DS age 3 is really struggling. His world has turned upside down and he hates it.
We relocated from London to my mother's house in a very rural area just before lockdown as I was due to have DD (now 8 weeks) and DS was getting really upset at being stuck in our small house and not being able to go out. So he has had the triple upheaval of lockdown, leaving our home and his baby sister arriving.
DH has to work- he is doing what he can to give DS attention when he takes breaks and before and after his working day but for most of the day has to shut himself away. DS is not keen on playing with my mother. She has limited mobility so is restricted in what she can do, and unfortunately DS seems to have transferred a lot of his upset at the move to her house onto her personally.
I'm doing what I can to give DS attention, and my mum is taking DD as much as she can, but it seems that too often I will just start an activity with DS and DD will need me for feeds or for changing or she will not settle with mum and I will have to put her in the sling. DS is trying to manage his disappointment when I can't play with him but it sometimes shows through.
He is desperately missing friends of his own age to play with. The other day a family with two young children stopped to chat to us as they were walking down the road. DS was in floods of tears when they had to leave. We've tried getting him to speak to friends on video calls but this hasn't been very successful. None of the nurseries locally are accepting new children.
We do have moments of joy when he seems really happy, often when I've managed to engage his interest in something in the garden and he has said that "I must be the luckiest kid ever", but on the whole his behaviour and attitude is deteriorating. He has regressed to grabbing and lashing out at us- for which he is sanctioned with the removal of screen time, which is a real hardship for him. It is getting increasingly hard to engage him in any activity. I try to get him to do one creative thing a day (crafts or Lego), one thing number or word based (numeracy/literacy app, treasure hunts, hopscotch, baking, pencil control etc) and as much physical activity outside as possible. However he is getting increasingly resistant to engaging in anything I propose. Today, he wasted a whole hour of time whilst DD was sleeping by screaming and shouting at me that he didn't want to do any of the activities I was proposing. DD then woke up and he was in tears that I wasn't playing with him and was doing her nappy etc. If I leave it to him to decide what to do he says he is bored. He hankers after screen time.
I do try to make a point of praising any positive behaviour and he has a reward chart at the moment to try to address some aspects of his bad behaviour.
He was mid tantrum about something this morning and just said "I just want things to go back to normal".
What more can I do for him?
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Heart breaking for DS(3). What more can I do?
90 replies
Thistledew · 12/06/2020 23:24
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