My phone has been ringing with requests from frustrated parents of four-year-olds—“Help! My child keeps freaking out and nothing I’m doing is working.” To answer this request, I enlisted the help of parenting educator colleagues, Kelly Bartlett and Andy Smithson.
There are many factors which conspire to make parenting children of this age particularly challenging:
So how do the kids of a psychotherapist and trained parenting educator act? Well, if you were at my house today, you’d see a raging three-year-old kicking me, calling me “stupid” and you’d be pouring me some tea and providing a shoulder for me to cry on.
My day today consisted of many crying spells. I’m not too sure why but every time my son threw something, I broke into tears. Maybe there is a threshold for how much aggressiveness and back-talking a parent can take, and I’ve just tipped over that.
