Four year old has hit the terrible twos again...

[ScummyMummy]

...with a vengeance. Really bratlike tantrums with full blown screaming and crying, absolute defiance towards perfectly reasonable requests/questions, meltdown at the slightest hint of not getting his own way, hitting his twin to underline just how cross he is (especially if I choose to deal with tantrum by ignoring it), even once peeing in his trousers on purpose to show me categorically that I'd displeased him and telling me so. (I was, needless to say, gobsmacked.)

I'm non-plussed at all this rage. He's always had a quirky sense of dignity and self-importance and his fair share of tantrums but the past year or so has been relatively peaceful. Now we are being treated to daily displays of petulant tantrumming drama- he had 3 separate ones just walking home from nursery the other day, all seemingly triggered by stuff that he would have accepted without a murmur a month or so ago (things like no sweets today because it's not sweetie day). I'd forgotten the joys of walking along the road with an overwrought screaming mini-madman at my side. My partner has just set off with a v grim expression having been treated to the "I'm not getting dressed" tantrum of the year.

I thought they were supposed to grow out of this sort of stuff, not grow into it... is it a surge of testosterone or something? Feel very deskilled- my usual tactics- of ignoring tantrum, not giving in, sending him/taking him out the room, talking with him after he's calmed down- aren't having much visible effect. Any advice?

Scummy ... sorry no advice as such as my DS is not the same age BUT I did read somewhere (might have been Stephen Biddulph's Raising Boys) that at 4 there is a surge of testosterone which calms down again at 5 just in time for the start of school. I remember that my SIL had similar nightmares with her 4 year old and he is the loveliest calmest 6 year old now ...
FWIW ... my DS is obviously a late starter as the twos passed us by fairly uneventfully and he is now a monster of a 3 year old ... testing us at every opportunity and generally being a total nightmare ... most of the time!!!
Blooming kids ... who'd have'em? Ooops too late!

Scummy, oh how I recognise this feeling! You may remember my four year old Kevin the teenager. He's now lovely 99% of the time I reckon so it does pass! But oh how exausting and shocking it is when you're in it isn't it? I don't know whether it is a surge of testosterone but I do remember that feeling of "what ARE we doing having to deal with a tantrum in the street AGAIN?! YOU'RE FOUR FOR GOODNESS SAKE!
FWIW my advice is:

On the things that are absolutely not negotiable, i.e extreme violence (I was being punched in the face) we used a bad behaviour book. If 3 bits of bad behaviour were written down then something got taken away (toy etc). We only wrote in it for serious offences and it meant we had to stop, find the book, (i.e before I reacted and went off on one myself!) and write it down. It meant we kept a record of exactly how bad it was. I really thought it was 80% of the time he was awful but on writing down every incident we discovered it was much less, it just felt* like 80%! I'm sure many people won't like this idea since it is noticing and reacting to bad behaviour but in my case, I absolutely could not tolerate violence in my house and he needed to know it and be punished as far as I was concerned.

*This was in conjunction with a star chart for good behaviour. He could get 3 stars a day: one for getting dressed in the morning, one for being good after school til 6.30pm, one for going to bed well and staying in his bed. I know star charts don't work for everyone but you know what rewards will motivate your ds best.

• I think it was tigermoth who said you cannot afford to ignore bad attitude since how will you cope when you have a large teenager standing in front of you, still with bad attitude? She recommended taking bad boy to his room immediately attitude started and telling him he had to stay there until he could behave. We did do this too. I'll find the thread in a minute with wise words from Tigermoth and others.

• We wrote down the house rules (he couln't read them but he knew they were on the wall and we would point to them when we wanted to remind him). They were:

We have good manners, are kind to each other and say please and thank you
We do not use violence, ever
Good behaviour gets stars and treats
Bad behaviour gets written down

In my case ds likes to know what exactly is going to happen and why. The first time we told him about the new rules and the star chart and the book we had 45 minutes of unmitigated bad behaviour (hitting and punching me etc) while he tried to see if we meant it. DP and I were ready for it though and sat calmly with a glass of wine while he got written down, things got taken away and dp took him to his room again and again and again. I think he wanted to see if we really meant it! Clearly we did and we were consistent about following through with treats and sanctions. It did make a big difference in our case.

On the getting dressed business we lay out clothes the night before - do you do this? Before we did we would have big discussions every morning about sir's choice of top etc and it really drove me mad. Now he chooses the night before and just gets dressed in the morning. I did have to threaten to take him to playgroup (this was before school too) in his pyjamas sometimes before we started laying them out the night before though. I'd be very airy about it, fine, that's what's going to happen, up to you if you want to go in pyjamas etc and it often galvanised him into getting dressed.

