What am I missing here?

[Ploink]

My DS3 was always one of those happy babies and then happy complaint toddler who just did as we asked.

For a while now though he has been going through a stage of just not doing what he is told at all almost to the point where I don't think he has listened to what we have said at all.

Just now for example. Just got in and he sat on the stairs to wait for me to take his shoes of. Was just about to do it and he threw a tiny toy (lego) which was on the stairs down onto the hallway floor. I told him very firmly not to throw toys and made sure he was looking at me when I said it. He then immediately picked up another piece and threw/dropped it over the side of the stairs. This made me very, very mad and he got put into time out. I explained why he was there etc and when I went to get him out of time out we talked about it again.

The problem is that this keeps happening all the time.

Yesterday it was that we were building a bit of flat packed furniture and he needed to stay on the other side of the room and not keep coming over and standing on it but he just kept on doing it. He got put in time out several times and we told him not to do it and why A LOT!

Is this just one of those things that's going to take ages to get through to him? Or am I just doing something wrong?

Throwing toys is something which particularly happens a lot and we've told him until we are blue in the face! Yesterday he was sitting with his older sibling who was trying to draw and taking all the lids off their pens and throwing them across the room! It is actually making me extremely angry now that he takes absolutely no notice of what I have just said to him. Seriously presses my buttons!

How old is he?

Sounds like he's testing boundaries. He didn't do the same thing twice, did he? The first time he threw the toy, which so told him was wrong and then he dropped it over the side to see if that was wrong, too!

I'm afraid it's just a question of repeating the same rules over and over again - consistency is everything - until he is happy that he knows the boundaries!

Isn't it just basic attention-seeking? Do you give him lots of attention when he's being well-behaved or does he get lost in the throng a little, being one of many? Are you unfairly expecting him to behave as maturely as his older siblings and not rewarding him for behaviour that, if he was all by himself, you'd say was pretty good? And do you spend nore time telling him what not to do rather than what you'd like him to do. Even now, at my grand old age, I find if someone says to me 'don't do X' I get a serious temptation to do it, just to be contrary!!!

Is he just 4 years old by any chance? Apparently there's a big testosterone surge that happens around this age. DS is exactly the same at the moment and its v frustrating.

What happens to the toys that he's thrown? Do they get taken away from him?

He is 3. By DS3 I meant 3 years old rather than my 3rd child.

The thing with the flatpack furniture might be because he can tell you are sort of het up about putting it together, and a bit anxious, and this comes across to thim. I realised eventually that if my ds could tell I was really anxious about him not doing something, he would be more likely to do it, presumably because he knew he would get a big dramatic reaction . They like winding you up, basically.

And they don't really understand that it is upsetting you, when they start to understand that, they will be less likely to do things like that.