Clueless with my 3 year old DS, tantrums and screaming all day long

[Akina]

I have tried to hug it out. To talk to him calmly, explaining the situation. DH believes in time-outs which he uses successfully with DS. I don't. Here is the every morning scenario: get out of bed, kitchen, time for breakfast. He says mama I want cookies or chocolate to which I say honey you know that is not breakfast food, do you want toast and cheese or cereal to which a huge screaming fit ensues. Screaming, stomping on the floor. every morning. He will not calm down, then I have to hold him down to get him dressed for school and force him to use the bathroom so he won't pee himself in the car. It's horrible. DS has no issues, he behaves fine with others and at school, but he gives me non stop tantrums and says No and screams to everything I say. The worst is about food. It is 99% about food. When it's dinnertime and I give him something healthy, he screams he wants a z-bar or nutella instead. I don't give that to him. I leave the choice of eating or no food to him. But it is just getting worse. This morning, particularly after a horrible day yesterday and me being sick now, I feel like giving up. Whatever, so I give him chocolate all the time so he stops screaming. I just can't deal with it anymore. None of my siblings were ever like that. My husband and his siblings were. They all are what you call spirited or very strong. I'm more the personality that goes with the flow and rarely ever speaks up. I'm at a point that I believe I need professional help to cope with DS, I'm worried that with his temper he will get physical against me eventually. :(

[Marsha]

What about the time-outs is working for your dh? I am not against time outs if they are used so the child can regain control of himself. There is no point in reasoning or bargaining with a tired, hungry, screaming 3 yr old. Can you watch and see how your dh interacts with him and see what seems to work?

[Akina]

He sends him to his room and tells him to calm down. I have tried, DS won't move by himself. I have to carry him upstairs and place him in his room, but he tries to open the door and run out screaming. DH isn't mean to him or anything really, he talks loudly, calmly what he expects now. I actually did just go through with a timeout on DS, he opened the door a little but didn't leave the room, I did 3 minutes as Dr Sears says (age in minutes as appropriate time) and he did calm down and now is eating cereal. I don't like those timeouts though. And I wonder what I can do better for him not to melt down all the time. Shouldn't he know by now that I will never ever serve cookies for breakfast?

[Marsha]

I don't think a 3 yr old being alone until he calms down is bad. I wouldn't use an arbitrary time, just when he is calm and ready to rejoin the family. Not for ALL 3 yr olds, some of them need the connection, but I'm guessing he feeds off of you. And needs the space to calm down whether he thinks he does or not.

I had a 3 yr old, and 4,5,6, yr old for that mattter just like that. They do eventually get better at choosing the alone time on their own. They just get overwhelmed and it comes out loudly. Time alone is not always a bad thing. Nor is it a punishment. Its a tool used to regroup.

All the hugging, comforting, talking in the world didn't help my 3 yr old. It only fueld it. ANY interaction did. She did indeed need to be alone, and she ;'d calm down and come out and we'd be over it.

[Psyche]

I would hold the door shut until he calms down :shrug

Here's how it would play in my house.

DS: I WANT CHOCOLATE!

Me: You may have toast or cereal for breakfast.

DS: I SAID I WANT CHOCOLATE.

Me: If you do not choose toast or cereal, I will choose for you.

DS: Meltdown.

Me: You are having trouble controlling yourself. You may go to room until you are ready to calm down.


DS: MELTDOWN continues.

Me: Carry him to his room and hold the door shut. "You may come out when you are calm."

It may take longer than 3 minutes. It make take 30.

Upon calming down.

Me: You were really angry you cannot have chocolate for breakfast. Chocolate is a treat not a healthy food to start the day. Now, would you like toast or cereal for breakfast?

I also wonder if his blood sugar isn't tanking and he perhaps needs something high protein right upon waking up.

