aibu regarding my toddlers behaviour

[mennie1980]

Hi all. Long time lurker, first time poster.

This afternoon I was upstairs sorting Laundry and my 2.10 year old son starting throwing lots of toys over the stair gate onto the stairs.

I went down stairs and told him off and explained how dangerous is was and how mummy could trip and hurt herself.

He said I want you to fall down the stairs and break your leg. I told him this was a horrible thing to say and asked him to apologise. He refused. So I told him our planned activities this afternoon, making cakes and the park were cancelled and no toys or TV this afternoon just drawing. He screamed the place down and cried himself to sleep.

He is now sleeping peacefully and I am wondering if I have been unreasonable.

He is adopted and our first and only child and not been with us very long so this is all so new and scary and today has been a dreadful day.

he has no real understanding of what he is saying they are just words

ok to show you are upset so he learns but i think you are being a little too harsh and trying to do the right thing

it is done now, tears and tantrums move on and enjoy the rest of the afternoon by punishing him later he will not connect it to what has happened earlier on in the say

ds (6) told me this morning he does not like me. i told him it is not a nice thing to say but makes no difference i like you and love you more than anything and he laughed do not take it to heart we were cuddling a minutes later (and i know he is upset because his dad was not around last night and other dads were)

mennie, I've always found this book really helpful when my DD has said/done something outrageous and/or I've over reacted. It means we get to read together which is a fantastic way to bond/chill out and it re-affirms that message that no matter what I will love her. Even when I go bonkers and shout at the kitchen cabinets.

Good luck, you'll do great.

Throwing toys over gate, a fun game for him or trying to get your attention. Next time get him to help you with jobs, they love helping at that age.

His comments, I would have said something like, 'well how would we go to the park then, that would be no good at all would it?' and moved swiftly on 'right, let's get these toys put away'. Holding out in a power game over 'sorry' with a toddler is completely pointless.

I do wonder with the comments about foster family boundaries and the 'little toad today' if you are being too hard both on him and yourself.

Sounds like it could just be standard active toddler behaviour with the added impact of adoption and fostering, and I mean that very kindly, I can imagine a toddler would be a shock.

I wouldn't use any punishments at this stage. I would ignore bad behaviour and praise good. he must be very confused. just concentrate on building up a strong relationship with lots of love and cuddles.

Hello, adoptive parent here too (though single). My daughter was in foster care from 24 hours old also, adopted at ten months old. No history of drug or alcohol abuse in the birth mother, about as 'easy' as adoption as there is. I'm sure you are doing fine really but I would echo what others have said about getting advice specifically from adoptive parents either here or on Adoption UK. Some people without adopted children find it hard to believe that if your child is in loving care from birth and came to you fairly young that they will have experienced no trauma from being adopted, this is absolutely not true. Of course partly it depends on your child's personality too but the taking away of a newborn from the birth mother is an extremely traumatic event, the sound of that woman's voice, the speed and rhythm of her heartbeat and half a dozen other things will have been all your child knew as his/her brain developed and learnt, the sudden disappearance of all of that is an extreme event in the baby's short life. This is only magnified by the second removal of everything they have known when they move from loving foster care to their new family. My daughter exhibited behaviours at the time of adoption that I didn't recognise as severe shock and grief at the time, because she was a total stranger to me, but only in retrospect as I grew to know her personality.
She had a number of pretty major behavioural problems at a young age (between 16 months and about 3 and a half), biting, extreme separation anxiety, night terrors etc and they were ALL related to the trauma of losing both her birth mum and then her foster mum, she was terrified of losing me too though you wouldn't know it from the treatment she gave out sometimes! This may just have been a bad day for both of you and all will be well, but if not I would honestly do as much reading and get as much expert advice (i.e from people who have actually been there/done that) as you can.

As an addendum, having had for many years a violent frightened child who I honestly thought would never be able to go to school, I now have an extremely empathic and hardy little school-a-holic! It took a lot of work and I made some mistakes along the way but I'm incredibly proud of how she is turning out and I am really grateful for the advice I got from adoption specialists and other adoptive parents. She needed treating differently from birth children and it was only once I realised that and analysed her behaviour accordingly that we started turning things around.

Thanks for the all the advice. Yesterday was just a really sh!tty day. Today was much much better.

I am not making assumptions about the fc, she admitted and we witnessed that she was far too lenient with him. He didn't have many boundaries and was allowed to do as he pleased.

I have read dan hughes and caroline archer. I have not gone into this unprepared, yesterday was just a pure b!tch of a day.

Glad today was much better. See, just a bad day, not a bad Mum.
Have a fab weekend.

Glad today was better.

There will be worse days than yesterday. Don't take it personally when they happen.

