My child is a bully

[Iknowjustthething]

It’s really hard, and I worry all the time I caused it. He was a very aggressive toddler but I kept reading it was normal. Now he’s 3 and a half. He often just takes a dislike to a random child and targets them. Of course I take him away but it never has a lasting effect. Sometimes we go a while without any incidents then it starts again. I worry he’s going to cause serious harm to his baby sister.

I am not necessarily posting for advice as have tried pretty much everything after months / years of worrying about this and I think I’m just at the point now where I think it’s just his personality.

some are aggressive and unfortunately mines aggressive.

Don't be silly. They aren't 'aggressive' by default. They exhibit aggressive behaviour. And you deal with it by removing them, talking to them about what they did, and giving clear, related consequences

He's not a bully at 3! He's only little & learning.

You keep reinforcing the correct behaviour, you minimise the opportunities for aggression. (For example don't put him in situations where he's likely to behave like that)

And stop being so self-pitying. Of course it's hard. But we've all had to deal with challenging situations - it's being a parent.

When young children bully and use a lot of physical aggression to get what they want or lash out at other children it's often a sign of a social-communication skills deficit and maybe an early sign of an underlying problem like autism or ADHD.

Do talk to your GP or health visitor, and to the nursery if your son goes to nursery. He can be helped and supported and he doesn't need to grow up to be aggressive.

In the meantime do protect your baby - keep them separate when you're not there, and keep a close eye and be ready to step in. Toddlers don't have a good sense of harm and danger to themselves or to others, and your son may still be immature in that way.

Maybe look at parenting techniques for children with autism, not saying he has autism but a different technique might help

Ah right I see he's showing that behaviour at nursery too? Will they support a referral for assessments? He doesn't have to wait til school.

How was his speech?

Op my dc1 was pretty agressive, still is to a degree.
Generally not just going up and hurting people. There was generally a reason.
once she was playing up at a toddler group and when told we would have to leave she ran up to a random child and janked their hair.
her speech was fine and other development but it is autism.

things to do
draw up a spreadsheet of incidents
when, where, triggers, what happened before

and also his other development

There was a child at dc school and preschool who hit a disabled child, hit bit etc etc at school.
he was significantly behind reading and writing. Parents said autism but honestly seemed more impulsive to me. But also combined with that he does have a mean personality and thinks that he can start things and get others in trouble. Eg we were in the park. He kicks dc1 on the bum (no interaction between them before this) so she does it back. So they are messing about. But him and friend come up to me and his friend says 'look what your dc was doing' hmm yes continuing what x boy started....

Could it be he finds large groups an issue?

Also is it happening when you take him places or just nursery etc?

As i found school etc were awful at saying what happened so you can see why. In fact making dc seem psychopathic. It can be something minor or even them holding a grudge from before.

She was in a Bumbo and he jumped on her.

And sorry for being self pitying but this is kind of my thread as well as his.

I really have tried the advice that’s out there. I’ve spoken to him about expectations. I’ve tried to stay positive. I’ve read books with him. I’ve removed him from situations. We don’t seem to be any further on two years later so yeah … I am self pitying a bit because it does have a fairly profound impact on my life tbh.

OP your child is still forming and is likely to have spiteful feelings of envy and jealousy about the baby on the scene. When an eagle lays two eggs, the chick that hatches first and is bigger and stronger pushes the weaker one out of the nest and to its death so all the parental love, attention and care is exclusively theirs. It is brutal, savage and horrific, but it is nature - Cain and Abel. Us human beings have ‘nature’ in us too.

My guess is that he has had a primal reaction to the young ‘usurper’ in the family and wants her gone on some level. This may have even begun during the later pregnancy when all this prep was happening for someone else to arrive.

When your child is spurred by savage feelings of spite towards other children at nursery and so on, this is likely to a transference from the feelings towards his younger sibling.

My suggestion would be to give him items and spaces that are %100 unequivocally his, which he isn’t pressured to ‘share’. The same goes for time and attention. Take him out one to one and get dad to look after his little sister, and really carefully manage and guide him to learn to enjoy sharing, instead of treating him like a bad boy if her doesn’t want to share.

Problem is @BackCats be was like this long before I was even pregnant with the baby. So I’m not sure it’s all that.

My husband was like this as a child. He has told me about beating other children off toys he wanted at nursery and similar behaviour.

He has ADHD and autism and is now the most wonderful partner, extremely empathetic and has an extremely gentle personality.

Please don’t write off a small child as ‘just who he is!’ If he is neurodiverse, these children receive so many negative messages growing up because their behaviour isn’t understood and written off as them being bad.

And it really isn’t about not wanting to share.

An example is at the park the other day two girls were holding hands and he was roughly shoving between them so they were split. Park was empty apart from them. This sort of thing happens all the time.

I don't agree there are no signs. You've listed many. You need to be proactive. Earlier diagnosis the better. My son was diagnosed at 3.5.

