Throwing tantrums

[vidya34]

My son is 3 years old ( 3 completed) , he has been excessively adamant oflate , throwing tantrums constantly ( atleast once /twice daily) or more.  The most irritating thing is he cries for EVERTHING , he was never like it till he was 2.5yrs.  I spank him a lot because he keeps doing what I ask him not to, including kicking me with his legs or hand. He is a very intelligent and smart kid , with high grasping power. He is very disciplined outside. My concern is if I am very much wrong in hitting him many times a day....( depending on his behaviour).

shall be very thankful to u if u help me what to do....pl. dont ask me to ignore him!!!

[margypops]

No its not good to ignore him he needs Bounderys, It has been proved by experts spanking does not work, you are only venting your anger, count to 10, Have a chair placed somewhere quiet still in an area where you can see him, when he is really throwing a Tantrum and kicking ,do not hit out at him, take him and sit him on the chair quietly and firmly ,tell him to stay there till he stops yelling ,he will get off so you repeat the whole thing ,over and over if you have to.It can be tiring but you take back control, do not get into a Power struggle with him. Some Moms use a bean bag chair and take it when they go away, some people call it the Naughty chair,you can call it what you like.What is it triggering off the Behavior if you work it out you may be able to stop the Yelling and Kicking before it starts.Has he plenty to do is he active and do things and Games with a Dad or a Family figure.Smart kids are always hard,very often when they get to School and using their little Brains it gets nbetter, so feed his mind, drawing reading Games .Its fun time, trust me the years go too quickly and you will look back and miss all this and laugh at how you felt, Good luck.

[Danale]

Please stop spanking your child.  It does not work and if anything makes the whole cycle worse.  Plus you are teaching your son that the way to deal with problems is resort to violence and he will not learn how to control his emotions..

Kids (mine, my friends, nieces and nephews) all seemed to go through a very difficult time around age 3 in that the tantrums seem constant and because they are getting a little more independence it is much more difficult to distract them.  I had forgotten it but when I read your story, I remembered how much my daughter kicked and she cried over just about everything.  I do think that they, at this age are seeing that they can control a situation and are pushing their limits to test us and see how much we will put up with.  It's extremely frustrating, I know.

I agree with margypops, he needs clear boundaries.  Instead of spanking him when he does something he is not supposed to try using time out or what we do which is a combination of time out (when she does something she is not supposed to) and taking away priveleges (to get her to do something we want).  We had tried time out and in the beginning it was just frustrating, it didn't seem to work at all (in that she would have a time out and as soon as she was out, start misbehaving again).  Then someone told me that the key to good time out are three very important things.  One-that you have to start doing time outs every time the child misbehaves (so that they learn that there are consequences to their actions).  Two-the one minute per age thing is not the way to go.  The way to go is to wait until the child calms down, however long that takes.  Three-you have to not talk or look at your child at all when he or she is in time out.  It's not ignoring, it is showing your child that the only way he can get your attention is by behaving.  All children crave attention and even a yelling, screaming, hitting parent is better to a child than an indifferent one.

At the beginning it was really hard, the time outs were for long periods, we waited one evening for 45 minutes for my daughter to stop kicking her bedroom door.  But slowly (and not as slowly as you think, if you are absolutely consistent in doing this), time out will begin to have meaning to them and it won't take them long at all to calm down.  

Also at the end of the timeout I only have my daughter say she is sorry and I do not put her through telling me what she did wrong.  I may be way off base here but personally I think it is the consistent pattern of what happens when they misbehave that makes them behave better and not some lesson that they learned (like saying I am not allowed to throw things).  I think they learn these things via repetition at this age and not from any one incident.  

We have been following this routine for the past 9 months consistently and I can tell you we went from having 6-7 time outs a day to maybe 1 or 2 per week (of course kids still have bad days once in a while and you have to expect that).  Plus, most of the time we don't even need to put her in time out.  When she is misbehaving we ask her to stop and tell her if she doesn't stop by the count of three she will get a time out and 9 times out of 10 this is enough to turn it around.  This and the simple passage of time and maturity will help your son grow out of this most difficult phase of childhood.  

The best of luck to you!

[margypops]

There is good advise here , please try it ,you will be surprised at the change, and let us know how it goes.