[arkansas parent]

T has begun having big tantrums. Tonight he got mad because I would not let him do something. He then started getting mad and grabbed my shirt. I told him to let go then he just looked at me and hit me (not hard at all) I told him to go to his room untill he calmed down. He screamed and yelled. He kept trying to leave and I would just put him back on his bed. He then started kicking,hitting and grabbing me. I shut the door , when Dh came home a few minutes later and tried to talk to T, he started to hit and kick him( first time). Dh continues to try to calm him. We keep telling him he could come out when he calmed down. We have tried everything we can think of to stop him from getting to the point he is out of control.
O.K here is my question. What do we do? If we send him to his room he gets worse. If I give him a time-in he hits and kicks. We think part of it that he is testing us to see what he can get away with. He has never hit or kicked hard(more like a pat). I would think if was out of anger it would be harder. Wouldn't it?
I dont think he has any major attachment issues. He makes great eye contact. He will let me give him a hug or kiss whenever I want. He seems to be attached to all of us.
He has the big tantrums when he has not taken a nap that day. We always put him down for a nap but sometime he will just lay there.
We were letting him watch TV and play his video game a few times a day. But now we are only going to let him do it for 30mins a day. I spend most of the morning teaching him to write his name, doing pre-k school books ( he loves them)and coloring. The best time we have found for his nap is 10:30am ( he get up at 6:30am) any later than that and he wont take a nap. Should we make him take another nap in the afternoons? He has his major tantrums late afternoon.

How do I stop these tantrums from getting so bad?

[kretzklan]

I can't exactly tell what age your son is - but I'm guessing he's under 4. We have tried a few things for what I term "rages" that our DD has. One is to try to keep it from escalating to that stage in the first place. I can usually tell when she is raising her level of anger. We do a "sit out" - whereever she is, she must sit for 7 minutes (that is her age). I don't talk to her during that time, but she is usually right underfoot, so she can see me going about my day. I make eye contact and smile at her. If that doesn't work and it gets to the boiling point - I do holding. I go with her to her room and hold her on the bed. Full on holding...so she can't head butt me or kick me or spit (those are her favorites). It can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 hours. There are times I must leave (for my own sanity) and then I usually sit on the floor outside her room with her door open, so she can see me. If she breaks something or tries to hurt herself, I intervene again.
Hopefully your little guy won't get to that point - but the physical violence against anyone in our house is not acceptable.

[arkansas parent]

He just turned 4yrs. I have been trying to learn how to head it off, but he has only been here 2mo. He is still legally a foster child and we can not physically restrain him. We have held him down for a minute or two just to try to talk to him and it makes it worse. I was letting him see me get upset, but now I just talk to him very calm even when he is yelling so loud he can't hear me. I pretend like I cant even hear him yelling( that makes his worst). I just go on doing what ever I was doing before he started his tantrum.Tonight lasted for about 1hr. He screamed untill his throat hurt. I thought about just ignoring him when he hits, but I don't believe any kind of physical violence in acceptable.

[kretzklan]

I'm so sorry - we didn't foster, so I don't know all the rules that accompany that. Have you found any consequence that works for other things? Like losing the TV time completely for hitting or hurting others? It's such a hard thing to figure out what works. I know for my DD once it starts, she really loses most control of herself in general. Maybe you will find the "precursor"...that seems to help. I hope you can find an answer that works for you all! I know how frustrating it can be...

[arkansas parent]

We are not foster parents, We are adopting T, but until the adoption in finial he have the same rules as foster parents. I am going to call the SW when she gets back in her office to see what we can do about his tantrums. If he hits he loses the TV and Video game for a day or two. We have also try taking toys for a day. He will ask for the TV or whatever he got taken away and we always ask him if he knows why he cant have it and he says because he hit. He does feel bad after his tantums and wants to hug and cuddle. I am hoping to find out how to head the major tantrums off SOON.

P.S If he is still doing it after the adoption is final I will try holding him untill he calms down. ( I am going to call SW to see if I can do it now, but I think she will say NO)

[Peggy]

I was going to say hold him also. I was allowed to hold my child (restrain, in a gentle way) when she was still a foster, but may your state has different rules. otherwise it would seem restricting him to his room, or a time-out spot is your best choice. Definitely do not let him see you get upset. Good Luck, I remember those days.

[ajjhmf]

My first thought is to cut out tv and video games altogether for a while. My son had a very hard time handling these at the beginning and by just eliminating them as an option it gave us more time together and less time for him to shut down his brain.

