I have two sons, aged 3 years and the second is 2 months old. For the last two days DS1 has had absolutely awful behaviour and it has come out of nowhere. For two days straight he has showcased his absolute worst, whereas we might have in the last have had maybe one tantrum lasting no more than half an hour every few months.
I have been kicked, hit, scratched, spat on. He defiantly pees on the floor and today he did that, walked though and in the most disgusting way spread his but cheeks and crapped on the floor in front of me. It’s all of the most horrifying behaviour as seen on supernanny type shows. He has called me all the horrible names his little mind could come up with, and told me he doesn’t like me, he wants me to go away and that I’m naughty.
Daddy gets this treatment too btw. He seems to be lashing out at the two of us equally. His behaviour towards his brother has not changed, he still adores him, always wants to touch and talk to him.
It’s so awful that if he had been with someone else (eg grandparents, aunties house) the day before I would seriously questioned whether he had been mistreated in their care simply due to how massive this character change is - and I really trust my family, so that’s how bad it is.
We were utterly bewildered at first and reacted by giving time out sessions at first and then as this provoked violence we ended up shouting at him. We assumed he was just having a bad day or something, and while the way we dealt with it wasn’t ideal, we just didn’t know what to do. We spent the night googling for help. Today, we took a different approach and calmly told him no, tried to let him cool down, and removed him from the area whenever he got to the stage of hurting anyone. We talked though things afterwards and explained why his behaviour was wrong in a simply way, The first day our parenting skills were iffy. Today, I would say we were impeccable. We did everything right , could find very little to criticise in how we handled things...and yet his behaviour was just as bad - worse, if anything!
Is this delayed reaction to havIng a new sibling? DS2 is two months now though, and DS1 shows no ill will towards him at all. We have been careful to give DS1 loads of attention and avoid doing anything to make him resent DS2. Up until now, things have been great. DS1 has been great 95 percent of days for the last year, and so much so in fact that although time out as a discipline method hasn’t really been working for us, we haven’t needed to worry about it enough to actually put it into use enough to bother thinking up new methods. This is partly why we were so underprepared for how to deal with his behaviour!
He doesn’t seem to be ill...no changes in his routine or anything. This seems to have been triggered by nothing! And each individual episode istriggerd by pretty much nothing too. I have spent the last two days delicately trying to manipulate him into staying calm as otherwise he begins to get what we call ‘silly’ - making up words and garbling them, jiggling about, being careless with his movements with this progressing into shrieking and rough play, carelessly tossing toys about and lashing out at the cat if it’s near. At that point we will need to ask him to stop, any even trying to stop him enough to make him listen triggers the bad behaviour - shouting no and insulting us, progressing into throwing, hitting spitting etc.
Honestly, today especially he has literally been trying to wind me up (and failing, at least externally I have managed to stay calm and collected). The whole day has been nothing but me trying to deflect his attention away from him trying to wind me up by behaving extremely badly.
I always watched supernanny and me and DH would scoff at the bad parenting skills on show. But now, this is US! And honestly, we try so hard to be good parents and despite constantly questioning ourselfpves and a tendency to be overly self critical, I actually thought we were doing a great job. Now I’m wondering where I went wrong, trying not to cry, and dreading tomorrow and how I am going to get through another day of this.
What the hell is wrong here?