3 and a half year old behaviour

[Mummy90]

I feel like i am at the end of my tether with my
3 and a half year old boy! :(
I am a single mother and still live at home with mum and dad. I work 32 hours a week and he goes to nursery 3 days a week. He was going 5 days a week until the nursery said they couldnt cope with his behaviour i.e hitting, pushing, pulling hair. There was even an incident where a parent complained because they witnessed it. He is not like this all the time though. So anyway, i lowered my hours in work from full time to the 32 hours to accommodate the nursery and he is still behaving the same even though he spends more one on one time with me. His speech is not yet quite there, i cant have a full blown conversation with him but i can understand everything he is saying. He is a very stubborn child and he just laughs when you try to discipline him. It is really getting me down and i dont know what else i can do! Anyone else going through anything similar?!

Poor you and poor little ds. I think you should ask your HV for help here...or your GP....his speech can be brought along with speech therapy and he can be assessed for other issues which could be affecting his behaviour. Nursery should have offered this as a suggestion to you before simply reducing his hours.

Hello OP. First of all you have my sympathy. It sounds as though your little boy has communication difficulties and is expressing his frustration through hitting etc. The nursery doesn't sound brilliant tbh if they can't suggest anything apart from what they have already. If your DS can't be understood outside the home then I would have thought he would be a candidate for speech therapy intervention at 3.5. The fact that you are single working mother will have naff all to do with his problems unless you routinely keep him in a box under the stairs. I presume that your parents speak to him as well and also do not keep him in a box under the stairs?

Speech issues and associated behaviour problems happen in all sorts of families up and down the country. I have two sets of friends who've had this problem with their children- both families married professional Oxbridge graduates with one parent at home all the time. In one case the little boy began speaking clearly after speech therapy and is now a perfectly lovely 6ft, 13 yo. In the other family they are 5 yo twins and are having ongoing problems with school that the school is not being very helpful about.

I think in your little boy's case, it's not too early to seek speech intervention for him. Forget the nursery's ridiculous suggestion that it's about working hours or any other aspect of your life. Contact your HV if you can still find them (many teams have been disbanded or altered thanks to that nice Mr Cameron's efforts). If you can't find out how to access that care then make a GP appointment and ask them to refer him to the SALT team.

Good luck- you may have to be pig-headed and a bit of a thorn in their sides!

I should have put more detail in what i wrote sorry. Nursery have gone down the route of filling out a CAF form and he was accepted for speech therapy but not behavioural therapy but i am yet to hear back about when this will all take place. I have decided to move nurseries to see if this could be the problem with why he behaves the way he does. I have his fathers side of the family constantly asking when i am going to 'sort out' his behaviour so i feel as though it is my fault with the way he is. A relative of his fathers tried to link it to the fact i contracted swine flu when i was pregnant?!? Needless to say this upset me.
Alls i can do is wait it out and try different things with him but trying to control a 3 year old when you are on your own is not easy!

PS: has he had a proper hearing test recently? Do you have any reasons to suspect that he might be deaf? Not listening to you + not clear speech might both be caused by deafness rather than behaviour problems!

Behaviour could be related to speech delay. Even if you think it is not related in that it isn’t directly connected to the frustration of not being able to communicate well.

For example ours did not want to go to playgroup with childminder and her other kids, as she finds big groups hard work due to significant speech delay – The reason for this are that she can’t hear what is being said well enough in a noisy environment to be able to copy and repeat words back and also of course struggles to talk to other children. She liked crafts and physical play but if any child spoke to her she walked away, so understandably found playgroup hard work (and would also find nursery hard work). So she didn’t have to go, she started playing up and making sure they didn’t go. She used to take clothes off in street and throw shoes into road or sit downa dn refuse to walk etc! She would also deliberately start a situation by pushing pone of the other kids so that they wouldn’t go to playgroup. Clever girl! At first we couldn’t see how this could be connected to her speech delay but I am now pretty sure it was related. She didn’t want to go to playgroup as she found it difficult so she stopped everyone from going by being naughty.

Your son may want or need more one to one with the adult staff member, or he may find it hard to socialise with other kids for whatever reason, maybe his speech, maybe not. He may not be a joiner inner. Not all children (or adults) like noisy environments and big groups. You may have to re-think your childcare provider. Would a childminder place (in a nice home environment with more one to one) be more suitable - could he attend nursery part time (mornings/afternoons only) and childminder drop off/collect on the three days you work, so he is not in nursery all day on those days?

Didn't want to read and run, but can't be any help.

First things first. The father's side of the family are clearly idiots and should be ignored. Also, none of this is due to you being a single, working mum.

I can understand him getting frustrated if he is struggling to communicate at nursery. I think it is a shame that the nursery weren't prepared to do more to work with you to address things.

By the way, at 3.5 it is also normal to some extent for a child to do all the things you describe, epscially if they are not happy. It doesnt mean he has a serious problem with his behaviour, just that he isnt happy about something. It means you need to find out the reason behind his behaviour and address that rather than simply telling him off or telling him not to be naughty. He may simply be better off in a new and nicer childcare situation as he clearly isnt happy in his current one and he is showing it!

Hes definitely not deaf, i can whisper his name and he will say 'what?' It seems like he has selective hearing and only listens when he wants. I praise good behaviour and he is a very polite little boy, always says please and thank you. But the behaviour at the minute when hes at nursery and sometimes when he is at home is uncontrollable. We have tried time outs, naughty corner/step, sticker reward charts. But nothing is working. As i live at home too, he doesnt have a lot of freedom i.e his own room or the freedom to play with toys wherever (my dad is very conscious about the little one wrecking furniture) so i sometimes put it down to that too