I need to talk about my 8 year olds behaviour but don't want to offend.

[FabIsGettingReadyForChristmas]

No one else thinks he has SN, or at least no one has ever said anything.

He is currently having what I am calling a melt down. Don't know if that is a medical term.

Tonight he was rude to me so when I said good night I shut his door. He wants it open. It has escalated with DH putting him in the shower to cool down - he didn't actually turn the water on.

Ds1 has said he is going as we are terrible parents and later did go downstairs to the front door.

I put him up on his bunk bed with great difficulty and he threw himself off.

He is currently crying and DH is upstairs, I assume keeping him in his room.

I know we are doing it all wrong and that isn't what this is about.

What is causing him to go like this, he says he is cross as we are horrible parents (DH took them out all day, lovely time, etc etc) but I am sure he genuinely feels we are.

He seems to get like this for something so small. Last time it was about Grandad being mean to him but no idea this time and are sick of asking him, maybe he is just a sod.

Apologies for posting in here, just need another perspective as we are falling apart here.

TIA.

first of all don'tthink we'll be offended, course not- aworried parent is a worried aprent.

DS2 is a bit like your DS and a lot of that is jealousy and resentment from his brothers needs,emotions that can be attributed to many things- he is a very sensitive child,quite emotional and receptive,and it seems to be how he is 'built' IYSWIM.

OTOH if you feekl there's something up follow it up, parents often see SN long before the professionals do. Read up about anxiety disorders, AS, ODD.... always worth informing yourself if you are worried.

But a great many asensitive kids are over stressed at this time of year, itshard for lots of them i think

I am all teary at your kindness. Thank you. You have no idea how much your support means.

Ds1 is the most amazing child. All the girls at school love him. He is sensitive, I had started to have more empathy for me, he must be desperate for attention with 2 younger siblings. Should have stuck to him being an only child.

MIL used to work as a teacher in a mainstream school and had children with SN in her class. She says he hasn't any SN.

ODD has been mentioned before but not by anyone who knows him.

Sigh.

Sorry you're all having a shite time.

Are there any other aspects of his behaviour which make you think he may have sn? ie, is he able to sit down and concentrate on a task sufficiently, are his motor skills lacking in any way, or anything..?

I don't think your mil being an ex teacher qualifies her to diagnose him, although I'm sure she means well

DD1 would have similar melt-downs, although she doesn't have sn. DD2 (Aspie) has them more frequently, and a bit differently; while DD1 loses the head, DD2 seems of another world somehow (not describing it very well, sorry).
I must say, DD1 was probably worse at age 8 than any other time - the meltdowns were more intense and frequent. Now she is 10 and is a lot calmer and saner; I could have written your post 2 years ago.

fab, 2 siblings is nothing LOL- I had 2 and it was fine.My ds2 is a bit different- not just 3 siblings, but 2 with asd- a rare setup.

I would say that wonderful though your MIL is,teachers really don't get SN an awfullot of the time- why would they, the primary syllabus currently covers 0.5 days of SEN at the local uni, and many disorders such as ODD / AS etc have been named sonce the older ones trained. Plus, there is so much more variation under any dx than a great many teachers know.

which is not to say that your son has SN either, no way I could know- just, read the information on dx's and go with your gut- get areferral from a GP to get definites and set yourmind at rest if you feel the need.

She did teacher 30 years ago so she probably doesn't know all the possible SN.

Motor skills have been mentioned before. His writing is appalling - don't know if rubbish because he doesn't like doing it, or doesn't like writing because he finds it hard to do it neatly).

I went in to school a couple of years ago and saw the SENCO and she was confused as to why I wanted to see her as she thinks he is amazing. All the teachers love having my kids in school.

Sounds like atough day
I always say keep a daily diary for a few weeks, it makes things very clear, as to triggers, likely reasons, if behaviour is always worse on a certain day.

Maybe a good start would be to call the school nurse and discuss concerns.
hth

sound's awful. I can only imagine how horrible it must feel for you. (althugh I CAN remember shouting 'i fucking hate you ' in through the letterbox at my mum when I was about 12. I'm sure she found that charming .

I can pass on a tip from a 'positive parenting' course I did recently ( actually I thought it was so good I did it twice, once for normal kids, and then again aimed at parent of SN kids).

