3 year old boy behaviour

[Franktank19]

I am really struggling with my sons behaviour. He is an only child and is very demanding for my attention. Will not play on his own or be in another room without me. He’s been at nursery since 9mnths whilst I have worked.

introduced time out and reward chart after intervention from HV due to his hitting and constant tantrums. Worked for a while now it seems he’s having a real regression!

He doesn’t listen, even things he was good at like finishing dinner, he is not doing. He always went to bed when asked now he won’t, he wakes up at 5am (used to be 6am) and has started hitting me again and he hit a child at nursery yesterday totally unprovoked.
After He’s very apologetic and when I ask him why he says he doesn’t know.

I am just at a loss of what to do. I use the time out step, he runs off and I continue to put him back but he’s a big boy and I just can’t keep lifting him and how long do you continue to chase him around the house.
I talk him through the day and tell him the rewards if he shows good behaviour, he seems to understand this at the time and then is naughty anyway.
I try and ignore the bad behaviour and over praise the good but only so much of that you can do.

any advice, is this a regression? Should I seek further help?

I think you're finding that the discipline techniques that you're HV is suggesting aren't working and there may be a chance that your DS is Neuro-divergent.

For the behaviour, I'd look at The Explosive Child, you should have more success with that.

What have Nursery said? Have they mentioned anything about his Speech & Language or asked their SENCO to have a look at him?

No concerns at all with nursery, the HV visited him at nursery and also said no concerns then. He is never misbehaved when at his dads or grandparents which makes me think he can ‘control’ it just feel at a loss

He is great at communicating and has been since very young

No concerns at all with nursery, the HV visited him at nursery and also said no concerns then

Do you know if the HV used the ASQ and the MChat Test?

He is never misbehaved when at his dads or grandparents which makes me think he can ‘control’ it just feel at a loss

Could there be an element of "masking" going on?

He is great at communicating and has been since very young

It's really good that he can talk well. I'd still do this progress checker for speech and language though as it covers a much greater area than how well they can speak

Did you manage to have a quick look at the Explosive Child and does it look like it might help?