Blessings From Home

The High Spirited Child

I've heard this term many times used for when parents have a child who are a handful. Now my children are all fairly well behaved, but my Maddy, my middle child,  is what they call high spirited, the child that has given me the most trouble, or as Deanna has put it, my wild card. As a baby and toddler she was very easy going and always very calm, but as she's gotten older (and especially since she's been in public school) she's gotten quite a temper and her behavior has been less than desirable.

Last night, while at my parent's house, she was asked to help do something and insisted that she always has to help and her older brother never does anything. Well, that's totally untrue. Since he's homeschooled, he has more responsibility than most kids his age. And the fact was, it was her that was asked to help and there should have been no qualms about it.

After her little rant, realizing that she was indeed going to have to help, she proceeded to stand up and kick her brother in the back, in which he retaliated with swinging a string around at her and brushing against it her arm, a string, give me a break. Well, then my little drama queen screamed in agony as if the string was made out of razors. Seeing it all, she was then placed in the corner until I could calmly deal with her. We also placed Nick in the corner as punishment for attempting to hit back.

While standing in the corner, she proceeded to scream at the top of her lungs and started kicking the wall. Needless to say, I was on fire and didn't think it wise for me to punish her until we were at home and I had calmed down. My husband loaded her into the van, and while we were saying our goodbyes to my family, she started kicking the back of the seats in our brand new van nearly puncturing the leather, and she continued to scream the whole way home.

Once at home, I sent her to her room, and my husband went in and gave her a paddling, and I went and had a nice long chat with her about her temper and how dissapointed I was.

I called my mother later and we were discussing this episode and we both came to the realization that these temper tantrums hadn't started until she started in public school. Imagine that!

I'm so ready to have all my children at home with me. She will be in PS for 4 more months and then she will be homeschooled. Praise the Lord! For now we will be doing some tomato staking when she is at home to curb this temper of hers. Does anyone else have trouble with a child with a bad temper, and if so, would you mind sharing how do you deal with it?

High-Spirited Children

{ 11:53, Friday, February 1, 2008 } { Posted by dorninkrefuge }

We adopted 4 of our children and know real well what a so called 'high spirited' child is. We could not homeschool right away. Our oldest adopted daughter was so having problems in the public school. When we did take her out of the school system to homeschool, one of her teachers told me she was concerned about the socialization issue. I thought, "Give me a break. That is precisely the problem. Socialization with all the wrong kids!" I know what she meant. She thought our daughter would not have access to friends here at home. Praise God for that! The kind of friends that wanted to hang with her were getting her in trouble. We have 6 kids and go to a good church. We also have LOTS of cousins so socialization is NOT a problem and guess what, the behavior problems that we were having gradually disappeared since we started homeschooling. Go figure!
Just keep lovingly redirecting her. Your sweet daughter will come around. She is young and you have so much time to come with her.
Be blessed! Linda
By the way, we use a lot of scripture with the kids to let them know how God feels about things too. Proverbs 22:6


Edited by dorninkrefuge on Friday, February 1, 2008 at 11:54

Untitled Comment

{ 03:49, Friday, February 1, 2008 } { Posted by gabbie427 }

Perhaps she learned this from the other children. She doesn't get the one on one attention there as she would at home, so she needs to act out to get the attention of her teacher while at school and decided to bring the same actions home as well.

I hope you get to stay home with the kids soon!

God's Blessings,
Amy Jo