Help I am going mad!!

[Lynne33]

I just had to post this to vent a little. My kids are driving me round the bend!! My ds (4) and my dd (2.6) are constantly bickering, pushing and pinching each other and generally getting on each others nerves. I seem to be shouting all the time at the moment and am becoming emotionally shattered . They also seem to have decided together to take no notice of what I ask them to do whatsoever. Every night I say to myself I am going to try not to shout at them tomorrow, and half an hour after they get up I am at it again!! Has anyone else been through this or got any ideas how I can diffuse a situation before I lose my rag and start shouting?!!

Hello, I have a question for anyone who can pass alittle advice on please.. I live in Spain now with my two year old boy.. we are away from friends and family and im having a real hard time with the old terrible twos..
Ethan my son is very loving, happy, confident and very approachable , however he has started to Hit me with closed fist taking a run at me at time in his rage .. it occurs when he is upset IE. when i say no or take something away from him.. I just dont know how to stop him.. I have tried sending him to his room.. talking to him and even tapping his hand or his bum ( with a nappy on ) the spanking of hand and bum i DONT want to do as I feel that giving him the wrong message that smacking is ok .. How do i stop him.. he doesnt do this to his father whom he see very little only weekend s and the odd hour in an evening if he is lucky .. he is with me and I feel that even though My child does not yet understand repsect, you would think that the person who has cared for him wouldnt receive such a thing as being smacked by her child.. i know that toddlers do this but you cant help taking it too heart Ethahn is myfirst child so Im new to this and really dont have anyone to ask about how to deal with such behaviour.. please if anyone may have alittle advice assides the posibilities i have already done Ie. send to room etc.. i would greatly appreciate this.. many thanks
lisa

Cant offer any real advice just to say that my DS also two has started smacking me sometimes for no reason - sometimes when cross (as you mentioned) sometimes just because i am there it seems - find it really difficult to handle as well. Read something recently in The Times that it is all about attention seeking - whether you tell them off or not - it is the attention they want. Recommended ignoring them and walking away etc bit difficult when you have to get them dressed/shoes on and out the door so you can go to work in the morning. I'm sure that someone else will have better advice but just to let you know you are not alone!

DD does this too sometimes, as you aid wen seh's tired and angry at me, even though she tends to vent her frustation at things mainly, but occasionaly me as well.
I always remove her from wherever we are, tek her to the bottom of the stairs, crouch dwon to her levle and try to talk to her and say that this is not acceptable, if she tries to get up I put her down again, until she calms down (can take up to 15-20 minutes in the worst cases).

Recently her tantrums have started to be less violent and shorter (she's now 2 and 7 months), but she started having them way before she was 2!!

I ahve been at times quie desperate about it and given her a smack on teh thigh once, but she just laughed at me (....)!!

It si attention seeking, if I ignore dd's bad behaviour she turns on to breaking things or hitting me so she can get a reaction, but I've tried to be very consistent and not let her get away with this kind of behaviour ever.

I also always takke away something she really wants as a punishment: we leave a friend's house if we're visiting, cancela trip to the park or the treat she wanted, no video before bed, etc etc.

For a long time it seemed like this was taking me nowhere, but it's now starting to have effect as she tends to calm down a lot more quickly if I say 'If you keep doing this we're not going to visit X', also in the past few days she has started to change her tactics: it's as if she now uunderstood that throwing things and hitting is not getting her anywhere, but sweet and nice behaviour is, so sometimes while I'm in the middle of a sentence telling her off, she would have acomplete change of personality and go from THE Exorcist type to being a very sweet little girl and say things like: 'cuddle mummy', or 'I'm tired mummy', which obviously wins me over all the time!! (Not that I give in to the demands that caused the tantrum, but I do give her a cuddle!!)

Hope this helps,I'm starting to see the end of the tunnel, so there is hope, even though sometimes I wonder whether it's anytihng we mums do, or they would just grow out of it anyway as they get older!!!

Mys DS 2.4 also likes to hit me and also says 'hit mummy' at the same time. I now pretend to burst into tears saying that he's hurt me and rubbing whichever part of my body he hit. This seems to for us to be the best way as since I started doing this, he now kisses where he's hit and says sorry. Although it hasn't stopped him, he does acknowledge that he's hurt me.

Hello, I have a son of 5 years old and unfortunately lately he is into hitting and sometimes even kicking me. Until now he used to do this only to me but now he is doing it to his father, grandparents even our housemaid. These tantrums take place as soon as somebody says no to him. He gets really angry and starts shouting and hitting and banging his feet real hard on the floor and at times he even spits. In general he is a very sweet, loving, affectionate child. At school his teachers are very happy with him and when I tried to discuss this problem with them they were shocked because he is always extremely well behaved. Even people who we do not know, i.e. a waitress at a restaurant, come to congratulate me on how polite and sweet my son is. I tried talking to him to explain that this behaviour is unacceptable but since I did not get through to him I started punishing him when he behaves like that by not allowing him to watch television or by not taking him to his playgroup or by not eating sweets, even sent him to his bedroom until he stops crying, etc... but lately I must admit I am loosing my temper a little bit and a couple of times I smacked him on his bottom and I yelled at him. I hate doing this and I feel extremely guilty since I do not want my child to remember his mother as the one who punished him all the time or yelled at him.

If anyone can give me any advice on how to handle this problem will be really doing a great favour!!(

Manoula, there's a book that may be helpful, Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph. Behaviour problems can have very different sources and very different triggers and it's not uncommon to see children who are hell at home and angels at school. My mother was a Montessori teacher and within the school there were many children their parents classed as aggresive and very 'prone' to tantrums but curiously just one of them had the same behaviour at the school, at the end is all about respect which curiously is based in you doing as you say be it to punish (in the softest sense of the word) or to praise. Biddulph synthetise these when he says that boys need to know three things to avoid behaviour problems:
-Who is in charge
-What are the rules
-And to know these rules will be fairly applied and that going beyond them won't be tolerated
Good luck!

Manoula

If you hit him and yell at him - how is he going to get the message that hitting and yelling and being out of control is not acceptable?

I know it is hard but you are there to set an example of how to deal with stressful situations without resorting to violence. As it stands I fear that you may be reinforcing the bad behaviour.

I agree with the last poster that raising boys is very good.

I wonder whether the rages are due to frustration on his part - can you ask him to use his words when he starts to get angry or upset, but of course when he does you really do need to listen to them!

Well... I know that it's not right to smack the children but seeing so many 12 year old yobs molesting people at the street I wonder if it would have helped them. Once I saw a women been beaten by his thirteen year old and she was obviously terrified, it was at an airport and forget about the shooting and kicking, he also hit her twice with a luggage trolley.

I'm not saying your boy will get to this, your child is old enough to understand and the sooner that you stop him the better. Don't loose your temper, is better to walk away and deal with the situation later. Hitting and bitting should not be tolerated, not even by you, you are his mother and do many things for him,You deserve respect don't let him take over you...

Sorry - realise my last post sounded a bit sanctimonious!!!

I think at 5 your son is old enough to understand deals. I would do a deal with him that at the end of every day he will get some small treat - allowed to watch a favourite program, a sweet or he gets to choose a bed time story. If he loses his temper he doesn't get it. You have to be absolutely rigid about applying this and must not give in to him no matter how bad the temper tantrum.

BTW I suspect that he will feel very frightened and bad about the loss of control he suffers - have you spoken to him about it at a time when he is calm?

Manoula, how is everything going?