Single father needs help with his 3 year old's growing aggressiveness

My wife and I recently separated (8 months) and our beautiful son has developed some serious behaviorial issues.  My son lives with me half of the time and his mother and I continue to be good friends and work very hard at trying to keep parental issues as consistent as possible in both households.  We are both loving, well educated and love our son dearly.  Neither of us ever yell or spank him and we both spend lots of quality time reading,playing and interacting. For the most part, he is very smart, verbal, active and healthy. That's the good part.  Lately (the last 3-4 months) he has starting expressing some serious attitude changes, when he gets angry and throws tantrums, he starts verbally & physically abusing everyone around him, kids, adults, us, & telling them to shut up.  Everytime we say something he starts repeating it and both grows in intensity and frequency. Talking to him results in him constantly trying to hit, pinch,or bite his mother, me or anyone else for that matter. Kicking, screaming and hyperventilating, we try timeouts and he destroys his room. Holding him results in him spitting and trying to bite us. His face goes red and he goes from sobbing, to anger, calm and then all over again. While trying to destroy and hurt everything in his reach, including us.  I say us, because, he does this to both of us individually and when we are all three together. After a few hours he will calm down and become this beautiful, smart loving child again. He has developed potty problems (which we have been to several doctors regarding) no diet problem, we need to literally hold him each night up to an hour until he goes, which involves him crying and cursing at us.  And when we don't hold and help him, he will not go at all and he become's more edgy and more volatile.  We both keep the same bedtime schedule and it's starting to take an hour or two before he stays in his room everynight. He is becoming a time bomb and we are starting to see him go off everytime he does not get what he wants or we want him to do something.
My heart is breaking and I am beginning to question and second guess everything were doing as wrong.  I have made an appointment with a child therapist and am willing to try anything, because it seems everything so far, isn't working.
  

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

Dear Ed,

You're obviously doing some good things to help your son deal with a difficult time in the family's life. No matter how hard you try to do the right things, parental separation is a major dislocation in a child's life, and is bound to bring some of the unrest and regression you are witnessing.

In addition, your son is also contending with the forces of normal chil;dhood development and, to some extent (it's impossible to say how much), the tantrumming you are witnessing is not unusual for this age.

In short, your son is facing demands of development, in the context of a major change in his family environment.

I want to be frank with you and your wife about one thing. For very young children, living in a principal residence, not dividing time 50/50 between two residences, is almost always a better arrangement. It offers a degree of continuity, familiarity, sameness (and, therefore, security) that changes between two homes cannot offer, in spite of the sensitivity and good will of the parents.

On the practical side, you are absolutely going a sensible thing by consulting the child therapist. Also, you might forego holding your son on the potty - this may be useful in the short term, but it is likely exacerbating an already-stressful situation.

When you can (i.e., when your son's tantrums are noisy but not destructive), ignore the tantrumming. It does no good to try to interact with a child who is tantrumming. The youngster can't be rational at such a time - he's overwrought with emotions. Let him calm down, then talk with him.

And, when you employ time out, place your child in ad adult-size chair, or on the bottom step of a staircase, and use a portable timer to track the time out. Five minutes is sufficient, but start the timer only when your son is seated and quiet. You will see that, over time, this will make a big difference.