Thread: Tantrums from a 5 year old

Help!! My dd is 5 and has never really had tantrums before, well before a couple of weeks ago that is!! Now she seems irritable, stroppy (in a teenage kind of way) and has thrown a few fits that i would have expected of a two year old. Is this normal?? I've been trying to make sure she gets to sleep earlier (although she's often still awake at 10pm, but sleeps til 8am), and she has a good diet. I've asked her if she has any worries or problems, the only one being that she misses her friend who returned home to USA a month ago, and now i am just lost as to what to do.
Any ideas please??
Thank you x

Sympathies September - this happened to my dd too - for no apparent reason - she never had tantrums - but started around the time she was 5 - she is now 7 and has them off to a tee

Will watch this thread with interest.

Noooo, i can't have this til she's 7 !!! Although actually she's been lovely today, so maybe yesterday's monster tantrum scared her out of them ...............it's possible right?? She woke up in the night last night really upset about it and then woke me up to tell me she loves me..............there must be hope!!

what do you do when she has a tantrum? Perhaps you need a "battle plan", steps you take when she behaves like this? Like we do with a 2 year old

Minitilly isn't tantrumming but sometimes he talks to me with a right tone.... more like a 15 year old

Oooh a battle plan would be good!! I usually talk to her really gently, ask her if i can help her, offer a hug or a quiet space, yesterday i asked her to stop as she was hurting my feelings (she was yelling 'i hate you' in the middle of the shopping mall) , then i said to her that we needed to go home as i couldn't continue like that, so we left. I actually have no idea what to do. She went into melt down yesterday because she couldn't decide which toy basket to get (there were two designs) and she got so frustrated. I sat on the floor in the store with her talking about her room and how each one would look, but she still couldn't choose, so i suggested thinking about it overnight and going back for one.....................then she got angry, yelled she hated me and we went home.
She has never had tantrums before and now we've had 3 in two weeks. I feel like i must have let her down somehow, or there must be something i've done to trigger it, i don't know what though. She is usually so sweet and gentle

At the risk of being shot, I think you are being too kind and too gentle
Perhaps her tantrums don't have some underlying cause, beyond her controlling you by bad behaviour? It could just be attention seeking

I would certainly ensure she knows that whilst you love her very very much, and you will help her if there is anything upsetting her, you will not tolerate rude and bad behaviour and that there will be consequences

With things like the basket, perhaps you should narrow her choices, I get in a tizz when I can't make my mind up about things! If she couldn't decide, perhaps you should have picked for her - by prevariacating she was getting lots of attention, then by leaving it overnight, she got more - but no basket. Perhaps you should have given her 2 minutes to decide, and if she couldn't, chosen for her. Then when she later said she would have preferred the other and it was all your fault, tell her she had a chance to choose and thats the end of it

just my thoughts, can't guarentee it will work but I think its worth a try

I'm not going to shoot you - you make a very good point, and i do think there might be something in it - one of dd's friends does the same thing and i always think she is manipulating her mother ..............urghhh, it's going to be hard to be less kind and gentle , it's one of my weaknesses, but I will give it a try and see how i get on.

Thank you Tilly

welcome

I have a spare cattle prod, if that is of any use

Good luck!

Now THAT'S a good idea

Alex has total meltdowns over stupid things - usually socks (not the favorite ones) or which top she can wear (ie - not the filthy dirty one)....and so on.

I usually ignore it (Right then, I''m going downstairs now) and after five minutes or so she composes herself and returns right as rain.

Sometimes I reason with her (the day she stropped because I insisted the back of the car seat went back on the booster bottom as the belt was not sitting right on her shoulder I pointed out that if we had a crash and she slipped out of the belt she may end up dead, or not able to walk!)

Occasionally I lose it and shout!

The thing I do try to do is stand my ground on important points (like car seats!). She still strops. Hopefully it will improve at some point!