My 2 year old is broken

[mummyh2016]

I'm not even joking.

DS was the perfect baby. Slept through from 7 weeks, he hardly ever cried, no issues with colic like I'd had with his sister. He slotted into our family great and it was like we didn't know we had him really.
Once he turned 1 it was like he turned into a different child. A year on after that and we're at the end of our tether.
I don't really know where to start. I feel like he has tantrums all day. He hits me, DH and DD (6). He is constantly climbing up things. He throws things. Meal times are a joke, he refuses everything you give him and starts kicking off after 2 mins of being in his high chair. We can't take him to eat out or on days out as he will kick off. These we could cope with as his sleeps have been great. Up until the last week. He is now waking at night, he's still tired but refuses to go to sleep. I'm currently lying on his bedroom floor trying to get him to go back to sleep. DH and I take it in turns, I cope better at the tiredness than he does but I'm struggling now.
We both work FT, childcare we use a mixture of my parents and nursery. He will occasionally play up for my parents however it does seem to be the minute I walk in the door the tantrums start. I've had no reports of him being difficult at nursery.
We try to tell him off and he thinks it's a game and laughs. I feel like if I can crack the punishing it would be a massive step in the right direction but how do I do this?!
We didn't have any of this with DD, and I keep saying to DH it will get better but in all honesty it's getting worse.
What do I do

You mention no potential sen issues because he’s only like this with you. Well this is classic. You are his safe space and safe person so he can be like that with you. It’s possible he’s not like that in other places with other people as they aren’t as safe as you are. I’ve a teenager with ASD (I’m not suggesting your son has ASD by the way, just an example) and she has no learning disabilities etc. She is the perfect child at school, in public and when she’s with other family members, but goodness can she show her true colours when she’s with me. She’s also better behaved with her dad but we are separated and they don’t see him as much as me and probably less than some other family even. But I know the meltdowns are only ever at home because I’m her safe person.

Another thing to look into of his speech isn’t developed yet is the use of sign language and possibly visual picture cards too. Makaton is common but bsl is fab and a great language to learn. I did baby signing from birth pretty much with my children. By their 2 year checks my eldest had no speech but over 100 signs. She rarely had tantrums related to not being able to communicate as she was able to sign. My youngest also had a similar level of signing but she did begin speaking much sooner and used a combination of both signing and speaking. I always used signing with speaking as well and never as a replacement. My kids loved watching mr tumble too and even though we were using bsl, they picked up makaton from his programmes and even invented their own if they didn’t know a sign for something.

Having some visual pictures of key words though such as hungry, pain, thirsty, nappy change, tired, and different pictures of food can really help and can be used to encourage choices - pictures of foods and activities work well for this.

Definitely opportunities to be outside and burning off energy, or in soft play if weather isn’t good

That time period though from getting in from work and bedtime was always the witching hour in my house though and seemed to last forever. Keeping lights down, quiet music, slow activities, bath time play, regular routine to slow down for bedtime is always good.

Sorry OP, that is so tough. Our oldest was like that between 1-2. An absolute nightmare to be frank. She was very verbal, very engaged, obviously smart, and got incredibly frustrated when we didn't do what she wanted the second she wanted it, she still does at 4. I found that time outs didn't work then as she was 1, so they did not register. I've heard you should say "ok you threw that toy, i'm going to put it away to keep us all safe, tomorrow we can try again". But again, at 1, I don't know how effective that is vs just saying a sharp "ow" or "no" and putting it away. Re. sleep, does he have his back molars, or could those be coming in and disrupting sleep? I think the final set come in around this age usually. I recommend big little feelings on instagram for parenting tips. They do have some useful suggestions. I saw a post recently about how if a child has had a hard day at daycare they might come home and lash out because they can't express that to us, and it does make sense. I wonder if anything has changed there that could be causing the behaviour at home? It is hard because there are so many variables. I hope it gets better for you really soon OP.