I know all our children are fabulous until they go wrong, but my DS has gone wrong big time.
Let me fill you in. The problems started about 8 months ago when I was pregnant with 3rd bubba. He started to bite other kids without any provocation. I was at work full time, but his teeth had sunk into me a couple of times, or you would see his fangs being bared. Anyway, it was so sporadic that we put it down to teething, and although we all said "no, you don't bite" etc, he would still occasionally do it. Then he stopped all by himself.
Then I had DS2, and he was fine for a while, would get a bit over enthusiastic with his baby bro and practically strangle him with affection, but that was all. Now in the last two months he's started biting again, but what's worse is that he's now hitting as well. (Interestingly he doesn't hit or bite baby, although he did in the very early days). Often it's for no reason at all, he'll just be looking at you, or a child and then just whack, and if it's a child he won't stop hitting. Now he's 2 anytime he does this he's put on a step/chair etc, made to sit for 2 minutes and then made to apologise. He knows the drill so well now that he starts apologising as soon as you pick him up. But I've noticed over the last week that the more I tell him off, the more he does it, like he likes the attention. The obvious thing to think is that he's attention starved, but he gets more than his sister and to an extent the baby as well, as DD goes to pre-school 3 days a week, and when he's not there he's with me playing car, trains, the park, playgroup etc.
Now on to the sleeping. He loves his sleep, or rather used to. He would have a good two hours nap at lunch, then settle really well at 7 and sleep through till at least 7 the next day. However since the clocks changed this has all gone out of the window. I kid you not, from that night we have struggled to get him to go to sleep till 8/8.30, when eventually he passes out from all the jumping around he does in his cot, he's then so exhausted that he wakes up early, and is hanging out for his lunch time nap, and then refuses to sleep at night. He started preschool 2 weeks ago, so for one day a week he doesn't have a nap, and this is the only day that he goes to sleep/passes out at 7, and wakes up 7.15 ish, but is exhausted the whole of the next day. I've slashed his nap down incrementally and am now hovering around the 45 min mark, but even tonight he was bouncing around till at least 7.30. And he'll be knackered tomorrow, (rubbing eyes, crying a the drop of a hat ) it's all a bit of a vicious circle. I would have dropped this nap by now if he wasn't so tired. And this lack of sleep is exacerbating his hitting. I.e when he's tired he just lashes out and you can't reason with him.
He sleeps in a dark room with a blind and lined curtains, it's not pitch black, but dark enough. But previously he would go to sleep in a light room no bother. His older sister is always having her hair pulled and has bit marks and scratches all over her face from him, and he's lucky that she's never retaliated.
Does anyone have any suggestions about what to do?