Almost 3 year old and his behaviour. Normal?

[AandB201517]

DS is 3 on Sunday and his behaviour is just getting ridiculous. We don't know what else to do.

He bites, slaps, smacks, pushes his younger brother over.

Grabs food off plates and throws it on the floor. Throws his food around the room for fun.

We'd say no to something 10 times and he won't listen.

He sits on my head, on his brother.

Can get very hyper and over excited which mostly leads to biting etc

He laughs if we shout at him to stop. We put him in his room when naughty, but he's actually enjoying being in there. And usually both of those attempts lead to him doing the same behaviour again anyway.

Is this normal behaviour for that age? If so what do I do about it? We're very lost

Biting, hitting and pushing is definitely not acceptable. This article from Ask Dr Sears might help to sort it.

Apart from that, how is he generally? Are his speech and hearing good?

Is he getting plenty of exercise?

@JiltedJohnsJulie thanks for the reply. His speech/hearing is normal for his age and he does get plenty of exercise. I'm just at a loss, really. Will have a look at the article, thank you 😊

If he’s getting tonnes of exercise and he can can communicate with you, the only other thing I can think of is sleep? Does he sleep ok?

If you’re after a book to try, have a look at Calm Parents

Try and play with him, have fun, be a twit, joke, smile and laugh, make time for him, love him more.
I was a parent volunteer in a state nursery for 2 years and learnt a lot about children. When i played i had so much fun and laughed and smiled most of the time. It's odd but when i frowned and said, "i don't like that," its like it was coming from big friend. I noticed in lots of classes teachers were shouting and many kids didn't take any notice of this.
I'm not saying this is you but you can't discipline if you don't love.
My mum said she loved me then would beat me.
Loving is doing, showing it, making time for it.
In some ways boys need more love and more discipline.
So love first and discipline later.

Just my opinion....

Sorry another thing, what I'm saying is you can hide discipline in play.
I was a father of 3 sons and tried to stamp my authority, it doesn't work.
It's as if i became a child again in nursery and that's where i tweaked their behaviour and made little course corrections.

Look for the good as much as you can.
Try and stay calm because children have a habit of controlling you.
They need your approval but if you don't notice some good stuff they've done then they'll settle for your bad reaction. Things just spiral downwards.

@JiltedJohnsJulie he gets about 12 hours of sleep per night. I don't know he's a weird one 😁 ooh thanks for the recommendation, I love having a book to read

@sevens7 good advice thank you. I do play with him and his brother, and pretty sure I don't beat him. But he also bites when he's overexcited as well.

Have you spoken to your HV about your worries AandB?

My nearly 3 year old doesn't hit but she does laugh when you tell her off. If she can see she's getting to you then she smirks and tries even harder to push your buttons. Whenever she has rice for some reason she scatters it everywhere and the only way to stop her is to take it off her, which makes her scream, otherwise anything you say makes no difference. She's forever trying to draw on the walls and floor. If you take the pens off her, explain why she mustn't do it, make her promise she won't do it again, give her some paper, finally return the pen and she'll go right back to trying to draw on the floor.
She's a lovely child most of the time but she enjoys being naughty, she enjoys the attention and drama it causes. Sometimes I think she's a bit bored and sometimes I think she's competing for attention with her 10 month old brother.
I try my best to stay calm and patient and remember that she's still very little. She's pushing boundaries and it'll get easier eventually.

He sounds a bit excitable, personalities vary, some children are calmer than others. And it sounds if he gets a bit stuck in what he's doing so he can't change direction easily,, which is not unusual for three! A few things to try:

Try giving positive instructions instead of saying no. "Put the glass on the table"; "sit over here" (instead of get away from the door); "run to the gate and stop" (instead of poking your brother); "get out the lego" (instead of pulling things off the shelf). You may need to be quick-thinking to think of what he should do instead! But that's the thing - he* can't think of what he should be doing when you say "no".

• Try a countdown, if he is doing something that is annoying but not dangerous "Three more big whacks with the stick (assuming it's on the wall not a person!!) and then put it down - three - two - one - and down! Well done"

• Use some when-then to get him to do whatever - "WHEN you have put the fork down on the table THEN we can have tea" (repeat boringly as necessary)

• Throwing the food could mean that food gets taken away. No fuss. He can sit til you have all finished or else get down and play by himself at the other end of the room.

• Biting slapping etc could mean a time out for him (three minutes in his room and it's not over til he is calm and has said sorry) and a fuss over the injured party. And yes it may need repeating, over and over and over. It is fine for him to enjoy being in his room - the point of time out is exactly to calm him down. You might want to take steps to calm things down when you see the first signs that he's getting over-excited before he does anything really silly - maybe separate him from brother, or direct their play a bit so they are co-operating calmly.

• Shouting at him is over-stimulating. Either use a firm calm voice and tell him what to do, or intervene physically to move him or take something away if you have to (but watch out for flying feet and teeth!)

Good luck

Very good advice Klein

@Oysterbabe and @Kleinzeit

Thank you for the wonderful advice I've taken everything you've said onboard

@JiltedJohnsJulie so sorry for the late reply. No I haven't spoken to my HV about the recent behaviour. I spoke to two different ones when the biting started and their advice didn't work so I gave up. They don't come out anymore anyway!!