Hi all,
Wonder if anyone can relate here and offer any advice.
Stay at home mum (for now) with a husband who works from home (relevant as he gets to see DS a lot throughout the days) and my own mum who more or less lives with us due to personal family reasons. DS almost 3 gets a lot of attention. weekends DH gives him one on one time in the park, I am obviously there all the time playing and engaging with him, my mum takes him out a few times a week on little trips and reads him books in the day, etc. DH’s eldest son our DS’s half brother comes over most weekends to see him too. He’s kissed and cuddled all the time and told constantly how much he is loved.
We saw lots of positives of having this more traditional family setup with grandma here all the time and a close family dynamics, DS is highly sociable and very confident, expressive, fantastic language skills and very bonded with us all.
recently, though he has been running rings around us all, and the three of us often struggle to manage him and feel exhausted by his unlimited demands for engagement. He wants to talk to use all day and doesn’t often self play, instead demanding one of us plays with him. He knows his dad works from a room of the house, and will often have a meltdown unless I take him to his dad and there is no way of distracting him. These last few weeks he has kicked and shoved several children and has gained a poor reputation at a Playgroup take him to. He has also started hitting our cats and having hit one of them twice with his train track yesterday while it was sleeping, said that he did it and it felt good. He also hits himself a lot when he throws a tantrum.
Not sure where this aggressive behaviour has come from, My mum has started saying that all the attention is having a bad effect on him, that giving him options when we are trying to get him to do something is only adding to that.
Not sure what to do or how to parent, I often hear from specialists in this field on YouTube and such podcasts that it isn’t possible to spoil a child with love, so what are we doing wrong?