Any Advice For This Annoying Habit?

[cheerfuldom]

a good part of my daycare issues involve my middle daughter. I have to say, she is really one of the most challenging kids I have ever taken care of or met, yay me! ha ha! so her newest activity involves grabbing stuff from another child or me and running like she on fire. the kids chase her to get their toy back and she tosses the toy and keeps running. I can't get her to stop doing this and its been a few months. she doesn't play all that well with others although she is getting better. Shes almost two but still quite babyish, not a whole lot of words yet, struggling to follow simple instructions. I don't baby her. She has the same rules as everyone else but she is just not that "advanced" or whatever you want to call it. I don't know if there is anything I can even do to help her play better with others and stop pestering kids in an attempt to get their attention. Any ideas?

[Cat Herder]

Ah, Jan Brady Syndrome......::::

Patience and consistency, like for eveything else.

[nannyde]

Time to learn stop and drop.

When I say drop I mean SHE drops.

Use hand signals for both: Hand up in the "whatever" position for stop... and palm motion to the ground for STOP.

Practice stop and drop when she is being GOOD and give her a reward. I reccomend a teddy grahm or a gummy worm... fruit snack. Something she NEVER gets except for the stop and drop game.

Do it many times and do it when she least expects it.

Then wean her off getting a treat for it.

Just practice it.... and give her a wink and nod and a good job.

Then when she does it with the toys you can say "STOP... DROP".

[AnythingsPossible]

Time to learn stop and drop.

When I say drop I mean SHE drops.

Use hand signals for both: Hand up in the "whatever" position for stop... and palm motion to the ground for STOP.

Practice stop and drop when she is being GOOD and give her a reward. I reccomend a teddy grahm or a gummy worm... fruit snack. Something she NEVER gets except for the stop and drop game.

Do it many times and do it when she least expects it.

Then wean her off getting a treat for it.

Just practice it.... and give her a wink and nod and a good job.

Then when she does it with the toys you can say "STOP... DROP".

Sounds amazingly similar to puppy training ::

[daycare]

I had this issue awile back with one of the DCK.

so here is what we did. When the child takes and grabs let them go and pay no attention to them at all.....

The victim will then get a lot of attention and you will say, I am so sorry that ___________took your toy, how did that make you feel? That was not very nice for__________________to take your toy was it?

The grabber is doing this to get a rise out of the kids ir you. She is getting attention from it and sees that it gets a reaction. Ignor the grabber and do nothing at all. When the grabber drops the toy, just pick it up and give it back to the vitcim or put it back in the DCR for others to use.

See how that goes for about a week.

[nannyde]

Sounds amazingly similar to puppy training ::

Yes

It's a precursor to the "stop... drop... and roll" they learn when they are older for escaping a fire.

[cheerfuldom]

thanks ladies. I will practice with her and see what happens. I agree that she is doing this for attention and with my other kids so young (all but one is under 2 years old) there is no way to teach them to not give her attention when she is doing this sort of thing. She is the child that couldn't care less about praise or positive attention. Its all the same to her as long as people are focusing on her. This is one of the things I can't ignore though because she will escalate to throwing and hitting if I don't nip this "game" in the bud.