Step-son is driving me up the wall HELP

[GirlMum]

Bit of a background - So my step-son is almost 5 and lives with us full time and has for just under a year now. He still sees mom on holidays and talks to her on the phone every other day. He was taken from her due to her new boyfriend being convicted of child abuse and her having drug problems.

Now when he first cane he was a nasty angry and manipulative boy, he hit my daughter (1 year younger than him) with fists and with objects. He gave her black eyes frequently and would push her down stairs - she is now (understandably) scared of him. He ignored me and told me his mum would kick me in the head all the time, he threw tantrums about everything and when I done up his bedroom for him, to help him feel at home, he gouged holes in the newly painted walls and threw his toys around his room and broke them. This is only some of the things he would do. He also nagged constantly from the second he woke up to the second he went to bed, and screamed for 2-3 hours at bed time constantly sneaking out of bed - we got maybe 30 mins of him being happy a day.

It took 7 months but he started making some huge positive changes and even more after our new baby was born. And we started bonding really well and he was loving towards us all FINALLY. I bend over backwards to make him feel a part of our family and loved and keep him happy and it seemed to be working. But recently he has started telling me he doesn’t like me and wakes up in the dead of the night and has tantrums and wakes the whole house. He has punched me in the face twice now and glares at me if he’s in the room with me (it is a look of pure hate). It’s hard enough coping with 3 kids on the lack of sleep from a newborn but he adds another 3 hours of tantrums in the middle of the night on top of the newborns waking. It’s making me not want to be around him at all and I can’t even stand to be in the same room as him, and because of his violent and disruptive start in my home it’s bringing up a really negative feeling in me toward him. I really don’t k ow what to do cause I just want our home to be happy for everyone and his behaviour is affecting EVERYONE all over again. My daughter is scared and women all through the night, my newborn is woken all the time by him screaming and yelling day and night (and he sounds demonic when he yells too its really scary even for an adult) and myself and my partner are dead on our feet and struggleing with him all over again. I’m at my wits end and even had the horrible thought of sending him back to his mum cause I just can’t do it anymore!
Help!

Calling a three year old child was has lived with abuse, nasty and manipulative is not helpful.

Ok so your no better than his mum really

^.......^

Totally uncalled for.

@PerfectPenquins - there really is no need to be so nasty. OP is doing her best & is on here looking for constructive advice. She has explained the situation and also the fact that they are not in the UK.
@GirlMum - I agree with everyone who has spoken about attachment issues. I don't know what it's like in NZ but it would seem to me that your ss should be removed from any contact with his mum until his issues are sorted out. Reading between the lines of your post it sounds like the contact she does have with him is adding fuel to his anger & hurt & he really is better off out of her orbit at the moment. To this end your dp needs to be prepared to dig in and ready himself for a possible legal fight.
He needs therapy (age appropriate) NOW. If a gp won't refer you google therapists in your area. I'm sure NZ has a governing body for accredited therapists & whatever that body is contact them & get sorted.
Are the grandparents you mentioned his mum or dad's parents?

Never ceases to amaze me how many accidental/unplanned/oops forgot to take the pills new babies are born into these families where there are already traumatised children in the mix but “oooops, baby was unplanned, this nasty manipulative child on the other hand....”. .

This child has clearly been through an awful lot in his life and it’s up to his father to get him the help he needs. And it’s up to the daughter’s mother i.e. the OP to protect her daughter if the child has been being violent to her. She didn’t ask to be landed in the middle of this mess either.

please do not listen to people telling you that you are no better than his mother, clearly they have never experienced the difficulty of 'picking up the pieces' of a child who has had a rough start due to their mother. I think that your doing a brilliant job! my sd had broken contact with her mother since she was 2 until about 6 and it effected her. Although she is not violent her temper was awful and even now at 10 she is HARD work , shes moody and difficult to please even though since she was 3 she has had me and her dad as a solid unit. Although she sees her mum now and we all get on those vital early years are so important to a childs grounding and mental health and it does effect all children who have had sporadic contact with a parent (i feel especially a mother). Its hard to reason with a 5 year old and help them to see the importance of being good, especially when they have the other parent filling their head with the 'dont listen to them' and the 'ill get you backs' , because your ss is probably so desperate to have his mum back he is a little sponge and absorbing everything she says. The term unconditional love is so raw when it comes to a child and their mummy , he probably doesn't think shes done anything wrong and sees you and his dad as the bad guys!
My suggestion is you ignore this mum blaming you because you and his dad are clearly doing your best, get him some counselling (it really helped my sd to talk to someone else as she didnt feel pressured into saying the right or wrong thing)
Reward! use sticker charts with lovely treats at the end, we did every 10 stickers got a small prize and after 100 she had a picture of the thing she really wanted (one was a dolls house, one was a dolls pram) the little treats were stuff from the £ store, it worked well. You could even do a family marble jar so every time the kids do something to help or play nicely together they get a marble and once the jar is full you get a family treat like bowling or an activity you can all do together. If he feels that all the kids can fail then he wont feel like the 'naughty one' , all kids have outbursts its just a case of what ones need managing and what ones are just 'kids being kids'.
I hope this helps you sound like a lovely family and hopfully you just need positive reinforcements to help him through the behaviour!!
good luck

I'm sorry for this child, it sounds as if he's been badly affected by his domestic background. BUT, and it's a big but, what about the affect on your own DD, of living with a child she's (understandably) scared of?
This child's father needs to step up to the mark, and get his son some proffesional help...right away!
Too late to say it now, but [what] were you thinking, bringing another baby into this scenario???

contact Plunket and get them involved

This sounds really tough. All those pp having a go I'm sure are unlikely to have tried parenting children with attachment problems. Even adoptive parents who chose to do so and don't have the bio mum in the background causing trouble can struggle with the pressure I understand. For yours and the little boys sake I hope that your little family can hang in there, but agree with others who say you really will need professional help and guidance. At the end of the day, for the sake of your own sanity and your own children, you may need to walk away but maybe with appropriate support it might not come to that. It's good he's caring with the baby, hopefully that will help you have warm feelings towards him even when some of his other behaviour can make that hard. He's just a little traumatised boy but that can be so hard for those around him.

As well as getting counselling consider perhaps that his mother was taking drugs when pregnant and it may have had a biological effect on him.
Foetal alcohol syndrome and an article on possible effects of drugs
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_alcohol_spectrum_disorder
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4262892/

he hit my daughter (1 year younger than him) with fists and with objects. He gave her black eyes frequently and would push her down stairs - she is now (understandably) scared of him.

And you stayed with the dad?! While his son was giving your daughter black eyes and pushing her down the stairs!! Why would you not leave and protect your own child first!! She has to live with a boy she’s scared off, poor child.