Hi I could really do with some advice. DD arrived 3 months ago and I’m beginning to despair at the change in her older brother, just turned 3, since she arrived. I expected that it would be a transition and challenging for him, but his behaviour has deteriorated rapidly. Bedtimes suddenly became a total nightmare, refusing to go to bed. That has improved recently but he’s still a handful in the evenings when he never used to be. He’s incredibly naughty regularly now - throwing drinks on the floor, throwing his cereal bowl on the floor, grabbed my dh’s drink the other day and threw it on the floor. Dh took him to his room to calm down and he just started trashing it - throwing his books on the floor etc. Everything has become an argument, I mean everything. Mega tantrums that also involve kicking, hitting. Often bites me as well.
He did hit his sister a couple of times to begin but recently he’s begun to interact with her and that’s lovely to see. However today he bit her foot, out of the blue after being very cuddly towards her. Should I have really yelled at him then or ‘love bombed’ him as I’ve read I should be doing? I am questioning everything I do with him and we used to have a wonderful relationship.
Dh and I are trying to not raise our voices, to be calm. Dh is better at this than me but I’m really trying to not let ds see I’m stressed.
We’re both trying to do lots of 1-1 things with him but it seems to make no difference. I took him to soft play yesterday afternoon, just me and him for 3 hours (tricky when breastfeeding but worked ok) but he was still very naughty when we got back.
I can see that he wants attention but we’re trying to give him as much as we can, in some ways he gets more now as he no longer plays on his own with his duplo or cars, which he used to do quite happily.
I am not sure what the line is between being very sympathetic towards how much of a change it’s been, to making him realise that he can’t behave like this.
I feel so guilty that I’ve turned him from a happy boy into a very unhappy one. It didn’t help that we all caught covid before Christmas so he missed loads of nursery then of course disruption with Christmas.
I am just at the end of my tether. Any advice greatly appreciated.