Hi all,
Been a long time since I’ve been in here – good to see some familiar faces still around!

I’m hoping to get some coping advice and strategies for my nearly four year old son, who pretty much has at least one tantrum (lasting 20 mins to over an hour) every day. From my perspective he is too old to have this many tantrums? He is an excellent communicator (speaks perfectly well and is early reading and writing).

The tantrums begin when he is asked to do something in our normal daily routine. I give him plenty of notice (eg. time for last play now, it’s time to brush your teeth soon, watch him until he’s finished off playing with whatever it was and then remind him to brush his teeth now). I’m always very calm, put my hand out to help him along, etc. Sometimes I have the time to be patient, but when it’s something like getting my daughter from school, we need to be there by a certain time and I can’t wait for an hour long tantrum. It then disintegrates into a screaming, yelling match – in fact, I think he wants it this way – some kind of satisfaction in this for him? He is also very physical and has hurt me on a number of occasions, including biting me on the forearm through a jacket and top and leaving pretty decent bruising.

This has been going on for some months. We had success with a reward chart, which I had hoped would get him out of the habit of the tantrums. The reward chart lasted over 6 weeks and he barely had a tantrum in that time. So, this shows me that he can control them when he wants to. But I can’t go on having reward charts all the time, and I’d like him to take some responsibility to stop himself from behaving this way. He also said when the reward chart was in place that if he didn’t have it he’d be able to have tantrums again. This and some other comments suggest to me that he gets some satisfaction from it all. He also mentions that he can’t stop, when he’s in the middle of it. I have tried teaching him ways to think things through, to take deep breaths when we get mad, count to ten and make a decision, etc. This works during calm times, but once he is distressed, there is no getting through to him to use these techniques.

As with most tantrums, a lot of the time it’s irrational (eg screaming at the school gates because he wanted to be at home and not collect his sister, when if he wasn’t having a tantrum, we’d be back home by now and not at the school).

This is really impacting on our family life, and I feel particularly guilty that I’m not able to fix it for my daughter, who is missing out because so much of our focus is on getting through another tantrum. Anything that has worked for others? Any long term strategies that can assist him (and me!) would be awesome!