Aggressive 3 yr old

[sharpster1]

My DS is 3 1/2, DD is 5. We recently moved from France to Canada for my husband's job. Since he turned 2, DS has been a handful: cheeky, aggressive to his sister and defiant. When confronted about his behaviour, he tends to either hit out or roar (like a lion...) at the person. After 8 weeks at home with the kids over the summer, I'm at my wits' end.

DD is mostly the innocent party, but tends to react not by sticking up for herself but by curling into a ball, hiding in a corner, etc. I am worried about what effect her brother's stronger personality is having on her and wish she would stand up for herself more - to the extent where part of me wishes she would just wallop him back.
I recognise that there are other factors here (the move, no support network, no friends for kids, looong summer hols), but he was like this before, it's just more obvious and more frequent as we're together so much at the moment.

Any ideas for how to help DD and DS? When not arguing, they are really close and affectionate.

What is your response to poor behaviour now?

What methods of rewarding positive behaviour do you have in place now?

Just so we have more info

By the by, my 3 year old son has also taken to roaring like a lion when he gets worked up

Firstly, the positive: both kids have 'success books' where we write down new achievements or positive behaviours. Separate to this, they have reward charts. And of course, lots of cuddles and praise in their hearing to other people when they do well.
For poor behaviour (let's take a 1-sided sibling dispute as an example), we start by removing attention from the one misbehaving and focussing on the child who is upset. Once DD is calm, I take DS aside and explain what he did that was wrong, and what the consequences will be if he does it again. If he does then do it again, we might give him a time out (3-5 mins) but these are difficult to enforce as he persists in coming out of his room. Other options are removing treats (e.g. this morning we cancelled a swimming pool visit, which I felt bad about as his sister also suffered) and privileges.
That's the theory...in practice at the moment I am also yelling a lot. There's no break, and I'm finding that really hard.

Thanks FixItUpChappie, all suggestions really welcomed as I can't go on like this.

Bumping up

Sounds like you have a good foundation already to me

A few little things my DH and I have employed that are working well with our 3 year old....

-I prefer timeouts in a corner instead of in his room because mine will just play with his toys. I had to go through a brief stage of putting him back and restarting the time repeatedly. I try to reserve time outs for the most serious behaviour - hitting, aggression - ongoing out and out defiance etc.

-I find my 3 year old gets very frustrated and loses control of his emotions very quickly. In this case I call it a calm down time - still in the corner but I give him his comfort stuffed animal and a pillow and I tell him to hit the pillow and hug his stuffy. Once calm we practice some deep breathing before he has to help me pick up/apologize etc. This has been working out actually really well. The focus is on his loss of control.

-In general for a 3 year old try to keep consequences, brief, relevant and have them carried out and over with very close to the incident. A 3 year old will have a shotty understanding of cause and effect and this is even worse if these is any distance between the event and the punishment. For example, in my experience taking away dinner dessert for not brushing your teeth in the morning would be nonsensical to a 3 year old IYKWIM?

-My DH and I read Dr. Harvey Karps "Happiest Toddler on the Block" and really liked the practical techniques given. For example our son responded well to the use of "hand checks" - a quick check mark on his hand with a marker or sticker on his hand for noticed good behaviour - it works well because its so immediate and the reminder stays there on his hand for you to point out latter on. There are lots of really easy to employ strategies in that book so I highly recommend it.

I think that one of the keys is keeping it positive. Dangle the carrot and not the stick so to speak. I know that this can be a monumental task but I do find our worse days are when I can't keep it light and positive. When I start coming down hard, lose my sense of humor and things go to the dark side, my kids are less cooperative, more sulky, more badly behaved and it just gets to be like a dark hole of a day.

Sorry, I hope I haven't rambled too much and that there is something of use in there.

Hopefully someone else will come along and add some more

Thank you, will definitely introduce the hand checks - I'd forgotten how brilliant Harvey Karp is. I find it a lot easier to be understanding when I'm working and the time with the kids is limited; summer holidays and a new country have decreased my tolerance!

You've had some good advice re the 3yo, I would also suggest trying to get your DD involved in some form of martial art - great for confidence, exercise and self discipline.

Oh, and being part of a club/class is great for making friends in a new place!

wow, I could have written this post!! only without the move and without a sibling!! I have realised that it is a viscious circle.// I get mad cus dd is so defiant then she digs her heels in , then I get to feeling that she is so naughty and I need to control her behaviour.. put in sanctions that are over the top... then she is unresponsive...

I have just realised on the days that I am calm and deal with incidents correctly; we have a better day.
dd has hit gp yesterday when I was on a course.. I felt awful and when I tried to speak to dd she just kicked off.. last week we visited gp and dd slapped me, they were outraged and said "do u smack her back?" I said no.. and they replied that maybe I should and that would be why she thinks its ok to hit me. Other gp said that if he had hit his mother like that he would have been knocked into next week!!
I guess I feel useless that I am a bad mother because she does not always do as I ask and she does lash out when frustrated. DD is nearly 4.

My daughter's starting a judo class through her school next week, and I have noticed over the last week (since she started back at school) that she's being a bit firmer with him.

Since I first wrote, DS has started nursery school, which I hoped would ease his frustration. No sign of that so far! He has moved on from roaring like a lion and is now hissing like a snake: not sure if that counts as an improvement.

The bottom line is that if I am on form, I can deploy a lot of the things mentioned above and keep him relatively well behaved. But if I have an off day, or even an off five minutes (e.g. am busy trying to get dinner ready whilst supervising kids and simultaneously putting the washing out) he explodes. For example, on Sunday in the car he started thumping his sister and kicking the driver seat whilst we were on the motorway. Despite repeated warnings, he didn't stop until we pulled over and my husband threatened to smack him. My husband is a big advocate of smacking him, and I really, really don't want to but end up doing it out of frustration, e.g. if he's been particularly mean to his sister. I have always thought that, setting aside the moral arguments, it was ridiculous to hit a child in order to stop them hitting...and yet here I am. Sigh.