Second, how much is he sleeping? You said the tantrums come late in the day. I wonder if he's over-tired and needs more sleep. I know most toddlers and preschoolers typically take afternoon naps and 10:30am sound's really early. Of course that depends on his bedtime too. At that age they usually still need 12-13 hours of sleep at night, plus the nap. I'd look into adjusting his sleep schedule.

Blessings!

[arkansas parent]

He goes to bed at 8:30 and gets up around 6:30.(sometimes 7:00am) We have tried doing nap time around 1:00pm But he wont sleep. We slowly made it earlier untill 10:30 seemed to be the only time we could get him to sleep. I don't like that time at all but I'm not sure if I can get him to take one later. His naps are around 1hr and half.

[ajjhmf]

That honestly doesn't sound like enough sleep. He's getting less than 12 and 12 is the minimum for kid his age. I would maybe make an earlier bedtime if that's the only nap time that work.

Sleep issues can really mess with the little ones. That probably isn't all that's going on, but it's something to think about. I know we see increased behavior issues with my kids when they are over tired. And the timing that you mentioned with the acting out in teh eveing makes me think he's needing more sleep than he is getting.

Just a thought.

[arkansas parent]

Dh doesn't get home from work untill 7:30pm. We really don't want to put him to bed before he gets home.He leaves for work around 6:00am. And only time he gets to see T for a little while at night. He only works 3-4days a week. So he gets to spend alot of time with him on his days off.I am going to change his bedtime to 8:00pm.When we put him to bed at 8:30 he just lays there for sometimes as long as an hour before he finally goes to sleep. So I'm not sure if the extra 30min will help.I am going to get a very calming CD to play in his room so maybe it will help him fall asleep faster. And we are going to try to change his nap time to the afternoons. I also think part of the problem is he has had to stay in the house all day. It has rained here so much we sink everytime we walk in the yard (and its cold).
We are going to also change his meal times. We usally eat around 7:30 when Dh gets home from work , so we can all eat together. The kids and I are going to start eating around 5:30 or 6:00pm. He is only going to be allowed to watch 30min to 1hr of TV or Video games a day. We may increase it some later to see if he can handle it or not.
I will let you know it this works

[mom2GRLC]

My daughter had terrible rages at that age. So many times I just wanted to run away and cry because it felt like nothing worked.

We took a "parenting the strong willed child" class through our local parent center and it gave a lot of good advice.

Some things they talked about are...

1) notice your child: don't make comments bad or good just state the facts. Like if you see them playing with their toy cars. Say... "Your playing with your yellow car" that way they know that you notice them.

2) try and catch them doing something good: instead of getting mad at them for doing the wrong thing. Praise the times he does the right thing. Like if you are always getting mad at him for leaving his clothes on the ground. Make sure you praise him when he actually puts his clothes away rather than yell at him when he doesn't.

3) pick your battles. Don't work on to many things at one time. pick your top 3 things you'd like to improve on and work on praising those. or maybe just one at a time.

He will like the positive attention he is receiveing and will continue to do the things that make him feel good about himself.

4) make sure he doesn't get too tired, to hungry or to overwelmed. These are the biggest triggers for kids. Aside from attention seeking our power struggly behaviours. If he can't take an afternoon nap.... then maybe just have him lay down and watch an afternoon movie for a bit. Or increase his physical activity so he will be more tired and able to take a nap. Make sure he has a healthy snack between meals. Ideally kids should have breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. It is better for a child or adult for that matter to eat smaller amounts through out the day rather than 3 meals, plus kids just can't wait as long as adults between meals. Over stimulation is a big one. Your child may get frustrated because he is bored but cant decide what to to (you can offer him 2-3 choices of activities to choose from) or he may get easily frustrated becasue he can't do something. My daughter is that way she would be completely fine and then go into this huge rage because she couldn't get her shoe on or something.

2 months really isn't that long to really get to know your child. As he stays with you longer you'll be able to pinpoint what is actually triggering these behaviors. So you can catch them before they get out of hand.Sometimes it happens so fast you don't really have much warning at all.

I used to do holding with my daughter and it was exhausting. What I found that worked the best was time-out. But I also learned I was doing time-out completely wrong.

The class taught us the correct way for time-out. Your not supposed to put them in their room, that is the worst place. Really it can be any place....but it should be in a place where your child can see you. You place them in time-out. Once you put them there you do not say anythign to them or have eye contact with them. If they leave the spot your come up from behind and without making eye contact or talking you put them back in place. Finally when they are quiet you start the minutes 9still without saying anything. If they have outbursts withing that time the minutes start all over again. It will take a lot of patience on your part and time. But after many times of doing it .....it really works like magic. The child learns that the only way to get out of time out is to sit still and be quiet.

