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My 7yr old has tantrums at school.

"Dear Annie

I have 7-year-old daughter who has been having temper tantrums at school.
She does not have them a home however. Both her teacher and I are at our
wits end on how to deal with this problem. It is very hard to ignore a
child having a temper tantrum in a classroom setting. Time outs and removal
from the class have also been tried with no success. I have asked my
daughter why she is having temper tantrums. Her response is "I don't know."
I know she is getting enough sleep and eating well. Her teacher has
told me there are problems with classmates or other students. We have only
two weeks left in the school year and I don't want her to leave First Grade
on such a negative note. Do you have any advice for me? All the
information I can find is about toddlers' temper tantrums and doesn't seem
to fit my situation.

Thanks,
Susan"

Hi Susan

I sympathize but take heart.  The way I see it is that children usually do something for a reason.  To continue doing it they must be getting some kind of pay back otherwise the behavior would simply fizzle.  The question now is, what kind of pay back is she receiving?  From what you've told me, the answer to that is probably the attention of her peers and sometimes negative attention is just as good as the positive variety.  My approach would be two fold.  Minimize the negative and maximize the positive.  What does that mean exactly?  Well, firstly ask the teacher to catch her doing anything good.  Praise for good behavior in front of the class will give her the attention she's seeking, but in a positive way. 

Now to get rid of the tantrums.  The trick for whoever is dealing with her is to keep as calm as possible.  You mentioned that you've tried removal from the class with no success, but I've found in my experience, that people often give up too quickly or alternatively they try too many approaches within a short period, which leads to confusion and lack of eventual success.  Whenever you try and change behavior, that behavior will always get worse before it gets better and sometimes much worse.  This can lead you to think that it's not working so you swap to something else.  I don't know how often you removed her from the class in the past, but that sounds the best approach to me. If she's eating and sleeping well and doesn't behave like that at home, then it sounds as though she's doing this because she's in public and gets the audience that goes with it. 

I'm not surprised that she doesn't really know why she's behaving like this, but perhaps it's a cycle.  She wants the approval of her peers, but for whatever reason, perhaps because of the problems she's having with them, they haven't included her.  To get their attention, the temper tantrums erupted.  That behavior in turn gave her their attention she desired, albeit negative but also perpetuated her exclusion from the group.  The bottom line is, keep going, be consistent and calmly remove her from the classroom each and every time it happens. Also, try and make sure she doesn't spend her 'time out' in a busy place like the school office, otherwise you'll just be swapping one kind of attention for another.  This approach combined with lots of positive attention when she does behave, will help her discover that it is much more fun to get positive feedback in class than to be excluded.

Don't worry about the timing in dealing with this.  In many ways the last two weeks of school are the perfect opportunity for you to tackle this, as everything is winding down from an academic standpoint. Also, over the summer provide her with as many play opportunities as you can with children her own age.  This will allow her to practice her social skills and give her confidence, all of which will ease her integration in to grade two.  Best of luck, stick with it and I hope this helps.

Annie

Date Entered: 2006-06-19 13:26:25.0
Date Last Modified: 2006-06-19 13:26:25.0

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