I’m really struggling with my child’s behaviour

[Bunnyhop1502]

I have a 3 nearly 4 yo DS. He’s boisterous, he shoves, thumps, throws toys, tells me to shut up, pokes out his tongue when told off. He argues back. I’m getting tired of people saying it’s a phase, it will pass. Maybe it will one day but right now I need support and I need a break. I have explicitly said this to DH and DM who are now ignoring my pleas for help. DH just sits there in silence and DM gives empty promises of help. I know he is my child and my responsibility but I am having a difficult time at the moment anyway with depression and I feel utterly let down by people whom I have always been there for in the past. What do I do? Part of me just wants to shut down and just get on with it but I don’t have the mental energy anymore. Please tell me I’m being precious and to woman up. I just want someone to respond to me and my feelings. I have tried talking to other mum friends who just say the usual things like take him to the park to burn off his energy. I do do that and he ends up shoving and thumping other kids in excitement. I stopped taking him to soft play as I couldn’t properly supervise him without leaving baby alone in the pram. He does swimming lessons and goes to a story and craft club once a week. He has regular play dates which sometimes go ok. He just gets too overexcited.

What consequences are in place for his behaviour when he hits or is rude?

Does he attend pre school af all? If not enrol him
Now for September!

And why is your dh just sat there?!?! Is he
Not his child too????

I'm confused about your DH? In what way does he not help you? If he is Ds's dad then surely he should just be parenting him.
What do you do to manage his behaviour? Consequences for bad behaviour? Discipline techniques?
I do think that if he is hard work then you can't expect your mum to look after him for you. Maybe she doesn't want to because he's difficult and she doesn't have to. Plus that is not going to solve the problem of his behaviour.
Try not to feel so down about it. Have a good look online for some new ways to manage his behaviour and feel positive about putting them into place.

Why is his dad just sitting there doing nothing? You might as well be a single parent if you are expected to do it all yourself! Tell him to step the fuck up and help parent his child!
Ask your HV for help, ask them to point you towards a parenting course. Watch episodes of super nanny and consider buying one of her books. It’s all about setting out your expectations to your ds, then teaching him that he can make a good choice or a bad choice, but bad choices have consequences.
You won’t fix this overnight but with a lot of hard work and 100% consistency, you can start to turn it around.

Forgot to add that he isn't over excited and it's not just a phase. He is badly behaved and you need to tackle that. But your DH needs to do this too. You are a team.

I feel for you. It’s tough when you have a child like this. I would describe DD as ‘highly strung’. It’s relentless! Especially when you’re low anyway.

I highly recommend The Explosive Child by Ross Greene. It helps you understand behaviours from a child’s point of view and gives strategies to change things. I’d second speaking to your HV too.

I think you need to be more assertive with family. If your Mum offers to help, can you say ‘Great! How about Thursday morning, 10am?’. Start off with just an hour and build up. Tell your H you are off out on x day and he’ll need to do the childcare. I think a break will be really helpful to you.

He goes to nursery three days a week. He’ll be starting school next year. When I say DH does nothing I don’t mean he doesn’t co-parent I mean when I say I need to step away and have a break he doesn’t facilitate this. I asked him back in June if it would be possible to take a few days here and there throughout the summer and he said he would but hasn’t. I asked if it was difficult and he said other people had got in first on the leave calendar. I feel that if it was the other way around and he was begging me for help it wouldn’t have even got to the begging stage but there you go. DS is fine for my DM. He can be a bit noisy but the home behaviour doesn’t appear. At the moment I’m implementing time out for hitting at home by sitting him on the bottom step in the hall. He will do his time and apologise but he does it again so clearly that’s not working. I made him leave him craft group early for thumping another child on the back. I told him why and he repeated back to me a few times that day what had happened. It’s almost like he just forgets what he’s done.

I will be ringing the HV today too. He’s sitting here right now innocently drawing a few pictures. I’ve got to clarify what it is that sets him off.

What about dh's days off? Can't you just say "ok well I'm off out for the day see you later" and then just go and have some time for yourself?

