Where has my happy boy gone?

Has anyone seen him? Since DS1 hit 3.5, he's turned from a considerate, gentle, caring, happy boy to an angry, grumpy, aggressive whinger. I'm not too sure how to handle it.

Last night he was mucking around brushing teeth so I sent him to bed with no story. On the way to his room he slammed the corridor door, then his bedroom door, then kicked it for good measure (I was right behind him so I saw it all). I told him as a consequence he wouldn't get any screens today. He got upset at that but went to sleep ok. This isn't out of the blue, we've talked about speaking nicely and respecting our property and I've warned him he needs to smarten up or he won't get to watch TV or do fun things like play on the iPad, so it didn't come out of nowhere.

Anyway, this morning he and DS2 are outside playing, DS2 comes running inside crying, I ask DS1 what happened, his answer was the DS2 destroyed the game he was playing (likely true) so he pushed him over. I told him he needed that's not how we behave, if DS2 is upsetting him to call out to me and I will help, then I told him to go inside and have some quiet thinking time, his response was "Dammit!" as he stomped off. I stopped him and said we don't say words like that, no TV tomorrow now either, at which he spewed forth pretty much every bad word he knows (poo bum stupid dammit :lol:) so I said right no TV the day after, shall we continue? He stopped then but still flounced off to his room with great anger and slammed the door, again. :wall:

I don't know what to do! He's just so angry! Every response is physical - push, hit, throw something. Is this just a testosterone-fuelled thing? What sort of strategies should I be giving him to help deal with it?

Sounds like your nice boy is hanging out with my nice boy while we are left wondering what the hell happened. So much attitude around here at the moment, fueled by angry, agressive, rough behaviour and lashing out for no reason at all. And dont even get me started on the whinging - although that seems to have improved by being told to come to me with a solution not the problem (as in "I cant reach the taaablleeeeee" changed to "can you please push my chair in?") Dont hail my miracle cure yet - we only started this morning LOL
Not sure when it will get any better... hopefully very soon. Like, tomorrow or Thursday... started around the same time too. Hed never thrown a tantrum before he turned 3.5 then it was like someone flicked a switch in his brain and now he is a moody nightmare.

It's a testosterone thing. They get a bigger hormone surge now then they do at puberty. It does get better but it is also party of being a boy. I don't know how many times I've broken up fights. But generally there's fighting and then 10 minutes later they are best friends again. We are constantly addressing the fact that hitting, kicking, biting etc is not appropriate but unfortunately it keeps happening.

Big :hug: it will get better

It's a 3.5 year old thing.

We had no tantrums and no 'terrible twos', now all of a sudden we have attitude, talking back, whinging... I have just maintained consistency with discipline and am hoping for the best.

A friend of mine had the same problem... She never got the 'terrible twos', she said as soon as her boys were 3 they were just monsters! (She has twin boys, now 7, and another boy just about to turn 4 next month). Her current 3 yo has calmed tho. She just keeps telling herself this is the hard bit, girls might be easy now but come teenagers they will be easier than girls.

I knew there was a testosterone surge around now but I didn't realise it was bigger than at puberty!!! Poor dude.

MM that sounds like my two - best friends, worst enemies..!

Calluna we do that too, though I hadn't framed it like that, we do "less about problems, more about solutions" and "use your nice words when asking a question", which seems to work. With DS1 it is more when he doesn't get his own way or if someone gets in his way (poor DS2 always cops it) he lashes out.

Nice to know I'm not alone at least. Maybe it's time to read some Biddulph...

A friend lent me a book called how to tuck in a superhero. It's by a mum of 5 boys. Less about advice more stories from their family and how they navigated boys, what worked and what didn't. Really funny and reminds me I'm not alone.

We find that consequences lasting more than the very short term (say 30-60 minutes) are a bit meaningless for DS1, as he just doesn't link the consequence to the action anymore (other than very basic things, like this toy is now broken because you were too rough with it ... yep, it's still broken).

So we tend to go with short term things.

We also don't find the "go to your room" thing to be particularly compelling, because he can just go and play there! There's a couple of minutes where it's a consequence, because he has had to stop what he's doing, move away from the action, and go to his room, but he tends to get interested in a book or his toys pretty quickly.

What we do find good is active consequences - things like packing up toys and putting away books and helping with chores. We try not to frame things as punishments (as housecleaning and taking care of our things might be a bit of a drag sometimes, but it's hardly a punishment - it's life!!) but more of a "if you can't play nicely/gently/share/ with your brother/friend/whatever then you can play somewhere else/do something else ... let's go do some weeding." or something which actually takes the attention away, and spends some energy.

It's far from perfect, but we find it works reasonably well.

Not sure about the language, we haven't really had to cross that bridge yet ... DS1 came out with one word one time, and I asked what it meant, he wasn't sure, so I asked him what word did he know, that was the right word for what he meant ... I suspect that route won't work much longer!!