I do know how awful it is. At least it's only one of your twins so far (touch wood!) Will post a link to the other thread, it helped me I seem to remember. Good luck, let us know what works hey?

The 4yo turning into Kevin thread is here but I've just read through it and you said you weren't keen on the idea of a bad behaviour book so scrub that advice from my post below! There were other wise words there though so maybe there's something useful there.

We had exactly the same problem. DS was a monster when he was 2, I swore then that our 2nd child would go straight from being 1 to 3. When he turned 3 he calmed down apart from a few hitches when DD was born.
He turned 4 in January and changed. I was dragging him home from nursery with him in a full blown screaming fit because he didn't want his coat on. He screamed all through town one day and I just ignored him keeping a firm hold of him and DDs buggy. Then the final straw was when dp bought him some sweets in town and ds threw himself on the floor kicking and screaming because he wanted to eat them straight away. A woman actually came up and gave dp a lecture.

After that every time we had an episode we would send him to his room for about an hour. He hates being on his own but we were at our wits end. It worked thank god. He's now his laid back happy self most of the time but if I do feel a tantrum brewing then I just remind him of how he'll be sent to his room and he calms down.

My problem now is that he finds it amusing to copy his 12 month old sister when shes shaking juice on the floor or unravelling the toilet roll. I normally find him amongst the mayhem and dd sitting watching looking innocent when I know full well it was her who started it.

Oh, tantrums at four, yes, we're coming up to that again. And I know just how it seems worse - unlike your average 2 year old, a 4 year old can reason (somewhat), can talk, can walk, can feed themselves, can go without a nap, can take themselves off to the loo. So there seem fewer and fewer excuses for a trantrum. You don't feel able to put it down to simple tiredness and frustration, even if these are factors. And for me, don't know about you scummy, it was the sheer size of my ds at 4 years. When he kicked, it hurt, when he screamed it was really,REALLY loud, when I had to carry him upstars he was B*** heavy.

WWW has given a great rundown of tactics and you've said you use all the usual ones, too. Can't add more. My favourite is sending ds up to his room - a very final and in a way a non-violent but physical answer to a partly physical display of temper. I always said (lets be honest, still do it sometimes, so still say), go to your room I will not have that attitude. Very very important, imo to get across the fact that the attitude is unacceptablem, not just the crying, hitting etc. As they get older, you know they can reason and have some self awareness, even if they deny it. Make sure they know that you know it.

but scummy I know that point you come to - you realise that no tactic is going to work 100%.- look at my son with his cub leader!

Another possibility is to try and rework some routines, re think ways of doing things with your sons. Perhaps different rules about sweets, dressing etc. Still your same principles, just a different way of carrying them out. Possibly even involve your ds in discussing the change of practice. That can be a good anti tantrum device. Take away the accepted barriers if poss, it might take your ds a whild to get fed up with the new ones, when he does, change them again. I tend to re-work the fine details our morning rountine every few months. Still don't have peaceful mornings, though. No magic solution.

I do remember thinking how much nicer my son was as he grew older - the massive tantrum stage does pass, the testosterone subsides, it is a phase. You're nearly there, honestly. In a year or so, if you're like us, you will look back and think, phew, glad most of that's over and done with.

Hmm, Scummy, we're getting a bit of this too at rising four. At present we've got the "I'm bored, so entertain me" riff (which is said remarkably insolently for a normally sunny little guy, but not tantrummy), and the ridiculous hissy fit ("I SAID that already! Why don't you UNDERSTAND me mummy?) which is uttered with added whinges at 110Db in public - latest at 31,000ft on a small EasyJet plane in front of two of the grumpiest old codgers I've ever seen.
All I can say is that the godson I referred to on WWW's thread, has, like her ds, got through this appalling phase in general and is much easier with life, his parents and friends now.
How nice for you that your little cherubs have decided to stagger this and not do the testosterone stuff at exactly the same time.
Commiserations and solidarity...

Bring him round to mine.
We'll stick your stroppy 4yo boy in a room with mine, shut the door, open a big bottle of wine and let them get on with it

looks like excellent advice here already, scummy, so i will just commiserate and wish you the best of luck!

I remember a consultant saying to me when pregnant with no.3 (when I was complaining about my 4 year olds behaviour) that the terrible two's turns into the f'n fours. He got that right