I heard an account of a psychological experiment on the radio once that has really helped me with my pre-schoolers. Basically, children saw a sweet go into one of 2 boxes and were told that they could have the sweet if they pointed at the 'wrong' box, apparently almost no 3 year olds could do it. I think of it when I have the urge to say 'no x until you calm down/ apologise/ insert difficult to achieve level of emotional control as relevant'. Please no-one tell me it isn't true - I still have an under 4!

Mennie can you explain what you mean by 'too lenient'? I am finding this emphasis on discipline a little worrying to be honest. Most discipline at his age should be purely related to him learning what might be dangerous for him or others, punishments, taking away of treats etc is not going to be understood at this age, he will find it simply baffling and think you are being mean, he won't be able to rationalise it in the way that you can!

I'm sorry but I am just getting a niggling feeling that whilst you have read the right books etc you still haven't really got that you need to make huge allowances for both age/maturity and adoption related issues. I apologise hugely if I am reading you wrong but I have seen what happens when adoptive parents go down the discipline route and it isn't good.

I can't help relating this to my earliest experiences of stepmothering. I'd been given to understand that my stepchildren's mother was chaotic, inconsistent and irrational.

I may have been inclined (arrogantly, secretly) to believe that if I had been in her shoes I'd have done everything rather better. If every my stepchildren were difficult or frustrating, I caught myself thinking how if I had had them from the start everything would have been a great deal easier. However my stepchildren were 5 and 6 when I first met them, so they could understand a bit more when it came to explanations of the changes in their lives. And they had the (relative) security of being based at their mother's house. So I think the transition of their parents' splitting up and my arrival was, though confusing for them, was relatively manageable

I simply cannot believe that a) removal from a birth mother, b) life with a foster mother who had a 'relaxed' parenting style and then c) being freed for adoption and coming into a family where there's a desire to impose much stronger boundaries, could be anything other than deeply confusing.

It's obviously pretty difficult for the adoptive mother who chose to change her life in this way. What it's like for the child, I can hardly begin to imagine.

We all lose it sometimes, but 3 years old and newly joined the family - he is probably testing you to see whether you still love and accept him if he's downright horrible! He's had several punishments - no TV, no toys, no activities...also, it's setting you both up for s miserable afternoon (no 3 year old will draw all afternoon, or concentrate on one activity for that long)...so, ideally (not saying for a minute I'd get this right every time!) I'd tell him when he wakes up that you love him very much, and that you felt sad that he wanted to hurt you, but you will love him no matter what he does. I would get him to help pick up the toys he threw, then say "we won't be doing the activity we'd planned, but we can do X instead"...next time, maybe take away one toy or activity instead of the whole lot?

Glad today was better. Going straight into the toddler phase cannot be easy.
My DD was a tantrum queen for 15mths or so and I quickly learned to not only pick my battles but pick my punishments. Not going to meet a friend, to soft play or something wasn't just a punishment for her but for me too as I the had a whole day to fill with no activities. Instead, I'd try to come up with a punishment that didn't really impact on me (or even helped me) like not being allowed to help load or unload the washing machine or not being allowed to go & jump in the puddle by our neighbour's drive when we got back.
Oh, and as they get older, the insults just get more varied. DD is now 4 and has spent the week telling me that her friend's mum is much nicer than I am! Or that I'm the bossiest silly poo ever.

Awww poor mummy, disciplining is the hardest thing. (Not sure about the crying to sleep, did he not calm down at all?) I would of took the same action, wouldn't of stayed mad but certainly cancelled activities / food treats and explained why, unless he apologised .

I'd tell him when he wakes up that you love him very much, and that you felt sad that he wanted to hurt you ' but bababoom I'm pretty sure he didnt want to hurt Mennie (i thought the rest of your post was really great it was just those few words that worried me) , if he is like most two year olds he wasn't acting with any kind of real rationale..I know it seems like a complete overaction to that choice of words but over time things like this can stick, you don't want to give the child an identity of 'I am the kind of person who wants to hurt people'...some of the most damaging relationships between parent and child are when the child is prescribed the identity of perpetrator or harm causer, and the parents take on a victim persona...this is a frightened 2 year old..he isn't capable of being deliberately hurtful.

What ovenbun said.

I don't personally think any child that age crying themselves to sleep is a great thing to be honest but for an adopted child in a fairly new family I find it really distressing. He will be feeling all sorts of sad emotions related to being 'abandoned' (by birth mum and foster mum) but without being able to articulate that or even identify it, to then use isolation as a punishment technique is pretty cruel when you reflect on that. I remember other parents telling me I should send my toddler out of the room on her own when she was naughty and realising what a massive gulf there was between a 'normal' kid and her - for my daughter that would have been akin to torture, a punishment way beyond the crime. If she was naughty I went out of the room with her and just held her - it meant she knew she was out of the fun space with the other kids but that I hadn't stopped loving her, I wasn't going to just get rid of her if she was bad etc.

