lisaaa1970
New Member
Sorry--my first post will be really long, but I am desperate. I am so glad that I stumbled upon this forum today as I think I have about hit my limit with my darling 3 1/2 YO DS.
So I don't sound completely awful in this post, I want to preface this by saying that I absolutely adore my DS. He is funny, creative, very intelligent, and usually quite affectionate. He loves the world of make believe, superheroes, and playing dress-up. He also adores his weekly gymnastics class and is really good about paying attention and following instructions.
He's always been a challenge, but the past few weeks have been pure hell at night. DS will go from the sweetest little thing on the planet to suddenly defying every thing I say. I feel like I've read every parenting book for his age group and the strategies will work for a day or two and then we're back to square one. The one thing that we're really good about is following through with consequences, so you'd think that he'd finally get a clue that misbehavior gets him no where. Tantrums and whining are NEVER rewarded in our house.
Right now our biggest issue is sleep and defiance. I know that a lot of his behavior issues would improve if he'd just sleep, but he flat out refuses. We follow the exact same routine every night, and still we have battles. We've been basically giving up lately and just locking the door on his room and leaving him alone. We've tried taking things away (he just calls our bluff and says he wants us to take his clothes away), threatening him (again, always calls our bluff), sticker charts, lying down with him, lots of stories, no stories, I could go on, but I feel like we've tried EVERYTHING. Our next move is going to be to take all of his clothes out of his room because he pulls them out of the dresser and changes clothes up to 5 times before falling asleep. We've already removed his toys, which is why he's going for the dresser.
What made me think there must be something more going on than just typical 3 year old behavior was at nap time today. We've had a hard time with naps for a while, but today was ridiculous. He was obviously tired so I took him upstairs and tucked him in after lunch. He acted like he was going to sleep and then of course got up and started messing around almost immediately. This post will go even longer if I go through all of the details, but everything I tried backfired. I would try to lie down with him (which used to work) and he got up and started running around, laughing. He would get into his window seat and jump out, yelling, "Look at me, Mommy! Look what I'm doing!" in a very taunting voice. When I just ignore him, he escalates rather than getting bored with no reaction. I am very much anti-spanking, but I even tried that today because I didn't know what else to do to get his attention. He just laughed at me and I was the one who ended up crying! The last time I went into his room he was jumping on the bed and laughing and said, "Mommy, I'm smart!" ARGH!! My mom is here helping out because I've been sick, so she and my DSD and I took every single toy he has and boxed it up. I am not totally cruel, so I left his books so he'd at least have something. We were hoping to shock him into behaving when we finally let him out of his room and he saw the emptiness of our family room, but he acted like he didn't even care!
I finally thought to suggest that my mom take him for a ride in the car because that will usually work. Since she needed to give DSD a ride somewhere anyway, they put him in his car seat and off they went. Mom just got home and he was sound asleep. YAY! He's upstairs asleep in bed now, but I know that we'll just be fighting the battle again at bedtime.
Please help me! I don't want to become one of those parents who is constantly screaming at their kids. I want to enjoy this fun time in his life, not dread every day.
So I don't sound completely awful in this post, I want to preface this by saying that I absolutely adore my DS. He is funny, creative, very intelligent, and usually quite affectionate. He loves the world of make believe, superheroes, and playing dress-up. He also adores his weekly gymnastics class and is really good about paying attention and following instructions.
He's always been a challenge, but the past few weeks have been pure hell at night. DS will go from the sweetest little thing on the planet to suddenly defying every thing I say. I feel like I've read every parenting book for his age group and the strategies will work for a day or two and then we're back to square one. The one thing that we're really good about is following through with consequences, so you'd think that he'd finally get a clue that misbehavior gets him no where. Tantrums and whining are NEVER rewarded in our house.
Right now our biggest issue is sleep and defiance. I know that a lot of his behavior issues would improve if he'd just sleep, but he flat out refuses. We follow the exact same routine every night, and still we have battles. We've been basically giving up lately and just locking the door on his room and leaving him alone. We've tried taking things away (he just calls our bluff and says he wants us to take his clothes away), threatening him (again, always calls our bluff), sticker charts, lying down with him, lots of stories, no stories, I could go on, but I feel like we've tried EVERYTHING. Our next move is going to be to take all of his clothes out of his room because he pulls them out of the dresser and changes clothes up to 5 times before falling asleep. We've already removed his toys, which is why he's going for the dresser.
What made me think there must be something more going on than just typical 3 year old behavior was at nap time today. We've had a hard time with naps for a while, but today was ridiculous. He was obviously tired so I took him upstairs and tucked him in after lunch. He acted like he was going to sleep and then of course got up and started messing around almost immediately. This post will go even longer if I go through all of the details, but everything I tried backfired. I would try to lie down with him (which used to work) and he got up and started running around, laughing. He would get into his window seat and jump out, yelling, "Look at me, Mommy! Look what I'm doing!" in a very taunting voice. When I just ignore him, he escalates rather than getting bored with no reaction. I am very much anti-spanking, but I even tried that today because I didn't know what else to do to get his attention. He just laughed at me and I was the one who ended up crying! The last time I went into his room he was jumping on the bed and laughing and said, "Mommy, I'm smart!" ARGH!! My mom is here helping out because I've been sick, so she and my DSD and I took every single toy he has and boxed it up. I am not totally cruel, so I left his books so he'd at least have something. We were hoping to shock him into behaving when we finally let him out of his room and he saw the emptiness of our family room, but he acted like he didn't even care!
I finally thought to suggest that my mom take him for a ride in the car because that will usually work. Since she needed to give DSD a ride somewhere anyway, they put him in his car seat and off they went. Mom just got home and he was sound asleep. YAY! He's upstairs asleep in bed now, but I know that we'll just be fighting the battle again at bedtime.
Please help me! I don't want to become one of those parents who is constantly screaming at their kids. I want to enjoy this fun time in his life, not dread every day.