My third child is a very active 4 year old. He has been difficult since he started to move around (walked, climbed, and ran at 10 months) and has been a high stimulation kid almost since birth. He was the only baby I knew who LOVED Chucky Cheese.
He is just a really tough kid to live with. I don’t think he is ADHD because he goes to a parochial preschool and is an angel there. I am amazed to see him sitting close to other children and not jabbing them. His teachers have had nothing but wonderful things to say about him (I think it is a phantom child they have there). At home, he is somewhat impulsive—always doing something he shouldn’t. He doesn’t listen very well. We are always punishing him and it doesn’t seem to make much difference. Typically we send him to the stairs (away from activity) or to his room. The only good thing about this approach is that we cool off. He is the kind of kid who just grates on your nerves after awhile and both my husband and I find ourselves yelling at him a lot. He is a pusher—which doesn’t help.
Anyway, I wondered if any parents had ideas about how to make homelife better. He is clearly a very smart kid with superior auditory and visual processing skills so that is not the problem.
ONly at school does he seem to be an angel (he told me once that his teacher told him he was an angel). Other parents, relatives ect. tell us that we really have our work cut out for us.
Beth
Re: very active 4 year old who grates on our nerves
Interesting. We have been thinking that the school angel diagnoses precluded ADHD, although he has symptoms of it. We have been blaming our parenting. Any insights into the split personality?
Re: very active 4 year old who grates on our nerves
My youngest is a lot like your 4 yr old, he is now almost 10 and although charming most of the time, he can make me nuts the rest of the time. He was just fine in kgarten, I think his teacher was very good at structure and was just stern enough to keep him from being his usual self. She used a monkey puppet to discipline, my son told me he hated the ‘monk monk’. She had only good things to say, meanwhile, we practically needed a seat belt for the dinner table, he couldn’t watch a tv show without a costume and doing all the activities in the show plus running around the house during the commercials. He started getting unhappy faces in 1st grade for ‘talking while the teacher was talking’. This is a kid who talked in the car whether anyone was listening or not, nonstop. He is either talking or making noises or running around. He was dxed in 2nd grade, I kept asking his teacher about his behavior, she was more easy going about the talking(has an adder herself) but we started seeing him making silly mistakes in copying assignments or doing math problems, it took her a while to say maybe it would be worth looking into(she didn’t bring up add, I did, I have an older son who is add/inattentive). We also managed to get him back into speech per the doc’s strong suggestion, he had been in at age 3 to 4, had practically no consonants.Didn’t stop him from talking though :o)! There is a definite difference when he is on his meds and when he is not, the first time I took both my kids to the grocery store after taking meds, I couldn’t believe they were the same kids. Nothing knocked off the shelves, no WWF in the aisles, no picking on each other, they were very helpful and sweet. Amazing. He is still silly, and charming but not nearly so obnoxious. Good luck with your little one.
Re: very active 4 year old who grates on our nerves
Hmm, interesting. My son was the opposite — pretty good at home but irritatingly stubborn and recalcitrant at school. Medication has helped with the school attitude, along with the right amount of structure and lots of positive reinforcement. I wonder if there is something in the atmosphere of your son’s preschool to which he is responding positively. You might take a visit to his classroom to watch him (and his teachers) in action. Lots of kids with ADHD are hungry for a contingency management plan that imposes the order and structure that they are not capable of generating for themselves. Most of these plans feature rewards for good behavior along with clearly defined penalties for failing to meet standards. All involve a certain amount of ignoring of “bad” behavior as a means of eliminating the attention it draws and focusing instead on noticing, and rewarding, good behavior. I don’t know if your son has ADHD. Lots of 4 year olds are maddeningly active and naughty, but parental instincts are usually correct and yours certainly are telling you that there is a problem. I don’t know if ADHD can be diagnosed so early, but I’m thinking it couldn’t hurt to try some of the behavioral methods used for kids with the diagnosis.
Andrea
Re: very active 4 year old who grates on our nerves
Do you have any suggestions on what I could read? I think you may be on to something. My son was complaining the other day that he doesn’t get the same kind of stickers for being good as he did last year. We have tried rewarding good behavior but it was more like extinguishing the bad. For example, we made up a chart for days without potty talk. There weren’t any. Maybe he needs a different sort of structure. I have never believed in rewarding kids for doing what they ought to do anyway but perhaps I need to reconsider.
I am not sure that he is ADHD at all. But I think he does have some of the characteristics and thus whatever works well with kids with it might help us with his behavior.
Re: very active 4 year old who grates on our nerves
You might try this link to start: www.schwablearning.org/SchwabLearning.asp?id=337
Andrea
Re: very active 4 year old who grates on our nerves
Thanks.
He just learned to ride a two wheeler (insisted on trying his cousins and just took off) and we’ve been riding with him around the block after dinner. I don’t know if he is just worn out or what but it seems to be improving his behavior.
Re: bike riding (long!)
Well, that’s what I was going to say! Seriously though, getting him involved in physical activity is an excellent idea. I had a friend who’s son was “off the charts” with hyperactivity- once he began daily swim team practice (age 7) she was able to gradually reduce his medication. My kid did great with a trampoline and she used to “cheer” her spelling words. Structure and predictability at home will help (I know, hard to do when siblings are going in different directions— but your rules need to be consistently enforced with this kid, even if you’ve been able to be more flexible with the others). Research shows that kids with ADHD do best with rewards AND consequences. So he should earn points, stickers, whatever, but he should also lose them for inappropriate behavior (like potty talk!). You will see this referred to as “response cost” in educational literature. You can gradually make it more “costly” to earn a reward— but he needs to know exactly what it is he’s working towards and what it takes to get there— concentrate on just one or two behaviors at a time. A final suggestion is to let some things go, “pick your battles”—stick to just a few important rules- e.g. there is no law that says 4 year olds must sit at the dinner table, maybe he is just not capable of doing that right now. Finally, don’t let that “angel at school” syndrome make you feel like this is your fault! Maybe school is still a novelty now, maybe he’s scared of what the teacher might do (but he knows how far mom and dad will go, and he has survived). They tried to tell me my “angel” couldn’t possibly have ADHD— guess what, she does!
Re: bike riding (long!)
Thanks for the helpful suggestions as well as why the bike riding may be helping. We will look for a replacement activity when the biking is not such a novelty. This all makes sense. A few weeks ago I took him with his older brother to soccer practice. I ran him all over the adjoining field. My husband remarked with amazement that he didn’t fight about going to bed at all!!!
Just one comment- My son’s second grade teacher used those exact same words. “He’s a little angel!” Finally, just last year in the 9th grade did I finally get a diagnosis to his aggravating personality. ADHD!