I would definitely do that but I work on the days DH is home. He works all week and I work most weekends. When I have the odd day off we go out as a family and DS is no trouble at all! Writing that makes me think maybe it’s a reaction to being bored at home?

Does he have big brother privileges?
As in something you can do together when the baby is asleep? Stay up a little bit later as the oldest? Is he misbehaving to be' little 'again?
My ds is nearly 4 and his nephew is 2, we remind him it's better to be the oldest and do big kid stuff as he was a bit miffed he wasn't the youngest anymore!

Funnily he loves bedtime and often asks to go up if we let him stay up a bit longer to finish a film etc we always read a story together - he chooses mum or dad to read. I’ve also taken him on “big” days out for mummy/DS time such as to Legoland and the museums up in London. He’s never shown any jealousy toward baby DD but maybe it’s coming out later? Although he definitely knows how to get my attention by snatching toys off her as it makes her scream!

Aha I see your issue with getting the 'me time' then. I wouldn't want to go and do things on my own instead of spending time as a family once in a blue moon either. That's tricky.
Is your ds the same when he's with his dad? Does your DH have a different parenting style to you?

Yes he is but I think as DH doesn’t deal with it all week he can handle it better. We are united in the sense that hitting results in exclusion from playtime. We agree that CALMLY explaining what he did wrong is important even if you want to scream back at him. My friend said to me she can see me getting irritated by his behaviour when he is not being that bad as I deal with it all day and it escalates. I’m so glad I posted on it as talking it out puts it into perspective.

I definitely think that you and DH need to investigate and agree on a new approach to tackling ds's behaviour. A pp mentioned watching episodes of supernanny, I have found doing that really helpful in the past, because watching techniques in action can be better than reading about them.
Both of you should agree on the plan and be positive about it. Support each other on implimenting things.
It's a shame that you work on dh's days off so having time to yourself is so tricky. But I do think it's unreasonable to feel let down by your mum for not having him. He is yours and dh's responsibility no one else's. It's lovely if she does help but she in no way obliged to do so.
Also, and I'm sorry to be blunt, but he is in nursery 3 days a week and you work at the weekends. So you do have plenty of time when you aren't the only one looking after him (albeit some of that time is at work so it's not chill time). I totally get the needing 'me time', my kids are pretty chilled on the whole and I still like to just take a day for myself where I'm not just mummy.

It's tough with little ones. You've just got to ride it out and make the best of it until they are older and have a bit more independence.

Last year I was working 3 days a week and we were still tearing our hair out trying to deal with her behaviour.

It does sound like your DS has lots of energy and needs that energy channeled or he will get himself into trouble. A lot of the time at that age they don’t learn from their mistakes. I really do think it would help to read the book I suggested up above and have a look at this blog post referring to it too.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say I’m feeling a bit let down by DM. I’m struggling a bit over the holidays and for her to offer to have them for a few hours and then to withdraw the offer when I try to arrange it. She says how much she enjoys having the DC so it’s pretty confusing to me. I get what you are insinuating about him being in nursery 3 days per week and me not being the only one having him. I’ll be clearer - I am struggling over the summer holidays hence why I asked DH to take some time off.

@faitheverpresent thank you I’ll take a look at those. I read the fabled “how to talk to children so they will listen” and it had some helpful points. DH is convinced DS will just “get it” one day. I hope so but I’m not that naive to think it will improve overnight. I definitely need some better consequences to his behaviour.

My DD was very difficult at that age too. She calmed down a lot when she was 4, maybe 4 and a half.

We started giving her a marble for a marble jar whenever she did a kind / nice / helpful thing... and when the jar was full she got to choose a small toy. That definitely motivated her to be better behaved.

We also got her to talk a lot about feelings - via a book called 'how are you feeling today?' - it helped her to articulate how she was feeling, which definitely helped as it meant she hit out a lot less.

It took a while and it really was the pits for what seemed like a long time! Good luck :)

That’s really helpful thank you. I will try this I think he will respond very well to a visual motivator!