4year old poos when told off

[equidox]

heya,

my son, (nearly 4yrs) has increasing tantrums and excessivly bad behaviour - hitting his sister, being nasty to her constantly, shouting/screaming/hitting me, amongst other generally naughty things.

i am, by nature a very calm person and dont think i ever truely shouted before i had children! but his behaviour is driving me crazy.

i am consistant and persistant with a 4 min "calm down" ('time out') but it seems i am doing it all day long, with out any prevail. if anything, it seems to make him worse.

i am not a perfect parent, at the end of the day, he gives his sister that one last punch and i shout at him. i know its wrong, and it doesnt happen very often, but when i do, it stops his bad behaviour, but, he poos himself. and has, just recently, started to poo himself even when put in his calm down spot too.

i explain to him why he is there, and when he has served his time, he is always made to apologise and understand what he has done wrong. but, this has resulted in messy pants.

i think maybe i am too easy on him, and recently his dad has moved in with us after a year brake up. he has been laying down the law alot heavier than i do, but sticks to the same calm down routine. this is the only thing i can think could be the cause of my lil boys accidents.. does anyone else think so, and if so, is it a sign of distress and i should ask my partner to take it down a notch? but it may be caused by something else.

please help!

also, if you have any suggestions for behaviour help, i would appreciate it xx
lauren xxxx

My sister was a nanny for a little girl who did this. Whenever she was told off, she just looked at my sister in the eye and pooed her pants! My sister simply told that it wasn't nice to do that and cleared her up and made nothing more of it. It worked but it took a long time. She's fine now and grew out of it but she did it with her own parents too; think it was an attention thing that was like "hello, I'm here".
You sound like you're doing all the right things; children have so many different phases though, he'll have had enough of messing his pants soon I'm sure.

If you can tell when he's working himself up into the naughty stage, could you perhaps distract him and ask him to help you do something so it stops him doing the naughty thing like hitting his sister?
I found my ds (4) reacts quite pistively to being asked to help do something (fold washing/use the dustpan to clean up a bit/set the table etc).