Struggling with five year old behaviour

[Backtoschoolshop]

I’ve posted a bit about my current situation on here but I’ve NCd, just to try to have a bit of privacy.

My DS is five, six at the end of the year. In mid June we found out DH has terminal cancer, although quite what terminal looks like at this stage is difficult to say. I haven’t told the children this but I have explained to them that daddy is very unwell. It’s been really difficult to manage because DH is in a lot of pain; the children don’t mean to but they forget and try to climb and sit on him. I know this must have really affected them.

However, DS has become increasingly difficult to manage and I’ve had a lot of issues with him arguing with other children, hitting out, showing his temper in other ways like banging things down or flinging them down. It’s hard to say if this is totally linked to DH - I don’t doubt a lot of it will be but other times I have to admit can be typical of DS anyway. He does have a lot of problems with his ears, and his behaviour does tend to deteriorate when his ears are bad. I also don’t know if some of this behaviour is typical for this age.

I don’t know if anyone has any helpful advice or resources as I’m increasingly feeling out of my depth and it’s doubly stressful as his three year old sibling is comparatively very easy which makes me feel he must feel like I don’t love him as much.

School is aware but obviously haven’t been there since the end of July so it’s been a very intense sort of month. I think we’re both feeling it!

It’s understandable that his behaviour has changed with everything going on at home. At five, children often show stress through behaviour rather than words. Try not to compare him with his sibling or blame yourself, he’s probably struggling with a lot too.

I would look into charities or organisations locally that support children whose parents have a terminal diagnosis. I'm sure they would have advice even if you're not at the stage of explaining to the DC yet.

I'm really sorry, it sounds awfully stressful and hard. FWIW I do think at this age children have very few resources to fall back on so if there is some persistent source of stress, like hearing difficulty/pain in ears, alongside the fact it's likely that he will be picking up on something being wrong/different because the adults all know something is wrong, and so the stress comes out as difficult behaviour. Mona Delahooke has some really useful books about this, you might like the one called Beyond Behaviors.

Thanks @BertieBotts . I’ll look into that.

Ask your school SENCO if they run the ELSA programme and see if they can offer him a space. You can read about ELSA online.

DH has also had cancer this year and DS’ primary school arranged for a Nurture TA to have a session with him each week, but he is y6 so this may not work for a much younger child.

They don’t really have a SENCO as such. It’s a very small school and there’s one SENCO who works in a number of different schools in the area.

I think we are pretty much alone in dealing with it which I prefer largely as it’s easier than being let down but I do need to know what I can do as opposed to the school or any other organisation.

No definitely can’t afford that

But I do feel as much as I’m sure some of this behaviour is linked to DH a lot of it was pre existing. The tendency to hit at soft play for example has been an ongoing issue, then we will have a few months without incident then it will start again. I remember going past a playground when DS was only just over a year old and DH and I both vetoed it as ‘Ds will get into an altercation.’

His best friends at school are two children with emotional, social and behavioural difficulties and I can’t really ignore this fact that he gravitates straight to them. Is it because he’s like them and I’m just blind to it? So hard to know.

If we could move on from that as I don’t think it’s possible or practical at the moment I’m afraid.

You could always make an appointment with the GP to discuss any concerns you have about his development. They might be able to let you know whether it meets the threshold for referral for any kind of support. But TBH it's difficult to tease out developmental concerns from stress-related behaviour in young children, and IMO (I have children with SEN) that's probably because the mechanism is fairly similar - and if it's stemming from a stressful situation, then there's nothing really you can directly do about it. The GP would probably also be able to say whether there are any free services to access to support children going through illness of a parent as well. It's one of those things which is rare enough that it doesn't make it into the standard parenting manuals or topics people talk about in the playground etc but there will be professionals who have supported many, many families through what you are going through, and it might just be useful to know whether they exist, it doesn't have to be an ongoing relationship, it could just be a one off and when you're ready. There are definitely MNers who have been in the situation you are in now as well and I don't know if there are support threads but maybe it's worth looking? I have found MN great for things like this over the years.

You say he has problems with his ears, is this hearing related and does he need support with speech and language? As this can cause difficulty in age-appropriate interaction as well as resorting to aggression when they can't access the communication they need via speech, and could be one part of why he finds it easier to play with children who are perhaps more interested in physical play than children using more complex speech in their play. So if this is relevant, it could be helpful to push for referral for speech therapy.

There is another good book I like called Self-Reg by Stuart Shanker, which talks about how different stresses can reduce children's capacity in other ways (e.g. on a very simplified level, if they are stressed cognitively by school because of SEN they may struggle more with emotional regulation). He describes a situation in the book where a child struggles with social skills for whatever reason, and so his social interactions are unsuccessful and this causes the child to withdraw and attempt less social interaction. So while he started out slightly behind his peers in social skills, his peers by interacting with each other practice and develop their social skills more whereas this child misses out on that practice and development, and creates a self-perpetuating cycle where the gap between them widens, but it could have been alleviated or reduced if the child was given more support with social skills in a pre-emptive way. I definitely see aspects of this in all my DC and the friends they tend to choose - it's not always negative, not all across the lifespan. DS1 is 17 now and has a group of friends who are all painfully stumbling through adolescence but they seem to have each others' backs. And DS2 benefits much more from me just being present and trying to intervene/guide in a more calm/supportive way long before things turn into any kind of altercation than being told off or punished for it after the fact (he generally just experiences this as unfair because he perceives that he had no choice but to lash out, we are working on this).

I am not really sure what you are asking for though - you say you want things that you can do rather than the school or anyone else, but you are worried you are missing something, do you mean some kind of developmental concern? The very most important thing you can do for your DS is to love and accept him. I know it sounds trite but it genuinely just is the one thing which makes the most difference.