Bad behaviour = need for attention. Don't give attention for bad behaviour, eg telling off, shouting, but do give your child lots of attention, especially for good behaviour... figure out what behaviour you want to see more of,and give it tons of attention and priase whenever you see it.

the advice was to start with setting aside ten minutes every day to play with your child, to do something the child wants to do, and really join in with lots of positive praise. Tell the child you are making a special regular time to spend with them.

Sure, there was a lot more to the course than that, but most people got really good results almost immediately just by following this simple advice.

and most of us had to admit that we didn't find it easy to put aside ten minutes every day to give our kids some of our full and undivided attention just to have fun!

Hell, it sounded too obvious, but it worked. ( and I'll be starting to do it again tomorrow!)

|We try so hard to ignore the bad behaviour but sometimes it goes too far. He has given his sister a black eye, caused her to have an injury near her eye and hit is brother so hard he had a big bruise by his nose.

This morning he got a tap on the bottom, I am not a smacker, and he hit me back. When he was going too far and I moved him out of the way he raised his hand to me.

I know he wants more attention but there are 3 kids and 1 me so it can be hard.

He also doesn't give us a lot to reward tbh.

Dh was talking to him this morning and DS said he was upset last night, hence the behaviour, but wouldn't tell us why. I haven't had a proper apology either.

I will take them to school shortly. Be stressed all day and he will come out at 3.15 as if none of this has happened.

It sounds like you are stuck in a vicious circle.

I don't think what you are describing sounds like meltdowns, but temper tantrums. You said he doesn't give you much to reward atm, and so he is prob stuck in this rut of misbehaving and can't get out of it. He is probably very unhappy.

Does your school offer counselling? I'd def try the school nurse and see if they can help. I think he does need a bit of 1:1 time too. I know it is hard with 3, but it isn't impossible. Does he do any extra curicular activities that might give his self esteem a bit of a boost?

Does he have consistant consequences for bad behaviour?

I think you need to try to find something good, however small and reward that. dd frequently gets in this kind of cycle. She will jsut misbehave non stop, and the more I punish her the more she gives up and the worse her behaviour gets. I have to take a step back and try to go back to positive reinforcement.

I hope things do improve for you soon.

I agree that you need to find something small and make big of it.

Also- a aprenting technique I find helps a bit with ds2 is calledlove bombing: basically you go absolutely madfor them for a while finding every opportunity to tell them you love themm, hug them, say how great they are- the key is to totally overdo it.It really seems to bring ds2 back down to earth if he is feeling neglected, and get his self esteem 9and therfore positive behaviours) back up.

Ironically last week had been better as I had stopped being scared of him and started acting like I was in charge. This all kicked off from him pulling me up for how I speak and me shutting his door.

Love bombing sounds great but I will have to fake it for a while. I do love him, I just don't like his behaviour at the moment.

It is our age old problem of not having consequences. He doesn't have a ds or psp or anything like that to take away from him as a physical reminder of his behaviour = lost toys.

I really feel for you as we are having behaviour issues with our 8 yo at the moment. He's been lashing out physically, having tantrums, winding us all up deliberatly and generally being obnoxious.

We have really had to take a step back as things were really getting out of hand, our behaviour as well as his.

I agree with chops, is there someone linked to school who can help? I contacted our Parent and Family Support advisor and she had a chat with me so I could let off steam, she gave me some useful tips and she is going to have a few parenting skills sessions with us as a couple. Hopefully that may bring some consistency between dh and I.

In the short term, things which have helped are

• keeping a cool, unemotional outlook when the kids are being naughty. Don't get upset, show your anger.
• not nagging and keeping on at them to do things
• praising good behaviour
• doing some one to one things together

It's worth having a look at when things tend to flare up. Is there a different way you can do things?

For us, not nagging has been useful.

Every morning I would go on at both ds and dd to get up and get dressed. I would get stressed, the kids would get annoyed with me nagging and we'd be off to a terrible start. Now I wake them up and tell ds he needs to be dressed and downstairs by 8am. I don't mention it again apart from telling him when it's 8 o'clock. So far every morning since I've been doing it he's been down before 8am. The one morning he wasn't, I reminded him at 8am and he was down 2 minutes later, apologetic.

