Need advice on a situation that happend last night involving my 12 year old and 3 year old !!

[Kaykay96]

Hi so i have 3 children my eldest son is 11 almost 12, 3 almost 4 year old and 2 year old. My eldest is awaiting assessment for possible adhd and add. Now last night we had family over my 3 year old and 12year old were on the sofa, watching tv and my 3 yr old was playing on my phone. I was in the kitchen, i looked through little boy got up screaming and ran off to the stairs. When i went to ask him whats the matter he told me 11yr old had hit him. I checked the top of his leg where theres visable finger marks from a slap!!! I coumdnt believe it. Sent my 11yr upstairs and went to talk to him about it. At first he denied it like he does EVERYTHING. Then wentnon to say 3yr hit him first and he was angry. Told him how unacceptable this was and he should of told me what happend so i could intervene as i normally would.im so so sick of 11yr old. Hes in constant trouble at school, always lies and denies everything, he blames every situation on everyone else! Iv allready confiscated xbox due to terrible behaviour. Im at a loss on what to do. Im worried for my little ones. This also is not the first time hes hurt my other son. When they were younger i found lots of bruises on my 1 year old and it was from my eldest being nasty ticklibg him REALLY hard cos he was annoyed at him.(they were his words). Im at a loss, im stressed constant and worried whats next to come. My eldest is always implying violence to other people when hes upset about kids at school also. So who do i contact? What do i do? Any advice would be appreciated. We don't work with any organisations for him, just SEND plans at school.

Social services will have a gateway service who can point you in the right direction. Google the name of your council and children social services and they will be able to point you in the right direction.

You supervise him more closely when he is with the little one. You give meaningful consequences when he hurts someone else. You support the school's sanctions when he steps out of line there. I would also focus on filling his time with healthy activity in the form of clubs etc. Spend time with him individually too as he needs your positive attention too.

You will get little to nothing from social services for the situation you have described.

Also agree that you need to supervise more closely, although I know how hard that can be. Things like asking the eldest to help you in the kitchen might work especially if you frame it as you want to spend time with him.

One thing that's really helped my relationship with my ND teen is to smile every time I see them and I mean smile like you are really glad to see them. I had to take it at first as their behaviour was horrible and it made me really anxious to be around them but just by smiling it's taken a lot of the tension away.

Have a look too at what things he can do to regulate how he's feeling. Maybe start something like C25K with him?

And I'd have a look on the SN Children section for some tips on organisations that might help and ways to improve his behaviour positively. We had to learn the hard way that discipline techniques used for NT DC rarely work for ND DC

When you have ADHD it can be really hard to fight impulses. Most 11yos will find toddler siblings annoying. With ADHD/ASD there is reduced capacity for frustration before they will lash out.

What you need to do is get him to recognise before he's getting to the point of wanting to lash out, because unlike most 11yos, he likely lacks the impulse control to do anything about it once he's already got to that point. Just telling him that it's not ok, and punishing him for it, is unlikely to help here. You need to identify the alternative behaviour that you want from him, and when/at which point, and then scaffold him towards it - which means breaking it down into steps from where he is now, and then praise/reward for each step that he successfully makes, ASAP after he does it (not half an hour later).

Something that can help at first is observing over a couple of full days or a week. You'll find that there are times of the day/week that he's more reactive and times when he's less reactive. Try to bear this in mind when you think about his capacity for frustration and impulse control. So for example, if mornings are better, then you can plan more things for the morning where you don't necessarily have to supervise them all the time. If evenings are tricky, then you likely want to set something up where the kids are not left alone together. Try to arrange things so that he is off doing something eg in in his room, or where there can be an adult with him.

Do you have a date for the assessment? Will you be looking at medication or just see what they say at first?

Just also wanted to say that not taking responsibility can also be a sign of ADHD/ASD and it's not something you can really get cross about, as frustrating as it is. Just keep reassuring him that he can admit to you when he's done something and you will try and help him.

My DM is very probably ND and I don't think she's said sorry or admitted to doing anything wrong in 90 years.

This is great advice. ADHD often involves issues with impulse control, you need to teach him how to recognise when he's getting less regulated and what to do and how to step away from it. You'll need to start when he's calm, he needs to practise until it becomes automatic and he can then access the strategies when he's starting to struggle. Punishing him or telling him how bad what he's done is wont give him impulse control. He lacks the skills for what you want him to do, you need to teach those to him or if you can afford it take him to a psychologist that has experience with children with ADHD who can teach him. You could try something like zones of regulation.

You may need some early help intervention but as others have said this is about supervising properly.

Im also going to ask, only based on you saying your little one was 'playing on your phone', does your older child have his own phone, on it without you knowing what he is seeing, on it for long periods watching the internet?

If he has ADHD or is otherwise ND you need to promote activities which support his impulse control and attention span, not deplete it or compromise it.

To be fair, toddlers can be very annoying to adults, let alone 11 year old siblings. My DC fought all the time - there’s a 9 year age gap. Obviously we wouldn’t like our children to hurt each other, but in the instance you’ve described, I wouldn’t be too worried. You’re making your eldest sound like a monster.

If the 3 year old hit him, he has probably learned not to now!