3.5 year old has been having horrific tantrums for the last few months, i would say for usual ‘toddler’ reasons, can’t have anymore tv, no more pudding then more silly things like leaving the park, not having any ham in the house, crusts on sandwiches etc. Usually dealt with by either ignoring, explaining and giving an alternative or sending to bedroom to calm down depending on the severity of the tantrum. However recently it’s just become unbearable, he will kick off like i have never seen/heard before, throw himself around stamp as hard as he can on the floor upstairs because he knows it’s loud, scream in my face, this can go on for a good 45 mins or more. No matter what i say or do helps - the only thing that would stop it is if i give in - which i never ever do. I won’t do it because i know im the long run it won’t help, so it takes however long it takes for him to calm down.
But each day now for the last few weeks it’s not just th tantrums, it’s the complete rudeness, disregard for anyone’s feelings, just doesn’t care, refusing to do things even when i can see in his face all he wants to do is test me.
For example tonight i said if we eat all our tea we can all go for a walk after tea on your bike. 35 mins later tea still not eaten but he’s asking every 2 mins if we can go for a walk, i keep repeating yes when we have eaten our tea. 50 minutes and everyone else has eaten their tea, he’s still just sat asking about going for a walk, so i said if the tea isn’t eaten in 5 mins we can’t go because it will be dark you have messed around and taken so long it’s nearly bed, so let’s hurry up, eat and we can go. Nope he just screams he wants to go for a walk same on repeat. Over an hour later i just take the tea away and say right you clearly don’t want the tea and we are not going on a walk (it’s actually raining now anyway) so then he does an absolute mother of tantrums and i just didn’t know how to deal with it, wouldn’t calm down to talk, wouldn’t reason, explained it was raining, he says no it’s not. I left him to scream it out, he just followed me screaming so i put him in his room to calm - just started punching the door. asked him to stop stamping on the floor, just looks me dead in the eye and does it over and over and over again. Took him out in the garden to prove it was raining, just still screaming.
The point of all this is that i’m just at a loss, i have lots of friends with kids the same age and they never ever have episodes like this, they feel sooo extreme i don’t know what to do, what i should be doing, or if there’s something else wrong i should be looking into?