4 year old son with behaivor issues

A little background on our family.  My husband and I only have been married less the a year, and my daughter was born 5 weeks ago.  My son just recently moved back in with us.  He was living with my mom.  She had guardianship and he moved in, in October.  The last 2 weeks (since I went back to work) he wont listen to a word we say.  The other day he had a BM in his pants and played in it.  It was ground into his carpet in his room and covered him from head to toe.  Yesterday he ate an gel air freshener.  He hits and kicks my dogs.  He has just recently started hitting, kicking and spitting on me.  we are too the point where we don't know what to do.  He is also having accidents in his pants again.  He was fully potty trained and I don't know what happened.  is this something that will pass or does he need mental help and need to see someone?

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

Yes, you should seek help. He is showing signs of emotional distrubance. Since his grandparents had to assume guardianship, I assume things in his life were not stable. It is not surprising he would show signs of emotional disturbance.

[portuguese mom]

Maybe he misses your mom, his grandmother.  Why was he with her and for how long?  Children do not do well with major change in their lives.  Did he behave well with his grandma?  maybe it is too much for him to: (1) Leave the home he knows with grandma (2) Have a new baby in his life (3) Have a new stepdad (4) have you go back to work.  Did he stay with grandma at home when he lived with her?  This is too much for a young child.  Maybe your mom can help again by taking care of him.

[d_balogh]

Things in his life haven't been stable.  But since we've had him back we have tried to make them as stable as possible before my daughter was born.  We started him in school.  His teachers all say that he does great and the he's one of her best students.  The major acting out has been since I went back to work. This week coming up will be my 3rd week working and all the acting out happened last week. My husband doesn't think that we need to seek any help however I think it would be nice to get someone else opinion.  We have already decided that if he does have any kind of ADD or ADHD that we don't want him medicated.  I have ADD and was medicated all the way through school.  Is that a good idea?  How would I convince my husband that talking with someone might be the best thing to do?

[portuguese mom]

If he is doing well at school, this is an issue with the change at home. You should consider this a complement. He misses his mommy.  ADHD and ADD symptoms show up at home and at school. The fact that he is doing well at school is good news. Could your mom help youwith him so that he does not miss you as much? Some professional help is always good also per Dr. Kennedy. Good luck. Be patient with him and give him lots of attention and love.  He is just having a hard time loosing you to work all those hours when he was just getting used to you again.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

If he is doing well at school, you really don't have to be concerned about ADHD. It does sound like the key is the situation at home. Only you know your husband and how to talk with him. If your son were experiencing a medical illness, you would not hesitate to seek immeduate help. This situation is no different, it just doesn't involve medical illness. Encourage your husband to read the posts here. Hopefully he will see that help is necessary.

[d_balogh]

I do know that he misses me.  The issue with having my mom help is about a month ago she was suppose to take him for just one night, and when I went to pick him up the next morning ans she wouldn't give him back.  And when we had to go to court to get him back she really fought us hard.  She didn't want us to have him.  She was very attached and I know that she loves him very much and I think she just didn't want to let go.  I feel really bad because she hasn't seen him in a while but we are concerned that we wont get him back.  Our other thing is she calls the house all the time and wants to talk to him and every time I allow her to talk she says things to him like I miss you don't you miss grandma?  Don't you want to come back with grandma and it was making this transition even harder.  So my husband and I have decided together  that the best thing to do was not to allow her to speak to him on the phone.  And we wanted her to see him at our home instead of hers for a while so he could start to understand that this is now his home and to help him understand but she wont come here.  We had a bday party for him and she refused to come.  We are having xmas here and have invited him several times and she wont come.  She doesn't want anything to do with my daughter she only wants to see him.  And that a big problem for my husband.  He wants my parents to have interest in both of there grandchildren not just one. So what should we do there?  Are we right for not allowing him there and asking her to spend time with him here?

[portuguese mom]

If she took care of him for an extented amount of time and she is a "good" grandma to him, you are not right to prevent him from seeing her. Maybe you can make up with her for his sake.  I know that sometimes it is hard to put up with family feuds. In this case the good of your son is more important.  If she takes good care of him and there are no issues with her, you should try to have a civilized relationship with her. You might actually be surprised how much she can help you with your kids. That is what good grandmas are good for.  Having two little kids, a new marriage and a job is hard enough without the help of extented family. Yes, she should see him.  Maybe some of his problems will disappear once he starts to interact with her again on a regular basis.  She might come around and love your daughter as well.  Grandmas usually love their daughter's daughters.  Good luck and get all the help that you can: (1) Your mom's (2) professional if your husband agrees (3) Church.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

She should be mature enough not to undermine his current situation by behaving as she is over the phone. She is paying more attention to her needs than to his. If she can't bring herself to act in a more mature, supportive way, then she should not be permitted to speak with him in an unsupervised fashion.

[d_balogh]

Yesterday I left my 4 year old son alone with his sister for just a minute.  They were in the car together.  I always take one out, then the other and then I still have to go back into the house to get my stuff and lock up the door.  Well when I came back from doing that I opened up my son’s door to give him his drink and snack to find that he had pulled so hard on his sisters car seat that it was laying flat on its side with her in it.  She is less then two months old!!  And honestly I over reacted.  I yelled at him and he did get a spanking, but I didn’t know what else to do.  I was so mad that he would do that to  his sister.  So after I fixed her seat and we were on our way to our first stop of the afternoon him and I were talking about why he had done that.  I was trying to find out if he was possibly mad at either me or his sister, if he was frustrated with something I didn’t know.  Well after we were done he looks at me and says “Mom I hit her.”  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing!  So I said “What!” and he said it again, “Mom I hit her.”  So I asked him where and he said “Mom I hit her in her head.”  She’s less then two months old!!!  We just happened to be going to the doctor that day for him to have a check up and when discussing his behavior issues with the nurse I brought up that he hit her.  She asked me if there were any marks on her head.  Well when he first did it I didn’t see any but when I took her out of her car seat I noticed that there was a mark about the size of a golf ball on the side of her temple!!  So the doctor looked at her too.  He now has us watching her for a concussion!  But I yelled at him and he got spanked.  Which I feel so bad that we have now moved to spankings but time outs weren’t working any more.  However my husband and I were talking about it last night.  He does love to help out with stuff around the house.  So tomorrow I will be making him a chart and we will be giving him things that he has to do around the house every day.  IE: picking up his bedroom, taking care of his dirty clothes, feeding and water his dogs small things like that.  And for that we will be giving him both stars on his chart and maybe somewhere between $0.10-$0.25 a day.   He really likes to receive change because he puts it in his bank.  So we are going to try lots of positive reinforcement because the negative really isn’t working anymore.  So we will see if this works, which I really hope that it does.  Can you give me your option on this one? Would this be something to possibly prevent some of this acting out that he’s doing?  Do you think this might help him feel like he’s getting the attention that he needs and maybe start to listen a little more?