[CelticJourney]

A couple of suggestions. If he comes out and asks for a cookie, get on his team :shifty "You know what, I want a cookie too! Let's hurry up and eat our breakfast and get ready for school and maybe we can share a cookie in the car!" It's worth a try :shrug3 Team building can be huge - it diffuses the 'us against them' factor and all the while you are working towards the idea that 'everyone eats real food for breakfast, even grown ups'.

Also, one thing that I've heard worked for other families is to set up a 'snack area' and fill it with acceptable foods. Mine would include peanut bars, snack sized peaches, cheese, etc It might be that he does better as a 'grazer' than a 'three meals a day' kinda thing.

Also, if what your son is asking for at dinner is a healthy choice, I wouldn't choose that battle at this point. Ideally, little children would sit down and enjoy the fruits of our hard work, but what is important is that they have good food to eat. At my house you don't have to eat what I serve - you are welcome to make yourself a peanut butter sandwich if you want (or I make it for the little guy). It's just not my hill to die on, so to speak.

If it is any consolation, my son was also a temper king at three. He will be six next month and he still as his moments, but the increase in cognative ability and being able to have an actual discussion has made a huge difference in his ability to diffuse a fit from the start and to shorten them. :hug2

[Akina]

Thanks... It's true he won't calm down in my presence. :(

As for the food suggestions - that won't work. DS didn't start eating until 11 months, and then barely anything, and the list of foods he eats is much shorter than the list of foods he won't eat. He doesn't eat fruit. Period. He only eats veggies if bribed with a cookie afterwards. He likes meat, eggs and bread. And he likes my salad dressing (balsamic/oil) with which he will eat salad, oddly enough. He likes pasta. But no tomato sauce. I don't want to force him to eat food at all, but I will not make unhealthy foods to appease him. He won't eat the healthy grazer foods as suggested by Dr. Sears. He hates peanut butter with a passion (cant blame him I don't like it either). He weighs 37lbs at 3 years with barely eating anything (he weighed 31lbs just on breast milk alone at 12 months)... So food is the big issue in our house here. :( He won't eat egg for breakfast unless daddy makes it (he'll have a tantrum if I don't give chocolate or cookies). I don't even know why he keeps asking for those things, it's not like we have them in the house often????

[Kiara.I]

It does sound like he calms down faster by himself than with you.

It also sounds like you are expecting that because you are explaining clearly, he will understand and be reasonable. :shifty Sadly, he's 3. ;) He will continue to have *BIG FEELINGS* about things, even when you explain logically. 3yo don't put much stock in logic. :giggle

An easy way to make things smoother might be to simply *have* no cookies or chocolate in the house. (Mommy's private stash needs to be *well* hidden and never accessed when it can be spotted.) "I want chocolate!" "Oh, me too honey, chocolate's yummy. :sigh We don't have any though. What do you suppose we could eat instead?"

:think Could you make sure he potties and dresses *before* the epic breakfast battle? Would that make things easier?

---------- Post added at 07:53 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:51 AM ----------

He only eats veggies if bribed with a cookie afterwards.

:up That? That's deadly. Don't be doing that. :no

[Akina]

The thing is we don't have those things in the house. When I say we don't have them he says go buy them. But today we have cookies as I made Christmas sugar cookies. :( He won't go potty nor get dressed without fight before breakfast. He only recently started to be so extremely defensive about everything. I do do the I know you don't want to to this and I completely understand, but .... talk with him, but eversince he turned 3 I could say the sky is purple and he wouldn't care. Oddly enough he only is like that with me, not with DH (he isn't home much though). Part of me thinks he is simply testing how far he can go as he feels safe with me, kwim?

@ kiara: how do you get them to eat veggies? It's so hard! I always ate mine because I always thought they taste good. I tried fun shapes, dips, spices... Nada.

[Mom2tkh]

:hug2
Your DS sound like my 4yr old DS. I am at my wits end with the meltdowns too. My DS is in therapy for spd because I went to a clinic and asked for help. I have always seen sensory issues in him. They said with sensory issues that they are always in the fight or flight mode.
I feel so bad sometimes because it does seem like his meltdowns are worse with me. He will meltdown with dh too though. It's a constant battle over everything with him. Just wanted to let you know your not alone.
I am watching this thread for ideas.

