My firstborn is 3.8 year old, and has always been a difficult child. We went through extreme crying stage as a baby, then biting/hitting stage when 2-3yo, and now extremely argumentative, stubborn, talks back to us and in general very difficult to handle. Our typical scenario ? he does something silly (like pulling his little brother?s hair), I say ?please stop pulling his hair?, he continues, I say ?please stop pulling his hair otherwise I will count to 3 and you will go to your bedroom?, he continues, I start counting, he usually stops around 2 but the starts talking back, e.g. continuing counting further or saying to me ?no I will count and you will go to your bedroom?. We have a number of silly behaviours during the day (pulling the hair, climbing over brother, shouting too loudly on purpose, obstructing me to do certain things, blocking our way, pulling his clothes until a hole appears etc.) I would try to ignore it, but it usually comes to the point when I cannot anymore, then I usually count to 3 and off to his bedroom. He usually resists to comply until last second followed by talking back to me, which seems to me that he is not taking me seriously. It usually ends in his bedroom with a big scream but the next minute he is out, he is back to doing his silly things. It seems that he does not care being punished and pushes boundaries until the very last, and always ends up screaming loads.
He is becoming increasingly defiant with our nanny, which is very nice and kind and maybe sometimes too soft (tries to talk him out of the situation rather than punish), and I feel that he takes advantage of her (perhaps likes the attention he gets when misbehaving?) even though he is only a little. I am sometimes afraid that he is too irritating and she will leave us!!
I occasionally worry about him having a compulsive defiant disorder, but on the other hand he is fine in a nursery (although sometimes a weirdo), so maybe not. But I think he is probably a really challenging child, somewhere not enough for behaviour disorder but I can safely say definitely harder as normal. He also does not like cuddles and I don?t feel we have bonded with him the way we should? we trying hard but it just does not work! (could be due to his traumatic birth). Also I worry a bit about his speech ? he chats a lot and has a good understanding of things, but does not make effort to compose sensible sentences, and rather enjoys asking silly questions, e.g. ?can you please take your socks from your drawer?? ?did you say kitchen?? (surely he heard correctly).
We have another DS, 13 months old, who is absolutely adorable, but due to DS1 being a hard work, I devote 80% of my time to DS1 and only 20% to DS2, which is a shame because I feel I am missing out on the wonderful DS2.
My strategy with DS1 is try to ignore silly things as much as possible and praise as much as possible, but even so we have lots of miserable moments every day and I can truly say, that if anyone makes my family life miserable, is DS1.
Just looking out here for some advice, or reassurance that he will grow out and it is not necessary a behaviour disorder, and how to deal with it.