4year old boy hitting and having tantrums

[iheartcinema]

My 4yo is a wilful second child (5 years between him and his brother) and he has had some speech therapy as he suffered for a while with glue ear. He started school in september and has seemingly enjoyed it but when he gets tired he starts to hit other children. We thought it was getting worse towards the end of last term and that was due to tiredness, but he's only been back 4 days so that's no excuse for the 3 kids he hit today! When he gets told off he throws a tantrum, and will basically throw anything he's holding, and it seems to be getting worse. He defies his teacher now quite openly. We are strict about bed times, but he is now coming out of his bedroom 20 times or more on some nights, driving us crazy! Our eldest was a model child by comparison!
Any thoughts? HELP!

He must be exhausted.

What does his teacher say?

Is he due to be reviewed by the ENT specialist and /or the speech therapist?

Is anything else going on in his life? any major changes at home or school?

Have you sat down and talked to him about what is going on?

Are there consistant consequences for his behaviour?

What about diet?

Sorry about all the questions, but these are my immediate thoughts.

Sorry I have to go now - but maybe considering all those points will give you some clues.

I can really sympathise having had a model older one and then an angry, tantrummy, bolshy, throw everying and anything -type second child. Our only conclusions at the time was that he could only demonstrate his feelings through physical reactions and these were mostly aggressive. I was doing a working with parents course (coincidentally) and through this read up on anger in children. Without going into lots of detail here, I got some books which we read together with him and I think they really helped. You could try Moppy by Jane Asher and I Feel Angry by Brian Moses. We are a year on and he is a very different child - still throws things and himself about when he is tired and/or cross but we have encouraged him to tell us how he feels and things have improved significantly. Hope this helps.

I'm afraid I have nothing constructive to add, but as the mother of a very similar 3.5 year old you have my every sympathy. I'll be following this thread with interest.

thank you for the responses. These are very helpful. I will try the books as well. We can't talk to him because he doesn't really understand and can't express himself very well. He has been having speech therapy and in fact is having a renewed session starting today after another round of assessments at the end of last year. We'll see how that goes. However , his speech has improved a lot since he recovered from the glue ear and his tantrums have got worse! No major changes at home and diet is pretty good - he eats well, and whilst he likes his sweets and chocolates, he doesn't get them all the time.