Please help!
My little boy is 4.5 years old. We are having increasingly aggressive bedtimes.
He will hit kick and bite. He is not out of control when he is doing this as sometimes if I say the right thing he can instantly stop and behave.
i honestly think he sees it as a game as a lot of the time he is laughing or giggling while hitting, kicking or trying to bite.
I think we have given a massive reaction to these behaviours and now he is trying to do this every night. He can be perfectly calm and relaxed at dinner time and bath time and then it is like a flick switches when we try to get him to go to bed.
I am sorry to say that on occasion I have totally lost my shit at him, threatened things we can’t necessarily follow through on. On a couple of occasions I’ve taken him out in the car to get him to calm down.
however nothing is really helping that much or stopping it. If anything it is now escalating to throwing things and being destructive etc.
i have tried to deflect or redirect by tickling and trying to make it silly but it only helped so much. Once I stopped tickling he immediately started trying to bite me again. I’ve tried time out it also didn’t help as he won’t go and sit in his room and calm down he will keep following us around hitting etc so then we have to lift him and put him back in room which is enflaming the whole situation.
at most other times he is pretty well behaved. He gets on well at nursery and we are told he is on track and ready for school. I’m a bit at a loss and also really drained by it