[Marsha]

My oldest has sensory processing disorder and ate almost no foods. So I do feel your pain. They really DO meltdown more. They really DO have bigger feelings. They really DO freak out despite the most perfect parenting in the world. So.....

But I did learn that my presence wasn't helpful. And explanations aren't helpful either , esp in the moment. I learnd to say "no" deadpan, wait a beat, let the tantrum happen, then move on. It goes SO much quicker that way. Once you are aware that they ARE going to freak out, you can plan for it and make it go quicker. The more I explained, cajoled, tried to make it better...the longer it took. Say no, get it over with, move on.

[Akina]

Marsha, thank you, I do believe that strategy is necessary with DS.

As for sensory issues, DS was tested but luckily has no issues or delays whatsoever. He does have a genetic tendency to dislike foods (my family is very picky) which is why I never expect him to eat everything, but some veggies (e.g. let's say carrots and peas and no other ones, I could live with that). It's not like he doesn't like them, he plainly doesn't want to eat them as chocolate tastes better. And in preschool he learned that healthy stuff is ewww from the other kids (thanks!!!!!). Oh my!

[bolt.]

Here is the every morning scenario: get out of bed, kitchen, time for breakfast. He says mama I want cookies or chocolate to which I say honey you know that is not breakfast food, do you want toast and cheese or cereal to which a huge screaming fit ensues.OK, I'm hearing 'blood sugar' screaming out of your morning meal issue. I think you need to wake this kid up with a sippy cup of juice or milk in your hand, before he even leaves his blankets. (Not forever, just until this pattern is well and truly broken and he can get himself to the table without getting provoked.)

Another thing might be to cooperatively set the stage for breakfast the evening before -- get out the things he chooses to have, make choices, draw a picture. When he waxes unreasonable, you could say, "You can have a chocolate chip now/when we are done setting up -- but breakfast food is for breakfast." or "Let's put a chocolate chip in the car, so that when everything goes well with no fussing, I can give it to you." or "Let's draw a cookie picture and put it near your plate so you can pretend to eat it."

Playful parenting can come in too -- There may be no sweets on planet zub, so little zubnites have to make other choices. There may be a small pet cookie-eater nearby him that keeps asking for cookies -- feed it pretend cookies.

He will not calm down, then I have to hold him down to get him dressed for school and force him to use the bathroom so he won't pee himself in the car.It sounds like "school" is pretty important to you... but it might not be worth 100 ruined mornings... are there any other options as to what you might do either for a little while (while you get this sorted out) or for the long term (afternoon class?) or just on bad days (getting comfortable with lateness?). What about starting earlier? Like 90 minutes earlier, and letting your body clocks adjust to that?

he behaves fine with others and at school, but he gives me non stop tantrums and says No and screams to everything I say.You are safe to be a test-zone. He loves and trusts you. That kinda sucks when you'd rather get his stranger-behavior... but... it is what it is.

It is 99% about food. When it's dinnertime and I give him something healthy, he screams he wants a z-bar or nutella instead. I don't give that to him. I leave the choice of eating or no food to him.How comfortable would you be with setting up your whole home in a 'no junk' way? If the tasty options just aren't in the house, there will be a lot less tension over them. (I see someone said that already.)

Questions: how do you tend to respond / speak to the preferences that he expresses? Does he scream his preferences at first, or does he have a 'just asking' phase before he melts down? When does he get these tasty things, and does he understand their 'place' in his own way (or is the limit a bit of a moving target)?

Leaving the eating choices with him is very wise... but requiring appropriate behaviour in eating-type settings is something he needs your help with.

