We are at our wits end with our 3 year old.
He had a sibling 7 weeks ago. He acted out at first, starting waking multiple times at night but generally nothing too bad or unexpected and was always affectionate towards baby (still is)
However his behaviour over the last week has become unbearable. He goes to nursery and every morning and every evening we have a tantrum/rage episode. He'll pick anything he's not happy with and scream at us to go away, throw things, kick things and hit us like it's a perfectly normal thing to do. The episodes used to be short lived but last night he was in such a rage for almost a whole hour. He broke a nightlight and emptied the bathroom bin down the stairs during that time.
The other day he got mad during his bath and filled his plastic jug multiple times and flooded the bathroom floor. So horrendous.
This morning he woke at 3am crying so I went to him. He said he wanted water so I went to get him some. When I came back he screamed "no you're poopoo" and slammed the door to prevent me going into his room and kicked off until daddy managed to calm him down. Then since 5am he has been hitting his car on the wall in protest to make sure the whole house is awake because we asked him to keep quiet.
I'm so shocked at his behaviour I don't know what to do. Our natural reaction would be to tell him off and punish him as that's how we were brought up but instead we've been very patient and told him it's OK to be angry but not OK to hit etc and patiently wait for him to calm down but I just can't do it anymore.
I can't have him waking everyone all night when we are already having little sleep from having a newborn. This is just hell.
My DH is a saint but even he is cracking and can barely deal with him anymore. Please help.
I just want to burst into tears. We never had any issues with him before he was the loveliest calmest boy. I don't recognise him at all.
The baby is very easy going so it's not even like he is left out, we still have plenty of time for him and the days revolve around what he wants to do and the baby just comes along so why all the anger??