My daughter is a slowpoke. Big time. But I feel so badly because I feel like I am always yelling at her to move (by 'yell' I sometimes raise my voice, but more often cue her in a firm voice). She is a preschooler, and she is very distractible in addition to just doing things slowly. She has no cognitive impairment, thankfully, she just likes to stop and smell the roses (or anything else that crosses her path, lol). Anyway, is anyone else in this situation? It is hard to get anywhere on time, despite leaving LOADS of time to get dressed, eat, etc. The worst part is that I want to cry bc she honestly feels she can't go faster. My husband and I try to prompt her to at least curb her distractibility, but again I feel as if I am scolding her always! Is her behavior fairly typical? Is my reaction (and remorse) typical? My husband has the patience of a saint and he gets frustrated at times.
Pick her up and go. She is at an age where she is fascinated with the world and all it has to offer. Tell her it is time to go, if she doesn't comply within 30 seconds then just pick her up and load her in her car seat and go.
I found that leaving loads of extra time to do something only made things worst. We use to get the kids up 1 hr before the bus and ended up trying to shove the youngest one out of the house every morning. When we narrowed the time down to 40 minutes it was the same thing however with 20 less minutes for mom and dad to become stressed it actually worked out better.
Young children don't understand time at all. They do understand a time frame so maybe you can put on a tape and tell her "ok we have to get dressed before this song ends" or "Let's sing Mary had a little lamb while we put your shoes on".
Ugh...I hear you. My daughter has her moments as well! I think both her behaviors and your reactions are pretty typical!
Does it work if you make a game out of it? Like say you're going to race to the end of the sidewalk or see how many jumps it takes to get there, etc. I do this sometimes and although I don't have the patience to do it all the time, it does help. You could also say (calmly) to her that hey we need to move a little faster so your choice is to stand next to me and go the same speed as me or hold my hand.
You could also maybe have her be the "line leader". Tell her that she's the leader today and she has to stay in front of you and lead you into the building, the car, whatever. My daughter loves to be the leader! ;)
It's all normal. You still need to be the one in control & set the boundaries. Give her a set amount of time "you can look at that for a minute, then we're on our way". If she doesn't stop, you pick her up, take her by her hand & lead her away.
I'm the grown up version of your daughter. One thing I do for myself is to use the alarm clock on my cell phone and keep hitting the snooze that way if I get sidetracked it's not for more than 5 minutes. Otherwise I've been known to take half an hour to put my socks on!
