Hi all, I've just come across this forum and am hoping to get a bit of feedback on my step son, or even just a bit of support. I can't find many support forums which seems bad considering the amount of troubled children out there.
Backstory - difficult child lived with his Mum and Dad (my now fiancee) for the first 18 months of his life. I don't think there was much maternal bonding at all. At 18 months, his mother assaulted his Dad, and difficult child and Dad left. My DF was a solo dad until difficult child was 3 years old, when I came on the scene. At this point he had long (hour plus) tantrums and very clingy to Dad. Started toilet training at 2.5 years. I fell pregnant not long after we got together and 5 months ago our daughter came into the world.
I know that thats a lot of change for a small boy to handle but I think his problems are deeper than that.
He has tantrums that can last 3+ hours, where he just screams and cries and destroys everything in his path. During them he rubs his legs together until they are raw and the skin breaks, resulting in huge scabs all over his legs. Lately he has been headbanging and punching/slapping himself or scratching himself til he bleeds.
He still is not completely toilet trained, he wets at least once a day and will soil himself and sit in it for hours without caring. We now have a reward box where he gets a little toy if he goes poos in the toilet. It is the only thing that stops me from spending all day scrubbing nappies and undies! He still wears nappies at night, as he has no interest in night training. We tried for a while, but he never grasped the concept of getting up to go toilet, and us waking him up and taking him just resulted in a screaming kid in the middle of the night.
He also gets agressive very quickly. I have been punched, kicked, scratched til bleeding, had things thrown at me. My daughter has had toys thrown at her. My DF has been punched repeatedly in the head for saying that difficult child could not play on the playground because it was raining. He 'punishes' his cousins for doing something minor by hitting them. Pushes kids at daycare over for no reason.
He whines and whinges constantly, for anything and everything. If he is told no, then it escalates into a tantrum. Even if I say "you can't have sugar on your cornflakes because we don't have any' and then show him the empty container, he cannot comprehend anything other than me being "mean".
He doesn't understand or respond to consequences. I told him yesterday that we would not go to the park because he scratched the paint on my car and he just said 'but I want to' over and over and over. No matter how many times I explain the reasoning, he doesn't get it.
His social skills are also behind where they should be. He cannot cope with sharing and still has a 'I saw it, its mine' approach to everything. He very rarely plays with other kids, and if he does, its chasing. He will not play on the playground at the park if even one other kid is on it. He stares at older kids and then follows them, which the older kids find unnerving and odd. If he is showing someone something, he just stands there with his tongue hanging out and grunts, holding out his toy or whatever. He babbles quite a lot and still uses baby talk frequently, but also can structure a paragraph.
He cannot follow a 2 or 3 park command, and cannot draw anything close to a person, or copy a letter/square, which most 4.5 year olds can do. Cannot accept responsibility for a mistake and blames everything else (if he trips, he punches the ground).
Most concerning though is that last week he tried to make our pet rabbit bounce and fly. As you can imagine, the rabbit was left severely injured and had to be put down. difficult child cried about this but seemed more concerned that now he didnt have a rabbit and when could he get a new one. That night and the next day, he described exactly how he did it and what injuries were caused. His daycare teacher said he had been bragging about it and 'was really getting off on it'.
It frustrates me when I see his 2 year old cousins passing milestones like toilet training with ease and we are still struggling at nearly 5. It has taken me nearly a year of pushing to get mental health input, as everyone else thought it was a parenting issue. Well, 3 parenting courses down and I'm still pulling my hair out. I cannot leave him alone with the baby for a second, and he gets so demanding that between his and Gremlin, nothing gets done around the house, and DF comes home grumpy cause the house is still a mess.
I'm thinking there might be a bit of conduct or attachment disorder going on, does anyone else have any ideas? We should be seeing Child Mental Health in the next few weeks.
Backstory - difficult child lived with his Mum and Dad (my now fiancee) for the first 18 months of his life. I don't think there was much maternal bonding at all. At 18 months, his mother assaulted his Dad, and difficult child and Dad left. My DF was a solo dad until difficult child was 3 years old, when I came on the scene. At this point he had long (hour plus) tantrums and very clingy to Dad. Started toilet training at 2.5 years. I fell pregnant not long after we got together and 5 months ago our daughter came into the world.
I know that thats a lot of change for a small boy to handle but I think his problems are deeper than that.
He has tantrums that can last 3+ hours, where he just screams and cries and destroys everything in his path. During them he rubs his legs together until they are raw and the skin breaks, resulting in huge scabs all over his legs. Lately he has been headbanging and punching/slapping himself or scratching himself til he bleeds.
He still is not completely toilet trained, he wets at least once a day and will soil himself and sit in it for hours without caring. We now have a reward box where he gets a little toy if he goes poos in the toilet. It is the only thing that stops me from spending all day scrubbing nappies and undies! He still wears nappies at night, as he has no interest in night training. We tried for a while, but he never grasped the concept of getting up to go toilet, and us waking him up and taking him just resulted in a screaming kid in the middle of the night.
He also gets agressive very quickly. I have been punched, kicked, scratched til bleeding, had things thrown at me. My daughter has had toys thrown at her. My DF has been punched repeatedly in the head for saying that difficult child could not play on the playground because it was raining. He 'punishes' his cousins for doing something minor by hitting them. Pushes kids at daycare over for no reason.
He whines and whinges constantly, for anything and everything. If he is told no, then it escalates into a tantrum. Even if I say "you can't have sugar on your cornflakes because we don't have any' and then show him the empty container, he cannot comprehend anything other than me being "mean".
He doesn't understand or respond to consequences. I told him yesterday that we would not go to the park because he scratched the paint on my car and he just said 'but I want to' over and over and over. No matter how many times I explain the reasoning, he doesn't get it.
His social skills are also behind where they should be. He cannot cope with sharing and still has a 'I saw it, its mine' approach to everything. He very rarely plays with other kids, and if he does, its chasing. He will not play on the playground at the park if even one other kid is on it. He stares at older kids and then follows them, which the older kids find unnerving and odd. If he is showing someone something, he just stands there with his tongue hanging out and grunts, holding out his toy or whatever. He babbles quite a lot and still uses baby talk frequently, but also can structure a paragraph.
He cannot follow a 2 or 3 park command, and cannot draw anything close to a person, or copy a letter/square, which most 4.5 year olds can do. Cannot accept responsibility for a mistake and blames everything else (if he trips, he punches the ground).
Most concerning though is that last week he tried to make our pet rabbit bounce and fly. As you can imagine, the rabbit was left severely injured and had to be put down. difficult child cried about this but seemed more concerned that now he didnt have a rabbit and when could he get a new one. That night and the next day, he described exactly how he did it and what injuries were caused. His daycare teacher said he had been bragging about it and 'was really getting off on it'.
It frustrates me when I see his 2 year old cousins passing milestones like toilet training with ease and we are still struggling at nearly 5. It has taken me nearly a year of pushing to get mental health input, as everyone else thought it was a parenting issue. Well, 3 parenting courses down and I'm still pulling my hair out. I cannot leave him alone with the baby for a second, and he gets so demanding that between his and Gremlin, nothing gets done around the house, and DF comes home grumpy cause the house is still a mess.
I'm thinking there might be a bit of conduct or attachment disorder going on, does anyone else have any ideas? We should be seeing Child Mental Health in the next few weeks.
