Pittsburgh Nesties
4EvR&4AlWz
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
4 year olds and emotions
What are your opinions on the emotions of 4 year olds? I feel like DD expresses herself well in all aspects (what she wants, likes, doesn't like, etc) except her feelings/emotions but do 4 year olds know feelings? I can tell she's sad, upset or being quiet and when I ask what's wrong, she says "nothing" or that she "doesn't want to talk about it." I know as adults, we all sometimes want to be left alone. However, DD does this with all of her emotions. I don't want to force her to talk about it (the other day, she said she needed "alone time" and was just quietly reading a book and another time she had "a rough day, mommy; I just need a hug." I want to respect her and give her the space she needs, but at the same time, I'd appreciate hearing how your kids react to emotions. I know she's especially reserved when it comes to being scared, upset, afraid and won't talk about it. She's very sensitive and cries, even if we tell her "no,"if she doesn't make it to the bathroom in time, or if she drops a glass, even though it was an accident and we don't and have never yelled for accidents (I have yelled at her when she ran across the street in front of a car....that was a safety issue) but for accidents, she's never been yelled at and we talk about how it was an accident with her and that she's not in trouble but she still gets really worked up and very emotional and hard to settle down but won't talk about why or what was bothering her or what/why it made her so upset.
Some of this is that she doesn't want to make mommy or daddy mad and frankly, her little sister is a brute so we have started to "discipline" the baby so that she knows we are doing something about DD2's grabbing a toy or hitting if she wants DD's snack.
Thoughts? Hope I conveyed this well but it's so hard as a parent.
DD had stayed in her bed this month and we told her before if she stayed in her bed the entire night until last night, she could get her ears pierced tonight. Well, wouldn't you know last night was the night she was crying and wanted mommy to sleep with her. So now, what to do about the ears? I hate punishing her by not getting her ears pierced because she was scared (because she did say she was scared last night) but at the same time, mommy and daddy need sleep and these middle of the night crying for mommy to come sleep with her has got to end. Any thoughts on that one? What would you do?
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Re: 4 year olds and emotions
I think that four is hard because they are SO much more mature than they were as toddlers. They can express their needs clearly, they can act rationally (sometimes), they can understand consequences and they have many moments when they behave like little people instead of irrational kids. At the same time, when they have “big feelings”, it can be really hard for them to process them and they can just default to either tantrum mode or bad behavior or refusing to communicate. It’s like the big kid mode just “shuts down” and you can’t get through to them until they get past it.
The other hard thing is that when they are this age it feels like we should be able to “fix” all of the remaining issues from toddlerhood. I’ve learned from Todd that you can’t. He had accidents regularly for a year and a half after he started wearing underwear. No rewards or consequences or reminders or incentives or anything could stop it. He had to choose to get on board. He finally did this fall. And also, bedtime. It has been a long, drawn out process with him and for the longest time we had to stay in his room until he was asleep. Nothing we did could fix it. And in the past few weeks we’ve been able to leave his room after 10 minutes and he falls asleep alone.
For the overnight situation I would offer B a deal. Let her know that you understand that she’ll need you overnight on rare occasions and that you don’t want her to call for you every night. Then make the deal that if she stays in bed for X more days (you decide how many) then she can get her ears pierced. This way, she still knows the importance of staying in bed but you aren’t making her start all over based on being scared one night.
For the other emotional stuff, I would talk to her about the way that some things make you feel. Make sure that you are sharing your emotions the way that you want her to share hers. “Mommy is frustrated right now because Crosby made a mess in the hallway” or “Mommy is sad, too, that London grabbed the toy out of your hand”, etc, etc. It may be another year or two until she can put her feelings into words like that, but at least you will have helped demonstrate a range of emotions that she can begin to process. For now, she mostly just has “big feelings” and may not have the ability to put them into words.
So either I gave great advice and no one has anything to add or my advice was awful but ya'll don't want to disagree with me publicly. ;-)
I agree with you! Four year olds can do so much that I think some times we forget that they are still very little. DD is 4 1/2 and still has trouble expressing her emotions. I think her emotions confuse her or overwhelm her some times. For example: Dh was away for work for a whole week which is not a normal situation. I know dd missed him very much but instead of saying, "I miss daddy", "I am sad that daddy isn't here" she was mean and moody all week and refused to Skype or talk to him on the phone. When he got home, it was like the weight of the world was lifted off her shoulders.