Screamed at my 4 year old… so upset with myself

[Cruzsteer]

I have screamed at the top of my lungs at my 4 year old this morning. I have cried and I feel so so so guilty.

he has just turned 4 and his behaviour has been tricky recently, very awkward, saying no to us constantly when we ask him to do something, refusing to go to bed and playing up etc even though we try our best to make bedtime a nice time. He is also using some language which I don’t like, for example he keeps saying ‘I hate this’ about certain things, he called me fat, and says ‘I don’t care’ all the time when we ask him to do something. We genuinely don’t use this language around him, we would never call anyone or anything fat especially not around our kids, we try and not use negative language etc, he is at school nursery and he said one of the other children called the teacher fat so I think that’s where he has heard it from. I told him we don’t call people fat and it’s mean, he said i dont care. He just seems to have lost his kindness recently which upsets me.

anyway early this morning he was asking me for a cereal bar (he’d already had breakfast ) but I was Trying to rock my poorly 1 year old to sleep, I said I will get you one in a minute once I’ve got baby asleep. he dragged his little table over to the kitchen side and started opening the tea,coffee and sugar pots. He started throwing the teabags everywhere so I said please stop, then he started putting all the washing up which was on the draining board back In the sink where there were some dirty pots so again i said please don’t but he ignored me again, so i went over and lifted him down off the table. I had stayed calm by this point. I started putting the washing up back and he stayed ramming the plastic table into the back of my legs and laughing. I turned round and said please don’t that hurts mummy. He kept doing it and laughed. I tried my best to ignore but then he rammed it really hard into the back of my legs and I span round and screamed ‘don’t you dare!!!’ And pointed my finger at him, i shouted so loud I shocked myself, the look on his little face broke my heart instantly, he ran and hid under the kitchen table. I started crying and went and got him straight away and said sorry I shouted it was wrong of me
To should but you hurt mummy. He said sorry mummy but he was so upset and hasn’t spoken since he has just sat on my knee looking sad.

I feel like the worst mum in the world

You are not his playmate , you are his mother and he was walking all over you . He needed to be told. Your guilt will fade as does hopefully his bad behaviour . He pushed you to your limits and now he knows . You did him a favour .

I’d have raised my voice long before you did! His behaviour was appalling. So what if his little face looked so sad when you shouted? Good. The bad thing is that he also saw you cry because you shouted. He will play on that big time if you don’t get a grip. Prepare yourself for self pitying ‘mummy shouted at me’ crap from him to guilt trip you into not shouting at him again. You are not your mother and I get it that you don’t want history to repeat itself, but that doesn’t mean your kids get a free rein. Kids need a stern voice and sometimes a yelling voice to let them know what’s right and wrong and more importantly who’s in charge. His Terrible behaviour needs to be nipped in the bud now. I only had to give mine ‘the look’ for them to stop in their tracks! With a smaller baby to look after too, I recommend you show your 4 year old who’s boss sooner rather than later.

Yep completely agree with this. Most of us are from a generation where shouting, smacking, extreme harshness was the norm and for a lot of us it was damaging.

BUT, now we’ve gone way too far the other way and it’s playing out in homes, nurseries and schools up and down the country with kids running rampant, atrocious behaviour, assaulting other kids and teachers, throwing chairs and desks across the room etc.

Personally I think it’s fine to have a degree of fear towards your parents and teachers. When I say fear, people will imagine a scared child hiding under a bed. That is not what I mean. Fear can be feeling ashamed that you’ve done wrong, or an appropriate punishment (obviously not talking about physical abuse here).

But for a LOT of children they have simply been badly parented, pandered to at every turn and never suitably punished. All of which will do them no favours whatsoever as they grow up.

to me, ‘gentle parenting’ is firm but fair.

I don't understand why you were crying and why you felt the need to apologise. He behaved horribly. Don't let him rule the roost. It's your home and you are the parent. You make the rules. If you keep crying and apologising, he will just take advantage and become even worse.

I think you weren't strict enough, but I also understand what it's like when you had a mother who was too far the other way and you want to be different. My mum was similar with rages and guilting and crying etc

I found two books an easy read and quite positive in their approach. Little Angels by Dr Tanya Byron and Divas and Dictators by Charlie Taylor. It's about being kind and empathetic, but also putting in firm boundaries at the same time.

Oh I get what your "is it?" was referring to now.

Surely the immediate-term goal of any discipline is that the undesirable behaviour stops? While they're little and lack impulse control, that looks like moving the object out of their reach and limiting their access to it. The long term goal is that the behaviour doesn't repeat, but screaming and shouting is no more likely to guarantee that than gentle methods, and creates more upset.

You wouldn't just say it in a firm voice; you also remove the object he's using to ram people with. If he continues finding other ways to hurt people, you move him to a safe space and say "you can't be around me without hurting me right now, so I'm going to stay away until you can". Otherwise, you redirect - "we aren't going to play with X anymore because you're using it to hurt me, let's play with Y instead".