How do I deal with my agressive 5 year old?

[Nicetoes]

HI
I'm new to Mumsnet but thought I'd just dive in here...

My DS is five years old - his birthday's in October so he's one of the oldest (and biggest) boys in his reception class. My problem is that he's getting in trouble at school almost daily and appears to have absolutely no respect for any authority figure. He listens to nobody and no punishment (eg taking toys away) seems to bother him in the slightest.

He was lovely (of course, to me he really is lovely, but you know what I mean) until he was 4, then he started being a huge handful at home - refusing to do as he's asked, breaking things on purpose, hitting his brother & sister, calling me and my DH names, running off when we were out and refusing to come back. Then it escalated to school too. Almost every day I collect him to stories from the teacher about how he's hit other children, called people names and it's got to the point where other mums don't want him to go and play and other children are beginning to avoid him.

He's the youngest of 3, has no respect whatsoever for my DH and just laughs in his face. This causes tension between me and my DH because he finds it hard to have a relationship with our son and openly favours the other 2. We've brought the kids up to be kind, polite etc but I just don't know what to do now about my boy.

Any advice whatsoever would be really appreciated. Sorry this is so long!

My DD is also being a madam at the moment, she's 5, not so much of the aggression but definite rudeness, etc. What are the school doing about his behaviour in school? Just telling you all the things he's done isn't particularly helpful. You could maybe switch to positive rewards for him rather than punishment if that's not working. For example if he manages something attainable, like not running off the next time you are out, he gets a treat of some sort. If your DH is struggling with the relationship then maybe they could try and have some special time together just those two, starting small like a walk to the shop together.

I feel your pain I don't like my DD that much at the moment because of her behaviour and I feel awful about that.

Not that it helps much, but you're not alone.

You really need to nip this in the bud now. My Ds is 8 yrs old and is acting this way too. They say that this type of behaviour has to be addressed before the age of 7 or its too late to change it.

Firstly - this is probably a testosterone surge, that will settle. All of my boys have been bloody horrible at the 4/5 year old stage.

But you do need to deal with this or it will become a habit. The best bet, I think, is some sort of bribery or reward scheme. If money matters to him, give him some pocket money - 50p a week, say. For every time he messes up/gets into trouble, you take 5p or 10p away. Or the more straightforward sticker approach - a day or half-day out of trouble and he gets a sticker. If he ends the week with a certain number of stickers, he gets a treat.

The other thing is that this is also attention-seeking - and bad attention is better than no attention. So make a real effort for either you or his Dad to have some quality time alone with him - a trip to the cinema, or to kick a ball around, whatever - but some time where you're having fun together (even if you're having to grit your teeth) and the focus is all on him. That should reduce the need to get attention elsewhere.