And what a neat assignment. A little like you, I think I sometimes also see those moments that MUST be captured… so for the next week, I will keep my camera handy and share my moments!!

This kind of situation certainly creates as much (if not more) anxiety and frustration for the parent, as it does for the child, so your, I mean your hypothetical parent’s, apprehension in taking the child back to dance class is duly noted and certainly legitimate.

While we may never really understand why she is behaving this way, it may be worthwhile to explore this a little…

Preschoolers are at a level of development where the world is a concrete place and abstractions haven’t really made their way into their understanding as of yet. So from a preschooler’s perspective, things are pretty much black and white. They are just on the cusp of learning that things may not always be as they appear or seem on the surface. She doesn’t care that there is an expectation that she will go in the calss and participate. She likes to watch. Simple as that.

Also, they function from a very ‘behavioral’ approach to getting their needs met. Because preschoolers are still in the concete realm of understanding things, they aren’t well equipt to utilize reasoning to get what they need, or to accept reasoning from others attempting to get through to them. She wants to watch. That’s it. She doesn’t want to go in and dance, and she doesn’t want to go home, she just wants to watch. I can’t blame her, I like to watch people dance too. As a society, we pay to watch people dance. She is already developing an appreciation of this art form. Good for her! Unluckily for her mother, this child discovered that there is a second option besides attending dance class as a participant…. attending as an audience member. lol

All that mumbo-jumbo aside, here are my thoughts and ideas for how to proceed:
1. Kids do have an innate desire to please us and often want and try to meet our expectations. So it is a good idea to let her know that you expect her to participate in the class and allow you to leave the room. She also needs to know exactly what to expect if she does not participate. HUGELY IMPORTANT in this scenario is to give her a choice – or at least the appearance of a choice. It is clear that a power struggle is ensuing here. So as the parent, you have to eliminate this power struggle. You set the parameters for what is acceptable, and in this scenario, it seems there are 2 acceptable choices. Tell her that she can choose to participate (which will make mommy very proud) or she can choose not to participate (which is ok too). Simply and matter-of-factly tell her, however, that if she chooses not to participate, she will be taken home, and not remain as a viewer of the class. She may not like this, but allowing her to remain as an audience member is reinforcing her choice not to participate.
2. Also know that she gets ’something’ from behaving like she has for the past few weeks. It doesn’t seem reasonable to us that kids would enjoy or seek out negative attention, but it happens ALL THE TIME, and parents are often unaware it is happening, or why. To minimize this behavior, it is critical that any negative attention (a.k.a. reinforcement) she may be getting from behaving as she has been is taken away, and is replaced by positive attention for desired behavior – only.
3. Give her a tool to lessen any seperation anxiety she may be experiencing. Give her a special little ‘mommy reminder’ that she can take in with her (i.e. a button pin with a picture of mommy & daughter, a little stuffed toy, a note telling her you love her, etc.)
4. Let her help you make a reward chart for staying in class. Maybe use dance stickers or something appropriate to mark a successful day at class. If she has 2 stickers in a row, she gets a more special, bigger treat.
5. Would it be possible to let someone else take her to dance class? Please don’t take this personally, but it may just be ‘you’ that she seeks a response from by behaving as she has been. I certainly know that my son behaves the worst, and is the most dramatic, and the most defiant with me (which you witnessed at our Christmas session!! – lol). I think it is the level of familiarity and closeness between mom and child that allows them to think they can get away with it… or at least test parameters in the most extreme way… at least that’s what I tell myself… So maybe allowing someone else to take her will simply create a different dynamic, thus eliminating the problem.
6. There is certainly the possibility that all of the above might seem to be working prior to getting there, and go right out the window and fail miserably when you get there. If this happens, go right back to number 2, and do not reinforce her behavior. Immediately – and calmly – remove her from the situation with no pleading, no reasoning, no arguing, no negotiating, and no response to her tantrum (as excrutiatingly difficult as it will be), and take her home. Don’t talk about the experience except to say that she ‘chose’ not to participate, and you made it clear that if she chose not to participate, you would bring her home, with no further comment or emotion attached. Anything more gives that unwanted negative attention to her behavior, and in an inadvertant way, reinforces it. If this scenario presents, there is certainly the option of acquiescing, and chalking it up to – she just isn’t ready for this, even though she initially seemed like she might be. Personally, I would try to exhaust other options first, but not taking her back is certainly an option.

I hope some of this helps. I know much of this is common sense to most parents, and you probably tried all of this already, but sometimes it helps to be reminded of these things, because when your own, I mean some hypothetical parent’s, emotions get involved, it is easy to forget what we know and makes it hard to make sense of things.

Ok, you can say it, TMI. Hopefully not all of it is useless!!! I will be curious to hear how things go…