In the last six months a lot changed, we moved to a new house, my wife had a baby (girl) and my son turned 4 and started school.
I’m not really sure if this is the reason but for the last month or so, my son has more and more temper tantrums. Basically any time we tell him no, he gets very frustrated and angry. Sometimes shouting or pushing me. It’s pretty new behavior and I really don’t like it. I have talked to him after the tantrums and he usually agrees he shouldn’t behave like this, but so far it keeps coming back. One other thing he does is just ignoring us whenever we ask him something he doesn’t want to do, pretending he can’t hear us.
The last thing I want to do is be angry or use threads (like I’m counting to 3). But sometimes it’s the only way to get him to do something (like getting dressed for school).
I would really want to have a better way to communicate without the negativity.
That sounds tough. Did he have a lot of tantrums when he was 2 and 3? A lot of families deal with regression when a new baby comes along plus all the other changes. When you talk to him after does he say why he’s frustrated and mad? One approach we try is having our son name his feelings kind of continuously in conversation. I read somewhere, either a Montessori or gentle parenting book, that it helps kids take ownership of their feelings. Daniel Tiger has a song that helps our 3 year old break the escalation cycle and get back in control.
We’ve made listening a game where we “put on our listening ears” before ask him to do stuff. We started doing it when we were going to ask him stuff he generally wants to do and progressed it to using it when we ask him things we want him to do. It greatly helped the ignoring after a few weeks.
FWIW, you talking to him and trying to avoid threats jibes with all the stuff I’ve read. So you’re already headed in the right direction. Good luck dad.
Thanks this is very helpful. He didn’t have big tantrums at 2-3 but he would respond to being told no in a very bad way, by hitting himself. As a parent it’s so hard to watch and we talked to him dozens of times, told him we love him, no need to punish yourself,etc. Very happy that was mostly a phase and he stopped. He also at that age 2-3 would bite (us, other kids, daycare lady).
This all sounds horrible, but 95% of the time he’s a super sweet smart little boy. I think he’s very sensitive and really doesn’t know how to deal with his own emotions.
When we talk to him sometimes he just says he doesn’t know why he got so mad. Sometimes he just doesn’t want to talk. Maybe we have to try more to let him name his feelings and especially during the 95% of the time when things are good.