Advice needed about nearly 3 year old pushing others and being unkind

[Summermeadowflowers]

Ds turns 3 in a month, and he has been having some poor reports from nursery. This is mostly related to altercations over toys but he can be somewhat dog in the manger about toys sometimes and will take something from another child because they have it, rather than because he wants it. He mostly pushes, but hitting and biting aren’t u heard of. He did have a phase of biting 18-21 months but this stopped

DS has had a number of problems with his ears and while I don’t want to excuse his behaviour incidents like this are almost always related to his ear. I am not totally sure at the moment though. He’s also had a new sibling in July which I thought I’d prepared him well for but perhaps not.

I am wondering what I can do and also how normal this is. It is worrying me as behaviour that’s normal at 2 isn’t tolerated as much at 3 (rightly so.) Any advice welcome!

My son went through exactly the same at 3. It has completely stopped now he's 5 and he hasn't done anything like this for over a year. What worked for us was a consequence every time it happened, aka, no biscuits after tea if he had hurt anyone, only one episode of bluey as opposed to the usual three, no going out for food after his club on Sunday. It took about three months of this for it to stop completely.

Thanks @Fantasia99 . I was wondering if I needed to be firmer with him - I was just worried that he might not link a sanction with something that potentially happened hours ago! I could definitely try no TV after nursery if there are any bad reports though.

It won't be something that happened hours ago though. We worked with the nursery with this. At the end of the day they would say 'he's been wonderful today, no incidents' followed by me saying 'that's amazing. I'm so proud of you'. Or, 'unfortunately he hit his friend today' which I would then follow with 'oh dear, well you know what that means'. He would know in advance that he either wasn't getting a treat or tv etc. May have a slight meltdown but soon calmed when he saw he was getting no reaction. Never had to shout (I'm not shouty anyway), or even be super firm, the lack of treats was enough. It worked pretty quickly.

Thanks, it probably is worth a try. I don’t want to be overly draconian with him but I do feel it’s detrimental to him (as well as other children!)