Yeah. I did talk to him about it first and showed him the difference between a problem like he can't reach the table and someone is hurting him. I want to hear about those problems but if it's something like I need help with x tell me what you want instead of complain about what's wrong

I don't know about the hormonal thing, but it's definitely an age thing. They're branching out, at the cusp of greater independence, but frustrated at their continued reliance on the big people around them. They're not quite ready to actually get out and run for themselves, but gee they want to.

If you're going for consequences, then like peanut says, I'd try and go for the here and now. Tomorrow, even later today, is too far away for them to even care.
If my kids use something inappropriately, then they lose it, for eg. But they can have it back another day when everyone's calmed down.
At bedtime, we remind the kids that they've only a certain amount of time and they need to hurry up or they'll miss out on books. It rarely actually happens. I think it's easier for them to get it, too, if there's an obvious link between their action and the consequence.
And, personally, if they do something wrong and then again and again, I'd let it go, rather than piling punishments up on top of one another. I think adding can discourage them from trying again.

When my kids are like this they're angry and annoyed and it doesn't matter what I threaten them with, they just have to get it out. It works better to just be there, staying calm (ha! ok, that doesn't always happen) so they know they can calm down, too, and then we'll talk. We often feel like we have to jump in and punish any infringement, instead of maybe looking for ways to talk it out and help them learn ways of dealing with things differently the next time. It's a slow process, but I see my kids starting to figure this out for themselves with time...

Anyway, your happy little boy is still there, he's just having a hard time right now. How much fun time do you get together, just you and him and having a good time? That always helps.

I've read about the hormone surge at around 3 that MelbourneMumma talks about, and I hope it's not applicable to girls! Lol.

DD is getting more defiant lately. She talks back, and it kind of shows us how we talk to her. E.g. we were running late for daycare and she wouldn't put on her shoes, so I raised my voice and said "Would you please just listen to me and put on your shoes when I tell you!" She yelled back "Would you just listen to me and I'll do it when I'm finished!" I got on the floor with her and calmly asked her not to yell at me, and I wouldn't yell at her. She said she really wanted to finish her drawing before daycare, and I told her we were late and she could finish that one bit quickly. Usually, our issue is that I'm rushed and frustrated, she doesn't want to run to my time.

We find that punishments don't work for her, we've tried. The most we do is send her to her room until she's ready to play nicely. I don't care if she plays in there, it's not a punishment. She comes out in a better mood and sometimes will talk about it. E.g. she was getting frustrated with DS who was being seriously clingy. Whenever I'd get a chance to put him on the floor she'd push and hit him, so when me asking her to be nice and gentle didn't work, I asked her to go to her room until she could play nicely. She ran off crying and after a while she yelled out that she wanted to play nice, and came back. I was feeding DS again and she told me she wanted cuddles too, that I was her Mummy. :(

A lot of the time things like this happen with us when I don't spend enough time with her or she gets bored.

Was going to say something similar to Onthefly, your little guy is still in there. I promise. At the time I felt like I had traded kids and there was no end. But there's definitely a calming, maybe not an end lol.

OP 3.5 and again at 4.5 were tough ages here, DS was similar and it lasted around 3 months in and off. He was darling again close to four and then again close to 5.


Very normal and your little man (and you) will get through it

Well we have some success over the past few days since posting.

Some thoughts first.

When I was telling him he was losing screen time, the thought was flashing through my mind that he will forget and it won't be a meaningful consequence but I have continued with it, he hasn't had any TV or iPad since then, for two reasons.

1, I said that would be the case and I intend to stick to it, even though I know he doesn't quite get it, because...
2, I feel like some screen-free time could be only good.

Sure enough, that afternoon after DS2 had gone down, DS1 wanted to watch TV and I said no, let's play a board game. So I sat on the floor with him, just him, and played bingo and pictureka and trouble. Then we found this awesome Where's Wally book but with Santa and we spent a good hour poring over that looking for Santa and a whole lot of other characters :)

So I had come to the same conclusion as someone suggested above - bit more intentional one on one time.

He's seemed better today, calmer. Still a few outbursts but I think overall better.

That's awesome!!

Another thing that occurred to me, is we started changing some of the viewing - while the boys mostly watch cartoons and activity shows (Mister Maker, etc) some of the cartoons are surprisingly rough (Astroboy, Disney, Looney Toons, etc) and so I actually put stacks of them away ... swapped in some Charlie & Lola, Mike the Knight, etc, and that helped too ... :)

I'm sure you don't sit there, force feeding your kids WWF and Tarantino, but I did find that the change helped (even if it's just the difference in pace and music? who knows...)

We do love a bit of WWF... Not. Lol.

I've had a similar thought. He was watching Power Rangers and How to train your dragon, so I'd switched him on to just plain old ABC 2. I agree, it does seem to help!

Yeah our boys only watch ABC 4 kids. Boys are full of rough and tumble as it is without adding in shows that have fighting etc in them :)

I know exactly where he is. He's off happily playing with my wonderful 3.5 year old who's been replaced with a doppelganger 4 year old who is exactly the same as your replacement!

Advice?

I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO EITHER!

That's great! TV makes my kids worse, too. And having time together always helps, as well. So easy to forget the simple things, isn't it?