Right just to be absolutely clear getting a child as a toddler is a real challenge. Those of us who had the first couple of years to build up to toddlerhood have been emboldened with a certain resistance that comes from the lack of sleep up until then which puts us in a complete fog to get through. He is being a normal toddler trying to push boundaries and checking you still love him, you are being a wonderful Mum holding the party line so he understands that he cannot behave in an inappropriate manner. Personally I would gently re emphasise my position when he gets up and then do something lovely later on so that you and he get the joy of the mother son relationship to balance out the hard bits. Popcorn and a kids movie and cuddles. Remember it is as much for you as him.

Can't I just say I hadn't planned to remove all toys activited etc all afternoon, just until he said sorry.

Once he said sorry, everything would have been forgotten as it always is.

He didn't cry himself to sleep, he needed a nap after being up since 5am.

I am not a monster!! When he woke up of course I told him how much I loved him. Then we went on to make cakes.

You seem to have me down as a monster, I am just a brand new mum who was exhausted and got it wrong. Simple as, I am fully aware he is suffering loss and isn't able to articulate it yet. I am not completely dense.

Surely I am not the only mother who has been at the end of her tether due to severe sleep deprivation??

My social worker agrees we need give him boundaries and use rewards and remove priviledges when necessary.

I know my little boy.

Nobody is calling you a monster, no parent gets things right all the time.

However your ds is only two and you seem very focused on boundaries and not letting him dictate to you. That is how my parents raised their children and it created an adversarial relationship. It meant that parenting was no fun for them.

Go easier on yourself, and on your ds. The book 'playful parenting' was reccomended upthread. The approaches in that book are unbelievably effective and they put the focus back on the child, rather than the adult enforcing the boundaries.

My own dc are remarkably well behaved and we have a happy family life partly due to books like that. If I had not read them I would have instinctively followed my parents' example. This would not have made me a monster but would have made for a less happy family in the long run.

I don't recall anyone arguing against setting boundaries - just that boundaries and sanctions need to be more age appropriate (geared towards the child's level of understanding/capacity for abstract reasoning) and, in your case, take account of your son's specific adoption-related sensitivities.

I have 2 boys and we are now - thankfully - out the other side of the tantrum phase (though my 5 yo still has his moments). The terrible twos are incredibly challenging and its a long haul, so it helps not to exacerbate any conflict unnecessarily - as others have said, learn to pick your battles.

What I meant by the fc being lenient is, he was allowed to run across roads himself, throw toys at the tele, throw toys at people, hit, kick, shout, throw food etc.

Gosh v lenient! You will find your way together & it must be very hard to pick up from that.
I don't think that people have you down as a monster & there is a genuine desire to help. I work in a psychological field, so you would think I would know what I am doing & I don't always get it right....no one does. And if they do they are either deluded or lying!
We all have different ways and you asked people if they thought if you were be unreasonable so they told you.

There were also in the posts lots of advice & opinion - you just need to find what works for you & your little boy in the long run. Imho the most important thing is that he feels loved & secure & the behaviour management (however you do it) come from there. And it is clear that you do love him ....I just find with children you can never show it too much

Definitely not the only mum to be sleep deprived and at the end of her tether, I too am there this morning. My LO is 11 months and has started throwing a strop every time I try to get him to do something different or anything that doesn't involve destroying everything on my fireplace. Some days you feel great, some days you feel like the worst mum in the world. You just have to chalk the bad days off and don't think about them again, I don't think you handled the situation badly at all. Your LO was safe and he went to sleep, you could have easily continued it by trying to reason with him which would have escalated things further. He then woke up and had a lovely afternoon. Keep going OP, the good days will start overtaking the bad days eventually as they do for all new mums.

And of course those behaviours need to be addressed (as they do with most children at that age). I don't think you're a monster at all, and most people on here have given helpful advice that you can pick and choose from depending on what works for your son.
My final input is just a tip which may make things easier for you, I think most of the time you probably won't need to use any consequences, which he will have very little understanding of at 2. Saying no for example 'no we never run in the road' and then offering a distraction/removing him from the situation is probably going to be a lot less stressful for you both. For example ' can you see that cat, what noises do cats make?' And then later reinforcing the good 'you are doing such good walking! In our family we always walk on the pavement! Mummy is so happy with you!' It just saves getting drawn into more battles which are massively exhausting for you both. Of course like any technique it doesn't work all of the Time, but see what you think.
All the best with your little boy, I'm sure you have lots of fun adventures ahead watching him grow.

No one is saying you are a monster! You asked for everyone's opinions and people have given them, there is a common thread running through almost all the answers which I guess should tell you what the general consensus is, its up to you whether you reflect on that and rethink a few things...