Not coping with 2.5yo, where to turn?

[dratdratdrat]

My son (second born) is just two and a half. He is bright, funny and very charismatic but he can also be an absolute hellion. Sadly the hellion side of him comes out about 90% of the time and I am rally struggling to cope with him.

• he is extremely defiant. everything is “no” a lot of the time he will cut his nose off to spite his face just for the sake of being defiant.
• he has a really immense temper, goes from 0-10 in seconds, screams, clenches his fists, throws himself on the floor, bangs his head on the floor, kicks things.
• will destroy things or actively look for things to wreck (pulls all the drawings off the fridge, breaks his brothers lego models etc)
• he is obsessed with having complete control over everything to an extreme, i.e if i go to pass him his drink he will say “daddy do it” and if i don’t comply and let my husband hand it to him he will kick off. but he is like this with everything, every moment of the day - all has to be on his terms.
• he will not follow a single instruction, he will actively do the opposite
• he has huge meltdowns that last 15-20mins, usually about 5/6 times a day over various small things. no one can touch him or talk to him you just have to wait for him to accept a cuddle, then usually he can be distracted after that.

He really likes to be out the buggy and walking but he completely refuses reins or hand holding and he will run off wherever he wants and refuses to come the right way (or the safe way!) so i have no choice but to buckle him in and every day that is a huge fight, usually with him still crying by the time we get to our destination. In the car he tries to escape from the car seat!

I hate to say it but he’s draining the life out of me. I feel a nervous wreck and stressed all the time. we can’t do simple things like attend a picnic with friends because i know he’ll kick off and itll be unenjoyable.

Please don’t come at me with this is normal 2 year old behaviour I know it is for maybe parts of the day, there is usually some light, some niceness right?
He has continued to get harder and harder to deal with as he’s got older, give me back him as an 18m old anyday - its not supposed to be that way round right?

I just don’t even know where to start getting help for him (and me!) i have started recording his tantrums secretly, just snippets and I have a folder on my phone with hundreds of videos. it saddens me.

I have every sympathy, he sounds like he's behaving in some ways like my DD was at that age.

You've said he can ask for things which is good, how's does he do on this simple progress checker?

@dratdratdrat my son is the exact same! I don't think it's right too but HV and preschool both saying no red flags atm 😣 so what more can I do. They think it's all 'behavioural' and will get better but I'm not convinced. The whole controlling aspect of it is too much in my opinion and then we get the hitting and pushing too. Really exhausting

I would try getting out of the moment and working on emotional regulation in the moment. This is helpful both for neurotypical children and neurodivergent children, so it doesn't matter that he's too young for any diagnosis.

Which basically means scrap most of the usual parenting advice.

Write a list of your current top 5 situations which are liable to cause a fight/tantrum, and write down what you would ideally like him to do (do keep it realistic for a 2 year old!)

This helps you notice when he DOES do anything even remotely in the direction of those positive expectations and you can go overboard with praise. You could also try a reward chart but he is a bit little for it to help very much. If you decide to do a reward chart, it should be temporary and specific (e.g. reward for holding hands, rather than for "being good on our outing").

Practise the expectations at separate, non-urgent times, make a game out of it etc. This can help a lot.

This is good with lots of similar ideas and more detail about how exactly to use rewards and praise etc: https://www.coursera.org/learn/everyday-parenting/home/welcome

Wherever you can, control the environment rather than the child. So for example, have a safe place where brother can put completed lego models where he can't reach them. Child gates on doorways might help especially if older brother has his own room.

Have a look at the book The Out Of Sync Child for info about how to help him regulate in the moment and spot signs of dysregulation in general.

Definitely speak to GP or health visitor and get any screening done for speech and language, hearing, development etc. If there's a simple cause then it's worth ruling out. You might also want to do the M-Chat screener for autism. It's difficult to screen toddlers for ADHD, because a lot of the questions aren't expectations made of toddlers anyway, but he definitely sounds like he's having trouble with emotional regulation, impulse control and frustration tolerance, more so than the average toddler. (And yes, they do all struggle with these things but yes, also, this is more than average).

