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Another Day another meltdown....
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 440809" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>You're a week ahead of us with the holidays. Qld is often a week this way or that, I've noticed.</p><p></p><p>Why did you not want him to have peanut butter? A problem with kids like ours, is they need to understand reasons. Some people object to giving reasons, thinking that the kid has to learn some time to accept authority, but I've found that while you can eventually force the issue with some kids, it has the opposite effect with others. </p><p></p><p>When they can see that there is a valid reason this time, and last time, they're more likely to accept you have a valid reason next time too. And your end result was that he felt he had won.</p><p></p><p>My mother-in-law often would use that phrase - "He's won now." But she would use it at a time when I was not competing with my child, so it was not a matter of victory or otherwise. I eventually figured that if I ever got to the mind-set of thinking it was a competition between me and my kid, I had already lost the war.</p><p></p><p>I note you did scrape his room out of potential missiles. But I'm not sure if he will get the connection.</p><p></p><p>I would go back to what you wanted out of tat interaction, and analyse it - did you get what you wanted? How will it go next time? It is better to avoid the meltdown in the first place, than to need to rely on your safety measures as a priority. Not that it's wrong to have such safety measures, but I think you need more - you need to find ways to prevent the meltdowns happening. And that is mostly you finding a better way to get what you want from him. Also perhaps rethinking why you want what you want from him. </p><p></p><p>The important battles - grabbing a kid who is about to run across the street in front of a truck - they are almost unavoidable. But we need to keep total number of battles to a minimum, which means that for most other stuff, where it really is no skin off your nose, let him have what he wants. For now. Teach him to accept being grabbed to sve him from a truck, or other equally vital things, and leave anything less important until he is accepting authority in urgent safety matters without melting down. Then as he is handling it, add one more issue each time.</p><p></p><p>A nephew of mine would only eat Vegemite sandwiches. So his mother tried aversion therapy - nothing but Vegemite sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and tea. His siblings got a wide range, including roast chicken for dinner. She figured the boy would crack after three days. At the three week mark she gave up. He's 40 now and still loves Vegemite sandwiches! But trying to force him didn't work either. She had to negotiate. "If you eat your roast chicken tonight, you can have two Vegemite sandwiches in your school lunchbox tomorrow."</p><p></p><p>The same thing can work with the peanut butter sandwich - "If you eat the carrot sticks I have for you, you can have the peanut butter sandwich that is here on this plate, waiting for you." It says to the kid, "I am so confident you will do what I ask that I have already got your sandwich prepared for you."</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 440809, member: 1991"] You're a week ahead of us with the holidays. Qld is often a week this way or that, I've noticed. Why did you not want him to have peanut butter? A problem with kids like ours, is they need to understand reasons. Some people object to giving reasons, thinking that the kid has to learn some time to accept authority, but I've found that while you can eventually force the issue with some kids, it has the opposite effect with others. When they can see that there is a valid reason this time, and last time, they're more likely to accept you have a valid reason next time too. And your end result was that he felt he had won. My mother-in-law often would use that phrase - "He's won now." But she would use it at a time when I was not competing with my child, so it was not a matter of victory or otherwise. I eventually figured that if I ever got to the mind-set of thinking it was a competition between me and my kid, I had already lost the war. I note you did scrape his room out of potential missiles. But I'm not sure if he will get the connection. I would go back to what you wanted out of tat interaction, and analyse it - did you get what you wanted? How will it go next time? It is better to avoid the meltdown in the first place, than to need to rely on your safety measures as a priority. Not that it's wrong to have such safety measures, but I think you need more - you need to find ways to prevent the meltdowns happening. And that is mostly you finding a better way to get what you want from him. Also perhaps rethinking why you want what you want from him. The important battles - grabbing a kid who is about to run across the street in front of a truck - they are almost unavoidable. But we need to keep total number of battles to a minimum, which means that for most other stuff, where it really is no skin off your nose, let him have what he wants. For now. Teach him to accept being grabbed to sve him from a truck, or other equally vital things, and leave anything less important until he is accepting authority in urgent safety matters without melting down. Then as he is handling it, add one more issue each time. A nephew of mine would only eat Vegemite sandwiches. So his mother tried aversion therapy - nothing but Vegemite sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and tea. His siblings got a wide range, including roast chicken for dinner. She figured the boy would crack after three days. At the three week mark she gave up. He's 40 now and still loves Vegemite sandwiches! But trying to force him didn't work either. She had to negotiate. "If you eat your roast chicken tonight, you can have two Vegemite sandwiches in your school lunchbox tomorrow." The same thing can work with the peanut butter sandwich - "If you eat the carrot sticks I have for you, you can have the peanut butter sandwich that is here on this plate, waiting for you." It says to the kid, "I am so confident you will do what I ask that I have already got your sandwich prepared for you." Marg [/QUOTE]
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