Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I'm going to be responding to a Facebook

message exchange that I had with a parent who's concerned about her daughter's inappropriate

attention-getting behavior and is wondering how to handle it to make it stop because it's

embarrassing her and she's struggling to understand what's going on and help her daughter to

stop doing this. Okay, so here's the message I received. Hi, Janet. I wanted to reach out and

tell you how much I enjoy listening to your podcasts. They've been a big help through my parenting

journey. I'm having concerns with my 3.5-year-old daughter. She's very bright, sweet, and a lot of fun.

She started preschool this year and began coming home with new behaviors. When we are face-timing

with her grandparents or when people come over, she will start lifting up her dress to show her

bottom, touching herself or making poop and fart sounds. I understand some of this behavior is

natural self-exploration. We recently had an electrician work on the house and she proceeded to

try and take off her clothes and say she wanted to shake her butt. I asked her to stop and I told her

that it is something to do in private and that it wasn't safe to do that when company is over.

I've asked her why she likes doing that and she says I like to be funny. I told her let's try to find

other ways to be funny, but she says no or begins having a tantrum. We've also tried ignoring the

behaviors, but that seems to escalate things further. Do you have any recommendations for us?

Thank you. So the specifics in this parent situation may seem a little unusual,

but all of the themes in this type of behavior are very, very, very common and they show up in a

lot of different ways that parents ask me about. So I'm really going to touch on not just

the specifics here, but all of the themes. And the first thing I thought of was something that my

mentor, Magda Gerber, always did and it was so patient and wise of her instead of jumping in with,

here's what might be going on and here's what you can do, which is sometimes my tendency because

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