It sounds like you have enough recordings - I would stop now as it is likely just making you stressed. You have enough to show any professionals who might be able to offer help/advice.

Thank you, your post is hugely helpful.
With controlling the environment that is a good way to put it, that's basically what we try to do at the moment but I realise we could probably go further with it.

He is having a blood test next week as last time I took him to the doctor they were unhelpful and said "he's not presenting ADHD/ASD to me" in the 5 minute appointment we had, but we did come away with an idea to rule out anything physical making him so irritable all the time. After this is done and assuming it's all clear I will push for more help with his behaviour.

Trying to come up with the 5 things but it is really unpredictable and can be seemingly nothing at all. Most of the time it is because he isn't allowed to do something (like run into a car park) or he's decided he wants something inappropriate to eat (sweets for tea) or if he can't do what his big brother is doing (he is 6) he is just so desperate for as much freedom as possible and he likes to have control over as much as possible. As a parent I am struggling to allow him these things while also keeping him safe. I let as much go as possible.

Ok, if you can't think of five specifically, you could start making a list/note over a couple of days and then just pick a couple of things from there to work on.

Another thing to do is to look at dysregulation throughout the day. The out of sync child book should help with that, a quicker source of info is theOTbutterfly on Instagram, though I'm not keen on suggesting social media as a resource because it's not usually detailed enough. Basically when they kick off it's usually because they're in a bit of an activated/aroused state. This is to do with energy and focus levels rather than sexual arousal. If you imagine this as kind of a thermometer (borrowing a concept here called zones of regulation you can also Google) you'd have blue right at the bottom for being sleepy and not much energy at all, unable to focus on anything, then green for a sort of calm focused level if you imagine a "perfect" school child in a state to concentrate and learn, going up to yellow/orange and then red is when they blow. It can seem like they're in green and then suddenly go to red out of nowhere, but actually what you find if you watch children over a day etc is that the kids who blow up often aren't usually in the green zone. They spend a lot of their day in yellow or even orange. That means that there is something underlying which is stressful for them. At 2.5 this is going to be harder to figure out but basically it could be sensory, it could be that he has too much power and needs stronger boundaries, it could be that he doesn't have much autonomy and needs more, it could be a dietary sensitivity, it could be a high energy need, it could be too much screen time/not enough attention, it could be he needs to potty train, it could be everything is unpredictable and he's trying to control it to make it make sense. The idea behind working out what state he's in in general can help because if you can keep track of it over a day then you'll generally notice patterns, which can give you clues about what is setting him off. Sometimes with dysregulation it's not like one thing will trigger an issue, it's more of a buckaroo effect so the clothes are too itchy and he didn't eat enough breakfast and his nappy feels horrible and then his tower didn't work and then he tries to zip up his own coat and it looks like he's melting down over the coat, but it's actually an accumulation of everything.

Looking up self regulation tools for 2-3 year olds will likely bring up various suggestions which you can practice with him like games or nursery rhymes when he's feeling happy and calm. Then only once they are well established, you can try to bring them in if you notice he's getting agitated before a tantrum starts. For example the conscious discipline breathing icons are great for this.

The everyday parenting course suggests that you can use their methods to encourage compliance in general. Personally for me, I am not keen on pursuing compliance as a goal because it doesn't feel right to me but there's nothing wrong with it as a goal in principle. So if that fits more for you than the regulation stuff try and give it a go.

Wow thank you @BertieBotts for such a detailed response. A lot of that makes sense, he does spend a lot of his day in the orange zone for sure. I feel a lot of his issues centre around frustration for him, he wants to do so much more than he is able or safe to do. Having 6 year old around flaunting his abilities / big boy toys is a big trigger for him. We got rid of his highchair because he would spend mealtimes crying to “get out” and wouldnt eat. Since giving him a regular chair he eats far better but constantly gets down from the table and tries to help himself to a yoghurt (which we let him do when we have all finished our dinner) and sometimes it feels like whatever I serve him he wants something different. So I am trying to let him have choices wherever possible (shall we have peas or sweetcorn today) but he is always striving for more control.