S
Sasha
Guest
Good morning (well, it is here in Australia anyway!). We have a sweet 3 year old girl, who our GP suspects of having Aspergers - we are still waiting to see a paediatrician (only 3 weeks to go, thank heavens..).
We used to have social problems (wouldn't talk outside the house, no eye contact etc). But now the hardest thing to deal with are her unpredictable anxiety episodes. She doesn't like sauce of any kind, and last night I forgot to not make her dinner with sauce. When she saw it on the plate, she had an anxiety episode, sobbing, crying, kicking, screaming.... We try to deal with the anxious issue calmly, but when she kicks people as part of her tantrums, we have to come down hard on this. It is so difficult to separate the 2 - to not punish her for anxiety, but to discourage the violent behaviour that comes with it.
All the advice I have read online is to talk to the child about anxiety, and do breathing exercises etc. I just don't see how to make this work with a 3 yr old in the middle of an anxiety tantrum?
I would love to hear how others with small kids deal with this. She hits her baby brother too, and other than keeping them separated I have a lot of trouble knowing how to make this stop....
My sleep-deprived mind is not up to dealing with all of this some days...
THanks for the opportunity to just put this in writing,
Sasha
Oh, and PS - what does 'difficult child' stand for? I have read it in a lot of the threads here, but am clueless?
We used to have social problems (wouldn't talk outside the house, no eye contact etc). But now the hardest thing to deal with are her unpredictable anxiety episodes. She doesn't like sauce of any kind, and last night I forgot to not make her dinner with sauce. When she saw it on the plate, she had an anxiety episode, sobbing, crying, kicking, screaming.... We try to deal with the anxious issue calmly, but when she kicks people as part of her tantrums, we have to come down hard on this. It is so difficult to separate the 2 - to not punish her for anxiety, but to discourage the violent behaviour that comes with it.
All the advice I have read online is to talk to the child about anxiety, and do breathing exercises etc. I just don't see how to make this work with a 3 yr old in the middle of an anxiety tantrum?
I would love to hear how others with small kids deal with this. She hits her baby brother too, and other than keeping them separated I have a lot of trouble knowing how to make this stop....
My sleep-deprived mind is not up to dealing with all of this some days...
THanks for the opportunity to just put this in writing,
Sasha
Oh, and PS - what does 'difficult child' stand for? I have read it in a lot of the threads here, but am clueless?