DS, 3.4 being naughty at Nursey - *help*

[stol]

Hello
I am first time on mums net and hoping to find that i am not alone in this very hard world of parenting. My DS is 3.4 months and my only child, He was an A Star baby and he terrible twos were not so terrible, but we find he goes through phases of extremely rude and bad behavior , he will be extremely well behaved at home and nursery for 6 weeks and then we have 2 weeks of all hell breaking lose indoors , me not being able to cope very well and my DH not enjoying coming home from work! We have recently moved and my son started a New nursery for 5 mornings a week , at first there was a little separation anxiety but he is fine now. At the moment he is having one of his Phases at home and i found out last week that this behavior is carrying on at school. When i picked him up the teacher said that he had be pinching quite a few of the other children (my son is not normally spiteful to other children) and she had sent him in. I was embarrassed by this some what and had a chat with him and he said he would be good at school..... When picking him up today the teacher had told me again that he had been getting aggressive when he couldn't get his own way, i was so angry inside, i dont know weather at him or myself as i try and promote nice things at home and not to hit back etc , how do i handle this situation and what do i say to his teacher, any advice or experiences would be highly appreciated! Thank you x

Welcome to mumsnet

Can sympathise on the phases of angelic beahviour followed by a phase of very challenging naughtiness and screeching etc.
(My son is 3)

Unfortunately he is mostly OK at nursery although I have asked them to tolerate no rude behaviour, to act shocked and demand an apology like we do at home. This generally works but not 100%

They seem O.K with this as we agreed it needs nipping in the bud.

Stol - hello
Firstly, I am sure you are not alone in having a child of this age who starts to experiment with a range of behaviour - and I wouldn't worry about feeling e=mbarrased by it at nursery - they will have seen it countless times before!

My guess is that you have quite a bright little boy, who is observing that there are lots of differnt ways to be, and is trying osme of them out. probably experimenting with a 'level' to see how much he can get away with at nursery. The newness of everything - moving house, new nursery, will definitley be a major factor. I would say consistnecy through and through - let him see that boundaries hold firm, whichever house or nursery he may be ion, and just keep discouraging any bad behaviour, and rewarding good behaviour in a very emphatic way. He is old enough to know that pinching is wrong, so I would say he is 'trying it on'.

My son was quite aggressive at home at that age but fairly good elsewhere. Sometimes if he didn't get his own way he would try to bite, scratch or hit me and sometimes I would have to wrestle him up to his bedroom and hold the door on the outside while he tried to kick the door down. These aggressive sessions used to blow themselves out after a short time and then he would cry or apologise. He used to say that he just couldn't help doing it. I then read somewhere that as boys go through their 3s towards 4s they have a huge surge of testosterone which makes them more aggressive. This then dies down towards 5yrs. From my experience this sort of behaviour just has to be understood and accepted and every time a boy is good or shows kindness they should be given hugs and kindness - to set an example for later on.

hello stol,
I think blu has hit the nail on the head. your son is just a bright lad who is experimenting. My children did similar things at this age.

Dont take it too seriously, but when he does something like pinching another child, just let him know that he's crossed the line. I had loads of rants at my children along the lines of "You wouldn't like it if I pinched you would you? Shall I try it?" (fingers ready) Child "NO!" Me "So don't do it to X then"
They did seem to get the message.

Some good advice there from others. I have little to add, but can sympathise as my Ds (now 5) has phases like this too. He had a phase in nursery where he would hit out at others if they bumped into him or something and said that they had done it to him on purpose.
We had a good long chat with the teacher who was lovely and decided it was happening if he had become frustrated during the morning at not being able to do something ( he is bright and had not previously had to learn too much about dealing with frustration of not being able to do soemthing easily but they were demanding lots of new things from him - quite rightly - in nursery)
We discussed stratgies we could both use when we could see something building up to this, and they introduced a star chart at school which we continiued at home. It worked really well, and after a few weeks the situation improved immensely. He still has his moments, but not nearly so badly as at first in nursery. And now he has settled much better and made more friends (he knew no-one at the nursery when he started) any little blip is soon dealt with
Hope this makes you feel a bit less alone

Nursery also told me that ds is copying some of the less desirable behaviour of his peers some of whom have older siblings to copy themselves.
We have clearly bred a sheep who follows the herd !

He was screeching "I want another story" in his bedroom last night so I turned the light out and just sat in the chair in his room saying night night and he got the message pretty quickly !
I told him he was a good boy as I heard him settling down to sleep and he said "No, I not a good boy" Perhaps being bad is more fun.

Thank you to all of you , i can clearly see that all 3 year olds hit this blimp , i have a parents evening on Wednesday with his teacher and will try and see what we can discuss and any ideas ti try and help.

Some of you have hit it on the Head , he is an extremely bright lad for his age, and really just wants to be part of the group with the older children (most of who he has befriended are over 4 and will be leaving him behind in september when they start school) so this might seem to him a good way to get noticed and made to feel part of it...... To relate what Normsnockers there are lots of times when we praise that good behavior '" Good boy , well done" and he will reply in an angry tone "im not a good boy" ! - Being bad must seem like they have more fun or attention!!!!!!!!!!!

why didn't i see all these threads when i was panicking (well, still am) about dd pushing and hitting other children (having no siblings that means it is at groups. grr)

feeling a bit less of a bad mummy seeing that maybe she won't be a huge bully but... argh (load frustrated mummy moan)

loud even