Toddler tantrums, how to manage him scratching, hitting me before I lose my mind

[~clover~]

Oh we've got the pinching, scratching, biting, kicking & weeing here too! No spitting yet, lol.

Problem here is that I thing DS is too young for discipline. I'm just not sure what to use. If he hits with something I take it away & tell him he's not to hit, but when he hears that word he swings at me!
He's only 20 months old. I'm not sure what on earth to do. I'e tried everything.

ATM I've resorted to intervention & distraction when its another child, & no attention when he does it to me. If I give him attention he'll laugh & do it again, or crack it & get worse. I'm preayng its just a phase. That he has no idea how to handle his frustrations yet, so he takes it out on me, & he feels threatened when he takes it out on other kids. He's been hurt by them & needs to get in there first to make sure they stay away from his toy or what ever he's worried about.

[sasha]

We are getting this daily with S at the moment (no spitting right now, but that comes and goes too). Not everything works all the time, but things I've noticed:

- he is VERY observant. He notices everything, from how I make my tea in the morning to whether M and I are arguing about something eg we bickered about something the other day, and S immediately took my side telling Daddy off, hmm, that was an eye opener! It wasn't even a real, yelling argument, either! So for him, the way others are acting around him would make a huge difference. I don't think home environment can be underestimated (so hopefully sweetpea things might improve when you move back to your own place)

- food is very important. Obvious, I know, but S tends to get so involved in playing and pretending and dancing and digging that he doesn't want to eat. I've worked out if I can get the food IN before he gets hungry rather than trying to convince him to eat when he's kind of past it, then behaviour improves a lot.

- yelling doesn't work for us. I've tried it, and he can yell as loud. And he screams, which I kind of draw the line at. So I just speak very calmly and quietly with him, and try and ask what it is that he wants, and most of the time he has to stop screaming to hear what I'm saying.

- when he can calm enough to tell me what he wants, then we negotiate I know you're not supposed to negotiate with terrorists, but this is how it works:

S: I want [insert request]
B: We're not having/doing [request] right now. You can play outside, or you can play with your train tracks.
[S screams, throws head about, stamps on floor, bangs on door - you get the picture]
B: S, do you need to go for time out to calm down?
S: NOOOOOO!
B: OK, so what do you want to do? Go outside or play with the train tracks?
S: Go outside!

And off he goes. This is a bit of a truncated version, obviously, and about half the time it ends in time out first Also I've discovered that the choices should both be ones that I'm happy with - sometimes he doesn't choose the one I thought he would and if I wasn't going to follow through on one of them, then I'm stuck with doing something I didn't really want to do!! Oops!

- we always talk about it later. I think that might be helping - it certainly helps with the washing hair phobia we're having at the moment. We talk about how hot and tired it makes him when he has a tantrum, and how sad we both get when he gets upset. I try to get him to understand why it is I won't let him do or have something, so it's not just arbitrary rules.

- distraction can be good, but only works some of the time. Plus he's getting wise to that and has a disturbingly good memory.

Sorry about the novel. I should add that as far as I've found, when it comes to changing behaviour, it's a long haul, and it alters gradually. Hope things are looking up... at least you know you're not alone!