Dear mothers-in-arms,
Don't get me wrong, DS 3.5 is perfectly gorgeous and loveable really. But lately his behaviour has taken on some peculiar and not altogether pleasant characteristics. I'd just appreciate hearing how you may have dealt with, or be dealing with similar issues.
DS shares a nanny during the day time and I just want to make sure we are all unified in our approach.
Some examples of new behaviour:
Hitting DD (age 5) and me. Not "hard", not to hurt, but clearly as an expression of frustration or a desire to get attention.
Willfully chucking toys on the floor. Sweeping cutlery off the table, bashing things. Again, sort of all with an eye on the fact that it is def naughty, so he's not really going for it, iyswim. He's not in a blind rage when he does it.
Saying stuff to DD like "I'm going to rip up your drawing". Or "I'm going to throw you down the stairs".
Pulling sulky and angry faces.
A few genuine tantrums. Again, not out of control thrashing around on the floor. Just a lot of crying and shouting, mostly to do with not getting his own way on something.
They key thing is that he is not really responding to the tactics we have always previously used in terms of bad behaviour. We have pretty much done the two strikes and your out on the naughty step approach. Also, pretty much zero tolerance on throwing, and always zero tolerance on hitting.
However, the bad behaviour is not isolated now, and in the space of 5 mins he has been rude to me, squeezed tube a cream on the floor, shouted or jumped on DD etc. And the stern "no" etc just seems to feed the behaviour.
So nanny has been doing a lot of ignoring of the bad behaviour, rewarding the good etc. Which I think is fine for the most part, but there are some things i just can't ignore. And it's not fair on DD. Chucking her toys around upsets her, hitting her is NOT ON, being rude to her is not ok and she naturally wants to see that there are repercussions for his bad behaviour.
I'm at a bit of a loss. And if I'm being honest, I find that often his bad behaviour does end up in him getting more attention. Which must be at the bottom of it all really, mustn't it?
I wasn't going to mention it as I don't really want all the posts to take this into account as it is quite possibly unrelated (can see you all smirking) but I had a cycling accident in November and my leg got broken. I was in hospital for a week and am still on crutches now (for two more weeks). This has obviously meant I haven't been able to be the active parent I was before....
Now you're all just going to blame it on that, aren't you 
. Even so, advice on tactics would be great. TIA.