And yes, part of the solution to this is finding a way to help her burn off some energy, and steering her toward interesting appropriate activities. But those things aren't fixes. They're temporary patches when she's in this kind of mood. Because I have come to believe that for Yehva, part of the appeal (most of the appeal?) of doing certain things is that they are forbidden.
It's an interesting problem for a parent. And another of those great moments when you are reminded of two things: 1) Children are little human beings with their own complex set of desires and motivations; and 2) What you think you know from raising Child Number One or Child Number Two is not necessarily of any use with Child Number Three.
Eric, for instance, was also very difficult to deal with starting around three, lasting until The Great Upgrade at 7, when we began to get a glimmer of an easier life, and culminating in The Singularity Of 2010, when he left a whole stage of childhood behind and grew into himself. But Eric's form of difficulty was very different from Yehva's. Trying to figure out how to cope with him, I read every parenting book on the market, including a lot of discipline-y, reward-and-punishment based behavioral programs. And it was always clear that these books had nothing to do with Eric. When you asked Eric to do something and he didn't, or asked him to stop doing something and he didn't, it wasn't because he didn't want to. It was because he couldn't. So offering him a reward, or threatening a punishment, didn't help--any more than (in an example stolen from Ross Greene) you could get me to successfully perform open-heart surgery by offering me a new car if I did it, or threatening to kill my family if I didn't.
Eric's particular brand of sensitivity and inflexibility meant that, if you wanted him to stop and he didn't, it was probably because once he was set on a course, it was very difficult for him to veer off it (we called this "being on rails"). if you wanted him to do something and he didn't, it was probably because he was so overwhelmed by his environment that he couldn't function (we called this "being stuck"). So, for Eric, the answer was never to offer rewards or "consequences" (the modern PC word for "punishments"). Because if he could do what you were asking, he would. He just couldn't.
For Eric, what we did was much more about working to help him learn flexibility, becoming more and more flexible ourselves, and reducing the load on him so that he wasn't constantly topped-up on stimuli. I can't tell you how many people told me I just needed to be firmer with him or stop "letting him get away" with certain behaviors or learn to "set limits." They were all wrong. I've talked before about the book The Explosive Child, which was a terrific tool for us in dealing with Eric, reducing conflict, giving him the help he needed to succeed, and preserving our good relationship with him until development made new things possible for him.
I am amused by the little addendum I put at the bottom of that post: I have a suspicion that working on this with Eric has been good practice for life with Yehva.
Wrong again.
Yehva's behavior sometimes looks similar to Eric's at the same age, but she is not like Eric. I have come to believe that the underlying reasons for her behavior are very different. She is not inflexible, and does not get overwhelmed by people, noise, lights, crowds, activity. When she's having a fit or pushing limits--a concept that really made no sense to us with either Eric or Carl--she's doing it for other reasons.
I have come to believe she's doing it to find out where the limits are.
I know this is a truism of parenting, that kids will "test limits." But we never had a kid who did it before, or did it so intensively all the time. I just read a book called Setting Limits with Your Strong-Willed Child. I read it when Eric was younger, too, and it just had nothing to do with us. But Yehva is the kind of child the author, Robert MacKenzie, is talking about.
MacKenzie suggests you think of your challenging child as a dedicated researcher who needs many data points before drawing a conclusion, or as a child who is wired to always learn things the hard way. A more adaptable, mellow child (like Carl, say) might respond to a request to turn down the volume on the TV by turning down the volume on the TV. Your more strong-willed child will hear that same request and think, "Hmmm...what happens if I don't?" And once that scenario has played out (you've argued with the kid until you lost it, or you've been all discipline-y and turned the TV off after one warning), the child takes that as just one data point. The next time you ask her to turn down the TV, she'll think, "Hmmm, last time mom got all purple-faced and screamy when I didn't do it...I wonder what will happen this time?"
When I read that description, my brain played a little movie-montage of shots of Yehva--holding her brother's toothbrush, heading out the door, holding an apple in one hand and a knife in the other, elbow-deep in the sugar canister, about to flush her stuffed bunny down the toilet--looking at me with a look that says, "And what are you going to do about it?"
It all rings so true with Yehva: she's testing all the time, collecting data all the time, wondering where the limits are and what will happen when she reaches them. This means that you can't assuage her by giving in to something she asks, because she'll just think, "OK, that wasn't the limit--what should I ask for next?" With Eric, flexibility on our part was essential. If he asked for something that wasn't originally on the agenda--even if he asked while upset--figuring out a way to give it to him was almost always a good idea (this was very controversial among people who felt moved to comment on it, because they thought we were "giving in" to bad behavior. They were wrong). With Yehva, that same kind of flexibility just ramps her up.
Which means I'm being a very different mom with Yehva than I was with Eric at the same age. With Eric, I was exploring how flexible I could be; with Yehva, I'm exploring firmness. With all the kids, I am constantly being asked to give up my vision of what kind of parent I want to be, in order to better be the parent they need.
Edited to add: This is not true all the time. Sometimes she's getting into stuff just because she has energy to burn, and then it really is about helping her burn it off with dancing, or taking a walk; she's getting a trampoline for Christmas. And just like with Eric, if you mis-diagnose--if you think she's in a testing mood when really she's just restless with all that energy--then you just make things worse. It's tricky. It's always tricky.
