I'm feeling super emotional about this and feel like crying as I'm writing this post. I've got a lovely 4 years old boy,and a newborn baby girl who's going to be 3 weeks old on Thursday. My son is pushing all our buttons at the moment: he's not at nursery for the summer as our nursery is only open during term time. Our nearest family live 2 hours away so we can't rely on them to give us a break. We're in the process of getting a diagnosis of ASD for our son, and sometimes it's hard to know if his behaviour is due to the ASD or just him being a frustrated typical 4 years old.He screams when he doesn't get what he wants, he can bring the house down with his screaming! I've been worried about the effect on the baby, it's that bad. He hits me if he gets mad, I try to use what they do in school: the"stop" sign and talking to him calmly at eye level until he stops but it's hit and miss. Often, I'm boiling inside. His behaviour ( screaming/ shouting/ throwing things across the room etc...) started to get worse maybe 3 or 4 months ago. Before that,he was crying quite a bit and I know he found preschool very hard. My pregnancy must have been hard on him too,as I didn't have the same level of energy for him. I'm now in this situation where I'm sleep deprived ( the baby so far is easy at night and wakes up twice for milk, he on the other hand can need me up to 3 times a night and screams if my husband tries to comfort him so I end up having extremely broken sleep), worried about him starting Reception next week and the level of support he'll have and how he'll cope, and struggling after a bad night only to have him screaming/ crying/ hitting and just wanting to watch TV ( which annoys me as he's got so many tous to play with). We've really tried to prepare him for his baby sister, we've carried on taking him out to the park/ for pic-nics/ to eat out/ to the soft play/ to a friend's birthday party, we're always playing with him ( my husband is on paternity leave so he can really help) but he gets angry and frustrated and mad and sad all at once. I feel like hitting and hugging him at the same time. The other morning, he woke up shouting for me, and woke me up from my 2 hours sleep stretch ( the longest that night as I averaged less than 4 hours). My husband jumped from bed to try to comfort him but the screaming just went up, and I decided to go in as I couldn't stand the disruption. My son was irate by that point and although I hugged him and tried to calm him down, that didn't work. Out of nowhere, I felt this rush of rage and threw him on his bed where he hit his head on the frame ( not hard) , I then left the room as I was shaking so much and felt worried what I could do. My husband came in our son's room and I heard him screaming at him to get in bed and stop it and so on. I felt already horrible about having lost it with my little boy, and couldn't bear thinking now his other parent was also shouting at him. I rushed back in the room and shouted at my husband to leave him alone, that I had lost it with him and he didn't need him to lose it as well. My husband said he had not realised but still carried on being negative about our son, who was a hot mess of tears by that point. I lost it as well with my husband, pushed him and shouted " go away!!!". Of course, our little boy saw all of that. My husband went back to our room,and I tried to calm my son, who was almost hysterical. After 5 minutes of me apologising and comforting him,he eventually calmed down. I made a point of apologising to my husband in front of him too. My point is that I've lost it a couple of times before with him,and I smacked his bum or shook him. I don't really shout, I tend to keep things inside until it boils over and I usually get it out by crying or lashing out. My Mum used to beat me up, and it was very unpredictable. I saw her lashing out at my younger siblings too,and had to shout at her to stop. I was frightened of her for a long time,and still can't stand hugs from her,and am struggling to leave my son in her care ( it's only happened twice since he was born). I'm very scared of repeating the cycle,and realise I've got lots of anger stored deep down. I've tried counseling and it's helped a bit but with lack of sleep and all the daily frustrations with my son, I need to think about practical strategies to stop me from getting to the point where I'm about to lash out. Thanks for any pointers.