Such a difficult relationship with my son

[andiwonderif]

He’s only four which makes it awful I know, but I just don’t know what to do. Every day I think I’ll be kind, gentle, encouraging, the parent I want to be. And I am … sort of. But every day I also find myself snapping at him, short with him, nagging and criticising him.

It’s awful but a lot of the time it’s as if I can’t get things properly into perspective. Like just now I put a bottle of water down for a moment to pick something else up and he kicked a ball (which he’s not supposed to do inside anyway!) and sent the water bottle flying. It was a total accident and I knew logically it was an accident, but I couldn’t get it properly into perspective and I was so irritated by it. So many of the days are like this with me getting annoyed and worked up over small things.

I want DS to trust me and to know I have his back, but I feel like I’m just destroying his self esteem at the moment. But equally I can’t ignore some behaviours. I’ve tried reading and nothing has really worked.

By the sounds of it , you might need professional help. I’m not saying this as an insult, but there seem to be a lot of internalised negative feelings towards yourself (shame, guilt, you “failed”/him etc.) which you are now associating with your son, so that’s the emotional feedback you get from him. So when something small or silly happens it all comes at you which makes it a lot harder to dismiss/overlook/pick your battles.

Have a chat with your GP and look into getting some therapy. In the meantime, try and spend as much quality 1 2 1 time with him in a “fake it till you make it way”. Are there any interests he has , that you could enjoy? Are there any interests you have that he would? It’s exhausting, but your reactions to him will have to be rational and preplanned , rather than instinctual. If he does x, I will do/say y. If he does x I will overlook it as it’s not a big deal. If he does y I will remind him we don’t kick balls in the house , but we will clean up together and have a cuddle after. That kind of stuff. If you can, try and lean into the silliness sometimes, laughing at a situation, sometimes making an even bigger mess , is just as much of a release of frustration as shouting and screaming, but a much more positive one. All this however takes a lot of work and commitment and it’s not a magic wand. In time though, it can change or at least ameliorate the way you feel.

Just like you had no control over how his birth went, the first few hours of his life and then maternity leave during Covid?

Any possible ND in ds (and dh)?

I find things very difficult with my own DC. Only 2 years old but is constantly running away every time we go out, any nice thing I try and do is ruined because I'm just utterly exhausted chasing DC all the time and dragging them back. Screams and screams when I insist on handholding/reins. It's exhausting and it's awful and I end up being really shouty, I hate it. I'm trying to work on it and am taking a note of the resources pps have posted.

I don’t think any neurodiversity. Time will tell and possibly traits but certainly nothing that would reach the threshold for a diagnosis.

Coincidentally most of the mums I know are ‘girl mums’ (and some quite disparaging about boys as a result.) As DS gets older we’re finding common ground more; he unexpectedly loved pottery and painting a pot so will try that again.

I would like therapy but I don’t think the birth bothered me - it’s more it started us on the wrong note.

Four years ago we were in the middle of a lockdown.
Mums birthed their babies without their partners, received devastating news alone and everyone they came into contact with stood at arms length.
Dad's had very little time with their infants, often missing out on those first few hours during and after being born.
Extended family and friends would have had no contact with you unless they were in your 'bubble'
During your child's first year they wouldn't have attended groups, would have mainly had telephone or video calls for any assessments...
...
How did all the above contribute to your bonding and relationship with your four year old?

Agree with what @Ughn0tryte is saying. Also, there's quite a lot of research available regarding how mums sometimes find their feelings towards their older child change when a new baby arrives. Also, postpartum anxiety can make you irritable. Maybe it started with him and has just continued?

Can you actively make some boy mum friends?

I really empathise on the birth - mine was very similar - but I also do feel sorry for DS. He may not be consciously aware of this right now, but he will be, in time. And you’ll be much happier if it’s not on your conscience, too.

I have found my boy and girl very different. My boy has lots of energy, he’s stubborn and passionate and needs to be entertained. He loves an adventure. He shuts down if he’s upset or embarrassed, his communication isn’t quite as good, he needs encouragement to talk sometimes. My girl talks better, is better at calm quiet activities, but needs encouragement to join in adventures and get involved. She’s a lot less physical.

Having mum friends with both is really useful, just girl mums would definitely reinforce your feeling that having a boy isn’t ideal, and there’s a lot of rhetoric around boys that it helps to just ignore sometimes, or laugh about with friends.