Whatever, so I give him chocolate all the time so he stops screaming. I just can't deal with it anymore.It might help you to realize that screaming is nothing more than a noise. Children make that noise, and so do other people who should know better. The world is full of annoying noises. You don't have to engage yourself with them. It's a little like construction noise outside your front door -- if you can't do anything about it, all you can do is ignore it or move.

With a screaming child, you don't have to engage in a person-to-person way. It can just be a sound in your environment. And you can move the sound to another room if that makes it better for you. It doesn't have to 'get to you' the way it seems to.

I actually did just go through with a timeout on DS, he opened the door a little but didn't leave the room, I did 3 minutes as Dr Sears says (age in minutes as appropriate time) and he did calm down and now is eating cereal. I don't like those timeouts though. And I wonder what I can do better for him not to melt down all the time.A break is good for the kind of child who needs for his emotionality not to be 'fed' by remaining in a situation, remaining in a conversation -- it's not the same as the kind of 'time out' that rejects and isolates a child. It is designed to serve him by providing the kind of calming space that works for him.

At times, the simple knowledge that 'if I scream, a concrete and predictable thing will happen for me' will help prevent meltdowns. It makes a child's world feel less like an 'anything could happen to me at any moment' kind of overwhelming scary place.

...

FYI -- My daughter weighs 38 pounds, and she is 7 (in two weeks).

I think your son knows food is a big issue to you. I think that is why he is tense about it. I don't think that's quite fair to him. Maybe food might not be as big of a deal as you think it is. What would it look like if you weren't trying to 'get' him to do anything with his food? What if you were just making it, serving it, and ignoring it? Or maybe what if there was just a daily menu of generally acceptable foods that never changed?

[Titus2Momof4]

I am uncomfortable with the thought of holding the door closed on any child and essentially locking someone in a room.

Since you said he has to go to school, I'm assuming he doesn't get to wake up naturally. Can you wake him a little sooner to allow time for him to wake up and cuddle with you before breakfast? I suspect that he's tired and hungry and cannot think straight first thing in the morning. This is exasperated by you telling him he can't have what he wants for breakfast. Holding him down and getting him dressed and forcing him to pee as well must be hard on everyone. :hug2

PS-in case you're interested, these might be a nice treat/incentive to get dressed on his own in the morning :shifty Raw, Vegan Chocolate Power Bars (http://enlightenedcooking.blogspot.com/2010/03/all-natural-chocolate-brownie-power.html)

[joyousTXmama]

This probably is going to go against the grain a bit, but around here I just say "ok" if he asks for some weird thing like "chocolate chips" for breakfast. I serve them right on the plate with whatever else I decide to make for his meal (if he refused to choose - which he often does).

If he eats only the chocolate chips and he has been eating decently 75% of the time otherwise, I let it go rather than let it go to meltdown. He'll eat at lunch or snack. He'll get sick of chocolate chips at some point. I mean, sometimes I just want a junky meal, and if I just eat it without guilting myself out... I am less likely to do it again anytime soon, kwim? I think kids are a little the same way.

I also keep a bowl of candy on ds's little table. He knows he may eat from it at any time and that it is refilled once a week (if needed). Honestly - he doesn't even look at it most days. He might unwrap a dum-dum and lick it ten times and then leave it somewhere, forgotten. Constant access and "sure, go ahead" has robbed sugar of its allure. He is more easily bribed with a dill pickle than M&M's.

I don't like assigning power and/or reward to dessert and sweets. I just think it sets kids up all wrong and creates issues that never needed to be there. :shrug3

[Titus2Momof4]

I don't think you're going against the grain, KG. I actually posted the recipe because I would probably end up finding a way for him to be able to have chocolate for breakfast, w/o my mind thinking "he's eating junk!" and those raw, vegan power bars are :tu for that very reason. ;)

Of course, your idea is instant (just toss some choc chips on the plate)... :)

[titosmommy]

I'm :popcorn because my 3 year old is the same way. It's a relatively new thing so I think it must be the age. And I have no concerns about him, he 's just being ....3.