Sudden change in behavior

My grandson is three years old. We babysit three times a week since he was a baby and he has been the joy of our lives. The last few months we see a big change in his behavior. He hits all the time me,my husband,his mom,his dad,whoever gets in his way. Last week he started taking terrible temper tantrums . Screaming yelling kicking throwing things unbelievable. Nothing we do calm's him down and we are at our wits end. He gets even worse when his parents pick him up and from what they tell us he acts like this at home all the time for two months or so. Please please, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on what could be going on here.I'm so afraid something is wrong and we are not picking up on it because everyone keeps calling it terrible two's. He was the sweetest kid you could ever meet always happy ,laughing ,playing , and he always did what we asked him to do (most of the time). Thanks in advance for any help.P.

[indigo39]

Hey, are you talking about MY son?? He is a sweet, well-behaved kid about 98% of the time, but when he loses it, he's like a whole other person - screaming, throwing and trying to break things.  Most of the time it happens when he is tired or hungry, but sometimes it can just be me telling him 'No'.  
What I do is just try to keep calm, telling him calmly to stop, to calm down, and try to keep him from hurting himself. After he's calm he goes to time-out (because to put him there in the middle of a fit just enrages him) and after time-out I talk to him and tell him that he is NOT allowed to act that way, etc.  
This has helped reduce the number of times he does it, but still it's scary to see such a little person so WILD!  I'd suggest you work out a plan for these fits with his parents and all of you do the same to keep him in line - be consistent with how you handle it, especially since you babysit him so much.
Good luck!

[pbart13]

How old is your son?  How old was he when he started to act out? My GS left our home at 6pm last night and they put him to bed still screaming at 7 or so. He continued to scream for around 20 minutes before he fell asleep. My daughter in law and son were so upset that my daughter in law cried all night and her eyes were swollen shut this morning and my son threw up part of the night and couldn't go to work today. My husband and I were up until after 3am just trying to calm down.

[indigo39]

My son is 3 and a half now. This started right before he turned 3...nobody ever believed me that he really acted that way because he's just so sweet. It makes me feel like I'm losing my mind!  Just the other day he threw a tantrum and was screaming so loud I thought the neighbors were going to call the police, thinking I was beating him or something!  But after he was done, he cried and got all sad and said he was sorry; I think he even scared himself.  I'm just trying to deal with it as best I can, but I haven't found a way to really stop him once he gets going.  Let me know if you guys figure it out!