Do I have to keep smacking him?

[mumtotwoboys]

My 3 year old is CONSTANTLY jumping off the top of the couch and pretty much aiming to land on his newborn brother.
He's done it at least 6 or 7 times today alone.
I'm trying to breastfeed. He dives onto us and ends up squashing both of us obviously so I have to drag/push him off.
When I leave the room (in the kitchen where I can can still see them). He goes to 'hug' his brother and I can see he's squeezing him as hard as possible and squishing his face into him, my 4 week old then screams obviously. It does actually hurt he's done it to me, disguised as hugging. I go in and say no get off him now. He'll look at me and carry on. I drag him off and smack his hand.
My 3 year old absolutely does not speak English. He used to speak some, he doesn't anymore. We're being referred to a speach therapists.
When I try to explain not to hurt his baby brother he just growls as I'm talking, absolutely no indication he understands me.
I'm really pissed off right now.
I hate smacking him but no idea what else to do, especially while he's mid- crushing his little brother.

Hayllp?

My son has profound SN.
Smacking wouldn't help him and will not help your child.
It will just confuse him and , as it hasn't worked so far I think it is unlikely to help anyway.

( the very definition of stupidity is to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result)

You need to find a consequence that he HATES.

For my DS2 it would be taking away one of his beloved toys.

Decide what consequnce he would hate and then do that. You need to know your child and then apply what he hates imediately with a clear verbal explaination.

Stop hitting him. Please. It is not going to help

What would be a good sanction for your son?

Don't smack him.I used to take away ds's toys as well. He's attention seeking and smacking is giving him attention for unwanted behaviour. I used to put ds2 in a playpen if I left the room but I didn't leave them alone together at all.

I had this nightmare with dc1 who was also 3 when dc2 was born. NOTHING and I mean NOTHING I SAID ever seemed to stop her from accidentally on purpose falling on top of me and the baby while I was breastfeeding. It was so hard.

I ended up locking myself in the toilet to breastfeed. I did everything the books said to do, encouraged dc1 to snuggle up with us as I fed baby but she was like your son and would not miss the opportunity to disguise roughplay as a 'hug'. It was exhausting, totally totally waring.

There was never any one toy that my dc1 would have cared about enough to prevent her from falling on top of us. I don't think she was capable of controlling herself.

lock yourself in the loo with breastfeeding cushion. That is the only advice I can give you.

I look back on that time now and I wish I had given my dc1 a few slaps, as she put me through 6 months of hell.

Smacking your child will not work and if you have had to smack him more than 2-3 times for the same thing, then you must know it isn't working.

He is having to deal with the new baby coming and you hitting him won't help.

It's so frustarting, he doesn't seem to understand a word I say. He communicates in growls and screams mostly. He stresses me out so much and when he's physically hurting me or his baby brother my instant reaction is to smack him.
After a bad day I always tell myself I won't do it again, but then I do.
It certainly makes him stop what he's doing, so it does work short term. But obviously he's naughty again.
He'll start screaming when he wants something or if his tv programme finishes. He won't stop screaming until I've restarted it. He seems to be whining constantly today.
Maybe I should get out..

that sounds tough OP. Have you got anyone to help?

He has learnt that screaming works as you restart what he wants.

toomanychislets

Wow other 3 yr olds do it too?
I push him away and stay really sternly 'don't u dare' and when he carries on and I'm stressed i'll smack his hand.

But don't wish u had smacked yours cause the guilt after isnt nice, when theyre crying 'mummy no more, be nice' like theyre an abused child.
Jeez
Very stressful tho

mumoftwoboys, take yourself off into another room to feed. sit with your back blocking the door if necessary.

eVerytime i started to feed I hoped it wouldn't be a disaster and it always was. I never learnt for some reason, if I could do it all again!! (what a hellish thought - worst months of my life.).

Hang in there. It's a tough time.

I think it's fairly common behaviour in response to a newborn TBH OP.

ignore all behaviour that you dont want him to repeat.

if he hurts the baby, lift the baby and walk away and give the baby the attention. do not react to repeated attempts to get your attention by naughty behaviour.

but more importantly, encourage and praise the good beahviour. sometimes its easy not to notice the good behaviour and only see the annoying stuff but even if it something like him sitting nicely at the table. he doesn't need to understand what you are saying to know you are happy with him.

x posted there.