For me that particular example sounds like an attention thing, it’s a “look at me I’m here”, and wanting to be involved, just expressing that in an inappropriate way?

One of the ways of trying to understand behaviour is to use the ABC method.

So this is where you try to write down details of what is happening but in a particular format.

A is for Antecedents - so what was happening before the behaviour.
This is often used in a school context so I might write down X was sitting next to Y. Z approached and whispered to Y.

B is for Behaviour - so you write down exactly what happened. Eg X got up out of his seat and tried to hit Z. He then cried and sat under the desk and would not come out.

C is for consequences - so what happens as a result of the behaviour. This isn't what you do, but how the other children/adults react. So for example the TA got under the table with him and helped him calm down. He then went out side and used his fiddle toys at his desk. He missed the maths lesson.

The point of this is that it can help you work out if the behaviour is happening in response to various things. So if he routinely becomes more aggressive when he is around a lot of other children he may get overwhelmed by the noise or the sheer social interactions.

So you could then work on that by socialising him in environments with fewer children and as he gets used to it upping the number of children.

Aggression in pre school children tends to reduce the better their communication skills are, so long term it is worth working on his speech and ability to communicate his emotions.

The HV and nursery disagree so I’m not sure what you want me to say.

Maybe @Mrsttcno1 thats a helpful way of looking at it.

He isn’t as bad as he used to be so that’s something. But I think I keep thinking we’re through that phase and then we aren’t. I do worry because he’ll go to a very small school and I obviously don’t want him thought of as the mean kid

Sending sympathy! BTDT, though a bit later than you.

You've tried ordinary parenting stuff and it hasn't really worked, so it sounds like it's time to call for some professional advice to find out what's going on for him.

You may get pointed at a parenting group while you're waiting for assessments, give it a try if so. It's not a criticism of your parenting, more an opportunity to try things out and discuss what worked and what didn't. Some kids are harder to manage than others for all sorts of reasons.

Yeah I have tried the ABC method, I was talking to nursery about it.

I have tried lots to improve speech and talking about emotions - haven’t got very far. But I have tried!

How are his communication skulls? Can he express wants and needs with words? Can he identify feelings that he's having? Recognise feelings in others?

You need to be consistent in your approach at all times, not leave the children in any situation where a baby could be hurt by him. And yes, if necessary then there needs to be immediate consequences.

My DD is no angel but could speak quite well by 3.5. I also could tell you that sometimes she would deliberately do something naughty, in a very calm manner too, to get some form of reaction from me. She wasn't violent unless she went into complete meltdown, she was destructive of stuff. Maybe I'm a lot firmer than some parents but I took the approach of quietly removing her from whatever she'd done that was naughty and then if I needed to then she had things taken away. Things that, even if unrelated to the offence, I knew she'd miss. It was the stance of, if you can't be nice you don't have nice things.

I still have moments with her now at 5 but not anywhere near as many.

You haven't actually said whether you've tried discipline at all, or what discipline, but perhaps you need to put some hard boundaries in at home to start to guide him in the right direction

As I’ve said he does have consequences but either he doesn’t understand, doesn’t care or doesn’t link what he’s done with the consequence. Hard to know what really.

An example is at the park the other day two girls were holding hands and he was roughly shoving between them so they were split. Park was empty apart from them. This sort of thing happens all the time.

That sounds a like a child who wants to play socially and doesn't know how.

Do you keep a diary of these incidents? Can you bypass the HV and ask the GP for a referral?

And I do appreciate now I’ve calmed down a bit that this morning wasn’t necessarily bullying or mean. He was probably over excited. But it gave me a fright and I was shaken.

However on other occasions he can be a bit unkind. And nothing I do seems to make a difference and this is a worry for me.

I don’t think there’s any need to involve the GP, I think I’d get laughed out of the surgery tbh.

He's communicating an unmet need. It's your job to work out what that is. You can't throw your hands up with a 3 year old and say, well, I've tried everything, he's just an aggressive bully.

That's not how it works, unfortnately, and it's absolutely not going to get any easier for you if you take this approach. You're not failing, but you will be if you let this slide and give up on him. Yes it's difficult, but you have years and years of parenting to do, this is only the beginning unfortunately, so you need to buckle up and lean in.

There is heaps of resource out there, look at the Mary Van Geffen Podcasts, and the more you read/research the more you'll find that fits. You won't regret it, but if you sit on your hands you most certainly will.

Perhaps consider a course like PPP (positive parenting programme) https://www.brilliantparents.org/parenting-courses/

At age 3 he will not necessarily respond quickly or obviously to your consequences.

Think of it as more like training a puppy - it takes a lot of time and the puppy still jumps up at new people but over time the training methods reduce the behaviour.

It's absolutely worth you keeping a record of the behaviour because it's easy to get lost in the oh my god he's still doing it and not notice it really is reducing.

Is the ABC method producing any ideas for situations where he is more likely to be aggressive? If so, that's where to target your efforts.