How to Help a 5-Year-old Become More Flexible?

Somewhere along the way I think parents have gotten the idea that our main goal is to make these little guys happy. Them being happy is great, but not nearly as important as making them well adjusted people with coping and problem solving skills. Remember you are eventually going to be turning him out into a world where people won't love him like you do and some will even hate him for no better reason than that they can. I read an article the other day about the importance of teaching kids to see the bright side of a situation. It helps them to look to other alternatives to a problem, it helps them to think positively in a bad situation and not just shut down at the first sign of a disappointment. It suggested that you start a dialogue with your young one when things don't go the way you planned. For instance, "It's raining today so we can't go to the park like we planned. That means we get to come up with fun things to do at home. I was thinking we could have a "carpet picnic" for lunch or maybe we could make a tent in the living room and camp out. Can you think of any fun things we could do?"

The other thing I would suggest is strong consequences for a melt down. In the case of the yellow floatie I would say, "You have a couple of choices here. You can choose a different floatie or we can leave right now. If you choose a different floatie you can get in the water and have tons of fun. If we leave we will go straight home and you will go to your room for thr entire time of the swim class. That is one hour. You will not come back to class until you tell your teacher you are sorry for being rude and disrespectful and I will make sure that for that first class you DON'T get the yellow floatie. Either way you are going to at least one class without that floatie. You have one minute to choose and then I get to choose and I will choose going home." Then follow through with exactly what you say you are going to do. He needs to see there are worse things that not getting that floatie and you need to call his bluff.

My son can be very stubborn and stuck in his ways also. He just recently turned 5. I say pick your battles but when you do pick them, don't give in, and if he won't then don't allow him to participate. We have less disagreements when I'm stern with almost everything verses when I let things go a little bit. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of choices they can make on their own, and I would rather give him a choice than no choice at all but the choices when he gets going are a, b or sit down alone until you can decide a or b. I find the nights to be sooooo much easier when he takes a nap. Even a small 45 minute nap makes the entire day so much better!

This sounds like a normal almost 5 year old to me who is trying to get his way and stomps his feet to get what he wants. We would all do this if it was sucessful! It is wonderful that he has the chance to be disapointed by things like the color of his floatie, it could be much more difficult if it were being disapointed that Mom and Dad could not feed him that day.

Take this as your chance to teach him that life is going to disapoint him sometimes, and being unhappy in a safe place is an huge gift that will eventually make him a well rounded kid.

When our fit thrower was about this age, we only planed outings that we were willing to sacrifice to the greater good of teaching her important lessons. When she would act up like this, we just left, and after a while she began to take us seriously. If you never follow through, and they think that they can make you misserable enough to fix it all for them, they will keep going to that well. The choice belongs to you!

M.

P.,

It's so hard these days to teach kids about loss and compromise. I mean, c'mon Diego succeeds EVERY FLIPPIN TIME.
But I think it's a long process. We tried to teach our daughter that things don't always go her way and she can't be upset about it. For instance, we would often drive by some railroad tracks by our house and more often than not, there would be no train. No exciting long loud train to look at. "Oh well, no trains today" we would say. And she got used to it. Now don't get me wrong, seeing a train wasn't the be all end all of her life, but what I'm saying is we started small. Something that didn't mean so much. That way, we could refer to it for something that DID mean a lot to her. I mean, those princess pajamas are not going to be clean and ready to wear every single night. There are going to be some days (most days) that they are on the basement floor in the bottom of a pile of dirty laundry. But I can tell her "Honey, some days it's like the train. Some days you see the train, some days we don't. Some days you can wear your pajamas, some days they are going to be in the laundry." The more he sees you shrug things off, the better he will be able to adapt to his own loss.

Hope this helps a little,
Jen