I'll be honest now and admit that I did slap my dc1. I will be flamed now. But I was nearly crazy. I had a young baby, a brat of a 3 year old and I was doing my best. All the usual suggestions, take away her favourite toy... all of those just didn't work. she didnt' care about any toy!! she only seemed to care about torturing the baby. I had to put him in the kitchen in his buggy with the stairgate across kitchen door.

There's nothing wrong with my dc1. Now she's 7 and dc2 is four and at the moment they are fighting in the back garden!! but at least now the size difference between them is less extreme!

You probably need some moral support. I look back on that period of my life and I feeel really sorry for myself. It was tough. Nothing has ever been so hard. My dc2 has sn too so have been through the whole dx followed by denial & acceptance etc.... And I still think that the first 6 motnhs of dc2's life was the hardest.

on back

do you have a little downstairs loo you can lock yourself in to?

sorry that is not a link, it was just supposed to be a pat on the back face!!

How are you financially wise?
Could he go to preschool in the mornings?
Might help for you both to have a break
good luck - it does get easier
go out as much as possible
like the library, feed the baby while Reading to ds there
and to toddler groups

Thenks all.
I guess I'll just keep trying different things.

What is SN? Is it delayed development?]
The healthvisitors have been saying from the start he needs to see a speach therapist he should be doing x, y and z. Even 2 years ago when he wasnt saying mum yet.
I thought they were being ridiculous.
I didn't want to take him to a doctor to make him think something was wrong with him.

I used to ask his daycare if they thought other kids spoke more, but they'd shy away from telling me the truth maybe not to upset me.
I took him to nursery for the first time a few weeks ago.
Other kids his age were speaking in full sentences and asking me questions about my baby. I couldn't believe it.
My son still mostly talks in single worded sentences if that.
Since then I've actually been in tears over it. Because when I went to pick him up from nursery he saw me at the window and ran to me excitedly, the teachers dragged him away, he was screaming on the floor, he looked so heartbroken to was being taken away.
Any other child would have said 'my mum is there' but he doesn't talk so they didn't know. I worry about how lots of situations like that could happen to him because they dont listen to him, they need to read his body language like i do and pay him more attention.
But he's on the floor throwing tantrums cause they didn't know what he wanted (me at the window).
It was heart breaking to see his little face as that was going on.
Then the teachers noticed me and apologised

compo he goes to nursery afternoons,
I think we should get out more too I guess though. This weekend is dragging cause we dont see anyone else in our free time, i'm a single mum living away from any family

mumof two is your sons hearing ok?

My dd had no kind of SN that interfered with her understanding, but I still didn't dare to leave her alone with her newborn brother. I took her with me wherever I went, or if I wanted to go to the loo alone I got her out of the room and settled with something else and put the hook on the door so she couldn't get to little brother. I tried not to leave her in a situation where punishments would just have to escalate because she couldn't control herself in the presence of little brother. Like others have said, there was absolutely nothing she would have cared enough about to manage to exercise impulse control over this one: she was too excited/frustrated/stressed over the situation, loving him and wanting to hurt him all at the same time.

So either I was there with the two of them- in which case I kept her engaged and talked to her- or she wasn't there either. I found I had to do a HUGE PR job on little brother. THings got better eventually and they are now great friends (not to say they never hurt each other- but he can defend himself).

So my advice would be, when you go into the kitchen take your older child, give him a job to do, let him have his own cupboard to play cook with, or help you with the cooking. Let it be "now we are going cooking, but little brother can't come because babies can't cook".

Well I just checked his hearing, I whispered 'in the night garden' when he wasnt looking and he ran to the TV ecitedly, so I guess he can hear?!

I get what you're saying. I need to try preventing situations where he'd be naughty, absolutely.
The little sod has figured out how to open both stairgates now. I actually call DS to follow me when I go toilet to prevent them being alone together. It's a good way to remind him to use the toile too

Save TV time for when you need to breast feed?

I would really recommend a playpen for the baby and it sounds a bit heartless but ignoring the baby as much as possible when your son is around.

My younger ones spent most of the time in the pram/cot/playpen unless they were being fed. The babies did get lots of one to one, cuddles/attention when the older ones were out/asleep - we used to but them all to bed and then get the baby back up . This is much easier if you have a baby that is generally happy/content/doesn't cry much.