I do think you’ll likely need professional support for this but understand that’s unlikely to happen quickly if you can’t go private, so in the meantime, I’d put my focus on faking it until you make it, doing lots of things together to build that bond, and making some understanding boy mum friends.

Vitamin D loading dose (GP gave me 20,000 iu loading dose for first week and I have been advised to take by NHS doc10,000 iu a week for foreseeable; YOU should also have 1000 iu A DAY bare minimum (all over counter)and time in sunshine will make you feel a thousand times better I promise. Not expensive at all.

I really don't think it's necessarily a boy girl thing either, it was my DD I found I snapped at. I think I worried terribly for her, which made me critical of her..I think back to my own mother shouting at me - no one will ever want to marry you if you can't tidy your room! ,(my mother was happily married for 58 years btw) Such an odd criticism but went back to her own mother criticising HER for being untidy

I am a bit reluctant to go down the girl mum / boy mum route. I don’t think there’s as much difference as people think; it’s the attitudes towards them that are different. Example - my sweet little one year old shoved a child the other day (I did pull her up on it) and people were chortling and laughing because she was wearing a pink pinafore dress with tights and her blonde hair was in bunches. If DS had done that at the same age (and he did) in jogging bottoms and a hoodie (and DS was bald!) the responses weren’t amused.

Of course you get some people who take the ‘boys will be boys’ attitude but I do find some people almost expect boys to be difficult.

DS is actually nice on his own. I’ve booked us in for an activity on Wednesday as DD will be at nursery. I need to really work on our relationship in a way I don’t with DD and that’s maybe OK.

In some ways he’s a typical boy. He is fearless, likes mud, finds poo hilarious and likes to run around but equally he loves animals and painting and has a very caring and gentle side. I think a lot of the time we see what we want to see.

I was in a similar position where my little boy used to repeat things constantly so he'd be saying Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum, until I felt like my head was going to explode. I went to the doctor and she suggested that I went on antidepressants. I was reluctant to do this but did so and the problem ended immediately because I could cope with him much better and redirect him. It did turn out quite badly actually because the reason why I was feeling odd was because my ex-husband was having a long-term affair without my knowledge so he was present but absent at the same time and I felt like I didn't know what was real. I'm not suggesting for a minute that's your situation but sorting out myself meant that I was able to deal with my son in a much calmer way and honestly the effect was instantaneous. It made me feel incredibly guilty. It didn't make my ex-husband feel guilty when I challenged him on this years later.

Some really good self reflections in this post. Even more encouraging is the more positive way in which you talk about him. Even if it takes a conscious effort on your part, expressing this positivity and self reflections will help immensely. As will time together.

I just wanted to add that children aren’t as one dimensional as we like to think. Again, it takes conscious time and effort to discover all their other sides and interests mostly by exposure and modelling. As it happens , we , as parents and a society tend to focus on/nurture the more obvious/typical ones as it’s easier/more obvious/expected .

@WhenYouSayNothingAtAll - one of the sources of my guilt is that he’s actually a lovely child, especially when I get one to one time with him which I don’t very often. I’m going to really try to carve this out.

He can be frustrating but all four year olds are … I do often find my expectations are out of whack and of course he has off days.

If he is a bit behind with speech and communication, could he have a hearing problem? Both of my boys had glue ear and DS2 was nearly deaf with it.

I’d say he’s fine now @MagpiePi and he’s never exactly been behind, but the range of normal is massive and DS was definitely at the lower sort of end. Health questionnaire asked if he had fifty words at age 2 (he had seventy by his second birthday and I was sad enough to count) but by contrast DD probably has a couple of hundred now, three months shy of two. The thing with DS is that he won’t tell you things though - he won’t come home and announce ‘Oliver was not kind today and pushed me over and Miss Smith told him to use kind hands but he didn’t so THEN …’ - you’re more likely to have him start crying when told he’s going to nursery and then if you ask why he’ll say ‘Oliver’ and after much questioning you might get half a story. Which is hard as I feel sometimes I can’t reach my own son very easily.

I was very irritable with my small dd until I took vitamin b complex
After taking it for three weeks I was loving at things that previously annoyed me

Op just in your posts here you clearly adore your son. You’re just getting to know him as someone different from you and your daughter in some ways.