Toddler behaviour

[littleleeleanne]

Posting on here for traffic ... I'm desperate for help

Background - me, husband, 15 month old girl & 31 month old boy (slight speech delay)

My little boy is so hard to handle and I just do not know how to deal with it

So he will lay over my daughter and she will be screaming and he will not move, I will calmly say please can you get off (using names), I can say this four, five times - nothing, he will not budge

He will choose to bite, slap and pinch me or my husband when he's angry - we try and go with 'we understand you're angry but it is not ok to hurt'

My daughter will be minding her own business and he will run up to her and just push her over. They can be happily playing together and he will just get a toy and smack it round her head

I'm not saying she is completely innocent in all of this, as numerous times she can get a bit handsy. However, he WILL NOT listen, we cannot make any progress with him it feels. How do I get him to listen & stop hurting?

He has also just started whining so much ... even family members on FaceTime have said where's Mr Chilled gone 🤯

The hurting has been going on for ages and I'm close to tears as I feel like I'm failing my children 😢

Physically seperate them when there is an "incident", him if it's just him letting off steam, both of them if she's antagonised them.

Don't waste time on umpteen chances. One chance, count from 3 and remove.

For young children, time out is supposed to be about 1 min per year of age. Separating is the main point.

Praise what is going well. Plenty of positive attention reduces the need to get attention at any cost.

I had a very frustrated, tantrummy, speech delayed toddler and a young baby at this stage and he would randomly go to his baby sibling and hit or bite. It turns out that there is high functioning ASD involved, but he just presented as an intense toddler, a little bit off some milestones at that point. Even with SNs, several years on, he is generally great company, articulate and socially functions through school. Our sibling spats can be quite intense and frequent but both DCs also have a great friendship and companionship too. The toddler years can be really tough and it's not a prediction of the way the child will be with a few more years of development. Clear boundaries are important though, wearing as it can be!

Naughty step etc doesn't work , especially for that age. I would remove him immediately when he's doing something he shouldn't. Model calm behaviour and explain very simply "we use gentle hands".

You aren't failing your children. Children are just difficult and disobedient sometimes just because they want to be. My (2yo) son has excellent vocabulary, but he still picks and chooses which instructions he understands and listens to. They need to test the boundaries at this age unfortunately, and being under lockdown means it is quite unrelenting (for children as well as for us adults) as the days blur into one without toddler groups and play dates etc to break the time up.

I use the naughty step for my 2yo. Also removing treats (currently his favourite thing is vacuuming, so if he doesn't behave, he doesn't get to vacuum - this hurts me more than it hurts him! 🙈)
We also have a star chart for good behaviour (not just for good things he has done but also for naughty things he hasn't done eg. Good boy for not running off when outside, good boy for staying in bed and not coming downstairs after bedtime etc)

Thank you so much for all of your replies, I really appreciate the support.
I think because we haven't seen any progress at all, we are quick to think 'oh that isn't working'

I don't think removing him to another room would work as with my little girl running around, we would soon all end in the same room completely defeating the point

I have thought about using my stairs as a thinking step, only to the point that there is a gate at the top and bottom, so less chance of running away - if I use the bottom step for example, my daughter will just get in his face as she doesn't understand obviously. Rightly or wrongly, if I tell him he's going on the thinking step I don't care if it takes me 45 minutes to get him to do his 2 mins, what we say goes. I am more than capable.

Re the speech delay, he can communicate relatively well with us, but only basic words like 'more food, potty, hello, bye, mummy, daddy' in the last week or so he has started with 'I did it, I don't like it, I like these' his two word sentences are definitely picking up but we waiting for speech and language sessions. Other family members/friends struggle to understand him. I think there is an element of frustration there but I'm struggling to understand why, because I wouldn't say there are many things that we can't work out, we normally get there easily, I did speak to the speech and language therapist about emotions as in he won't say I'm sad, or I'm tired, hungry etc and she said 'don't worry he's too young for emotions' does anyone know how this works?

I think I'm going to go with ...

• one warning to use gentle hands
• thinking step 2 minutes
• apologise to whoever 🙄

Sorry forgot to say we are really good at praising him!! He loves it