she seems behind then the next minute she does something that amazes me. (she beat me at Bop-It the other day ). She can be very polite, saying thank you without being reminded. In many ways, she appears to be a sweet happy little girl who needs some speech help. Other times it's as if she is angry about everything. Dcm says that some of her half-siblings seem to have a rough 6 weeks or so surrounding the time of traumatic events within their household. It's as if on some sub-conscious level, their brain remembers what happened. But her aggression isn't subsiding at all.
A lot of the things she does makes us wonder if it's just normal behavior(selective hearing, tantrums, aggression) or trauma. Hopefully, the appt. will help us learn more.
As far as preschool, it would be in the town school, so I'm sure there'd be more support services for her.

[Unregistered]

Thank you!
I can't wait to see what the evaluation shows. Sometimes she seems behind then the next minute she does something that amazes me. (she beat me at Bop-It the other day ). She can be very polite, saying thank you without being reminded. In many ways, she appears to be a sweet happy little girl who needs some speech help. Other times it's as if she is angry about everything. Dcm says that some of her half-siblings seem to have a rough 6 weeks or so surrounding the time of traumatic events within their household. It's as if on some sub-conscious level, their brain remembers what happened. But her aggression isn't subsiding at all.
A lot of the things she does makes us wonder if it's just normal behavior(selective hearing, tantrums, aggression) or trauma. Hopefully, the appt. will help us learn more.
As far as preschool, it would be in the town school, so I'm sure there'd be more support services for her.

She reminds me of my stepdaughter. SD is 5.4 and was recently diagnosed with a whole slew of things. She has a speech delay also and any time we tried to discipline her by putting her in time out she would stand in the corner and just scream for up to 45 minutes. This went on for over a year. Every single time you try to discipline her she would scream for anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes. If you tried to interact with her at all during that time it would cause a total meltdown complete with slapping herself, kicking at us or the wall, and screaming like we were peeling her skin off for up to a full hour. It got to the point where we had to start restraining her when she acted like that.

She went through a hitting phase that may or may not be over. I would notice things like this spring around her 5th birthday she still couldn't peddle a bike with training wheels unless she was staring at her feet despite us having worked on it multiple times. There were a lot of milestones that she was delayed with especially gross motor skills and she has some pretty obvious sensory issues. However, last summer at 4.3 I taught her how to tie her shoes in a half hour. It was amazing. I still have trouble believing it.

What I have noticed is teaching her socially acceptable behavior takes FOREVER. You have to tell her over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. It takes months and months for her to learn socially appropriate behavior skills. It is SO frustrating. Especially since if you ask her what she is doing wrong or what happens when she does x behavior 95% of the time she can tell you exactly what she is doing wrong and what the consequence is but it takes months and months of that before it actually starts modifying her behavior. It has gotten to the point where I have often wondered if she truly doesn't know or if she is basically flipping us the proverbial bird and saying I don't have to listen to you I can do whatever I want.

We got her evaluated by the ISD right around her 4th birthday (which involved nothing more than 45 minutes or so observing her at daycare) and they said everything was fine. Developmentally she was right where she should be. There was nothing to worry about, the tantrums were all emotional. Hour long tantrums to the point we had to restrain her were all emotional. I don't care what anyone says that is not normal.

Anyway, we eventually had to take her to a private psychiatrist for evaluation and she has now been diagnosed with anxiety, an expressive/receptive language disorder, PDD-NOS, and sensory integration disorder.

If the parents are getting DCK evaluated by the ISD and don't get any help try to encourage them to go elsewhere. You said DCK is already getting speech therapy so hopefully she will get a quality evaluation.