Likewise getting out of the house. They would both arse around rather than put their shoes on. Now I tell them to get ready because it's time to go. I'll finish sorting myself out and then wait by the front door saying nothing. Mysteriously it seems to work! I even used it on dh the other day!

It's not always so easy, bedtimes are a bit of a nightmare still, but we are doing my best not to let ds wind us up. I think solidarity is the key!

I hope things get better for you.

'Love bombing sounds great but I will have to fake it for a while. I do love him, I just don't like his behaviour at the moment.
'

TBH I don't think theres any issue with fking it- when we started with ds2 I ws really angry with his behaviour, and I found the love bombing workedwell for me too, gave that sense of bond back IYSWIM?

So what do I do when I pick him this afternoon? Pretend last night and this morning never happened and start again?

Dh tried to get him to apologise to us this morning but my apology wasn't meant. He just tells us to smack him, it has been used as a threat in the past but not what I would have actually done, and I am sure he says it for effect.

What I do with ds1 (he has As but is massively aggressive so shares a lot of the same characteristics, has no LD as such) is to say that whilst I disappointed by tye last few days, I am his Mummy and I love him and nothing he can do can stop that.I then go into lovebombing / attention from there..... it makes me feel I acknowledged the shit IYKWIM, but allows me to wipe slate clean

That is a brilliant idea VirginPeachy.

I found a book called "One Two Three Magic" helpful with my five year old. The author recommends not discussing the behaviour (unless it's a new behaviour) just counting 1 the first time then "that's 2" and finally "that's 3 - time out or other consequence. This worked really well for my son once it was set up and he realised it would be followed through. With him an attempt to discuss the bad behaviour tended to disintigrate into more anger and bad behaviour and the vicious circle continued. This is much more low key and really works for him. OK the first few times I put him in his room for time out for five minutes I had to physically carry him there kicking and screaming and then he would throw things round the room but I just ignored it and didn't say anything and he doesn't do that now. It sounds simplistic I know but it did work for us and he is no longer shouting and screaming for the least thing and yelling that he will phone the police on me - which he did do once! Can't remember the author but is on Amazon.

I have that book and have used the counting before and found it worked sometimes. Unfortunately if I count DS 1, he goes 2, 3.

this book

Hope that's of any interest.

By the way my son doesn't have special needs just anxious child and a terrible temper. This system didn't help at all with my other son who does have SN - still looking there!

I suppose I find it hard to think an 8 year old is having a temper tantrum as he is not 2 and unable to say what is up. Sometimes it is like getting blood out of a stone asking what is wrong.

Crossed posts there! Yes my son also did the counting and I explained if he did that I would count again and he would be in time out. Also at first when I got to 2 he would always ask "what happens on 3" and I kept re explaining which is of course what he wanted - me to just keep talking and not count. So in the end a firm rule established that if he asked that I would count again and straight to time out. After a few tries he got the point. I've not found it a miricle cure but I find it mostly is effective except when I inevitably get angry at times and keep talking at him then it all escalates again. I decided I think a lot of the problem was in my over reaction to his behaviour so I try to keep very calm and quiet - VERY hard at times.

fab - ds1 is 8 in two weeks and the gp has just referred him for paed assessment. he thinks adhd or maybe as... his teacher thinks not. i'm running with 'highly strung' at the moment, but recognise some of what you say (particularly the getting blood out of a stone thing).

for us it's coupled with continence issues, which have also got much worse over the last couple of months...

just sharing your frustration and concern, i think this sort of age is tricksy for some boys, and i'm sure there are all sorts of hormones sloshing about too.

You mentioned that he is sensitive. Has anyone suggested reading "The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping Our Children Thrive When the World Overwhelms Them ~ Elaine Aron"? It is really an excellent book and helps one to understand what might be causing a child to become so overwhelmed that he or she starts to melt down. It can be a bit like solving a mystery at first to learn to see things from their perspective but it can make everyone's life soooo much easier! I started this journey almost 3 years ago with ds1 and, while we still have our ups and downs, there is a huge improvement over where we were and I cannot imagine where we would be now if we had not started working on this with him.