I was amazed when our time outs went from these horrific hour long episodes .....to 4-5 minutes and my child immediatly being quiet because she knew what was expected.

When you give eye contact to a child, or talk to the child or even hold the child in time-out your actually giving them control. But the other way....they have to comopletely submit to your control in order to get what they want....which is to be out of time-out. It takes a whiel to learn....but I promise you with consistancy on your part...IT WORKS!!!

[Butterflies2]

Hello Arkansas Parent,
We had similar problem with our six year old girl. I don't know what the background of your son is, but our girl was physically abused, and she was ready to "defend herself". When we responded with any physical contact - even just restraining her arm so she'd stop punching, it was like, "okay, the gloves are off, the fight is on!" Have you read "Parenting the Hurt Child"? One of the things that stuck with me was the varying of the consequences for the behavior. They gave the example of speeding. If you know that you'll get a $50 fine for going 10 mph over, sometimes you might decide it's worth the risk. If you thought you might get a $10 fine or a $1,000 fine, you might not be as willing to take a chance (I'm making up the numbers). So, we varied the consequences, and sometimes I would even just look at her calmly as she hit, kicked and threw things at me, letting her know she couldn't really hurt me or make me angry. Over several months the behavior reduced gradually. Now she rarely hits. I don't know if this helped. Just hang in there. One day at a time. I'm barely hanging on by a thread myself.

[aspenhall]

I agree with the tiredness part....You gotta increase the bedtimes.....try doing physical activity (pretend to be a jungle animal) more often.....

And I would do what I can to keep him in bed longer in the AM. perhaps let him lay there and have TV time then....

my dd had horrible sleep and behavior issues, as soon as she got enough sleep her capacity to handle stress increased immensely! But it took a yr or more to figure out the right schedule. Perhaps a longer bedtime routine to ease the tiredness in before laying him down? Maybe dad comes home just in time for storytime....Now I KNOW she's an hour past her bedtime because she basically goes nuts whenever she's up late.....note the time of his melt downs...I bet it's like clockwork... I can't have a family dinner every night with DH, so sometimes, I feed DD and put her to bed, and then me and DH eat. It only happens once or twice a week, but I'd rather miss family dinner than have a hellish day later because I let her stay up. Besides I didn't like that she saw herself as "a mis-behaver" so I tried to give her all the tools I could to help her behave. After a while she had simply stopped trying "to be a good minder" because she felt hopeless....I was setting her up to fail...so now she's much better and it's easier to handle those few times she has to be up late, because she's had so much "behavior success" under her belt and believes in herself, and makes a concious effort.

My dd is now 6, but would wake up after only 8 hrs sleep I finally figured out she simply needed to pee.....so I made bed time earlier so that in the middle of the night when she awoke, she'd go pee and fall asleep better than if she awoke in the early AM....the light kept her up....she goes to bed at 7:30-8pm and is up at 7:45 in the morning....the afternoon naps (rare nowadays) happen after lunch when she is full. I don't give sugary snacks after lunch time.....but before lunch it winds her up a bit so that she's ready to crash for her nap.....

If his body is used to this schedule he'll take a bit to adjudst but just because it's what his body is used to, doesn't mean that it's what his body NEEDS.....he may be TOO tired by the time it's his bedtime...and have a harder time falling asleep later, than if you put him to bed earlier. keep adjusting the times a half an hour at a time every week or 2.....until his night sleep is 12 hrs.... and his nap time is more in the middle of the day.

[arkansas parent]

We got him to take a nap at 1:00pm . I had him play outside for about 1hr and eat dinner then he said I am sleepy.
I try to get him to sleep later but he gets up between 6:30 & 7:00am. This morning I told him to lay in bed untill breakfast was ready and he started to get up set.
The weather is finally getting nice enough he can play outside again. I know he had alot of built up energy. I got an exercise tape for him to help tire him out on the days he cant go out side.
I hope the afternoon naps continue to work. I like it a lot better. I think he was just getting bored in the morning and going to sleep. I am going to started finding something to keep him busy so maybe he wont get sleepy at 10:30.

[ajjhmf]

My 2yo gets up between 6:30 and 7 and naps around 12pm. At 4, he should get to 1pm pretty easily. I'd just work to keep him busy everyday until then and get his body used to the new schedule. Good luck!