Almost Four and Having Tantrums

You are not alone! I have found w/ my daughter (recently having tantrums again at 4) it's best to send her to her room. Let her know that we don't want to hear her have a fit, and she can come down when she is done with her fit. The only other suggestion I have is to find ways to give him a little independence and make it fun for him - positive. Have him help make lunchh or set the table or feed the dog or sort the laudry. Ask him to help you. My kids respond really well to this involvement and I follow up with positive praise. Sometimes this type of different attention seems to be what they are craving. Good luck and hang in there.

I honestly never had a problem with tantrums with my daughter who is now 11. Don't know if some kids are just prone to them or not. Sorry I don't have advice on them specifically, however, the red flag goes up at the end of your post. So he wants you to do everything even when Daddy's home? I assume from your saying that daddy is hurt by this, that he would be willing to participate in tub time, etc. If that's the case, it is very simple. Tonight when daddy comes home and your son wants you to do something, have your husband say "Mommy loves you very much but is tired (he can add in that you're tired from dealing with his behavior today if you think that will help - not sure). Mommy is off duty (or unavailable) right now so I'll be giving you a bath and putting you to bed, etc." Leave the house for a while if you have to, or go in your bedroom and close the door. Do not open it for anything. Do not give in even if your son throws a 3 hour tantrum. He needs to understand that Mommy and Daddy are in charge and he has to listen. He might also discover that having Daddy do things for him is nice. Tell your husband that this isn't about HIM and your son loves him but just doesn't know how to show it right now. I'm sure he's a gread dad but kids do go through stages. Best of luck and let us know what happens.

with my two year old (i know very different from 4) and my 4 year old step son, they are allowed to have tantrums, but they must happen in their room. this puts the responsibility on them. they are allowed to be upset and everything, but it has to be privately. they lose the tv and our attention when they decide to throw a fit. its the best thing for us. it helps the fits shorten and stop.

as for the needing you to do everything, my daughter was the same way. then i started telling her my fiance was doing certain things and she had no choice. now my fiance can do anything for her without much of a fuss. :) took a few days of fussing but really helped.

good luck! i hope things get better.

Your post made me feel like you live in my house. My oldest is 3 and a half and we have been going through the exact same thing. For about a month I dealt with daily tantrums, bad reports from the nanny and even a phone call from his school. It seemed like he would fight and fight and fight about everything. His tantrums were not just meltdowns where he would scream or roll on the floor but rather I would tell him, no you can't have another snack which would send him running into the fridge to get one himself. He would take action and I would have to physically intervene in order to get him to follow directions. I have also had the same issue of him getting out of time out, and on special bad days sometimes he leaves time out 10-15 times before he just sits and cries and waits for his three minute time out to be over.

I did a couple of things that added value to the situation. First I stopped yelling. I was so frustrated that I ended up screaming at the top of my lungs, like, alot. So I made a concious effort to lower the volume and approach the situation calmly. This actually made him crazier at first, but deflated the situation.

But the absolute best thing I did was to stop asking so many times. I always ended up yelling because I would ask him to clean up maybe 10 times before I got so frustrated that I started screaming. It was a bad cycle. I write a blog, and I posted about my frustrations (see here-- http://thetableofpromise.blogspot.com/2011/02/epic-battle... ) and one amazing commentor said don't ask more than three times. This make a huge difference. A three year old has checked out if you have asked him 10 times to do something. If he doesn't do it by the third time, he is probably not going to do it at all and he is playing the game. That means, move in to either give him a time out, turn off the TV or whatever else sooner. After a couple of times of this early intervention, my son started listening on the first try. But like anything else, he still has his good days and his bad days.

Three is worse that two because you give them so much more credit for rationality. But they still are not rational creatures at 3. And the things that three year olds do are more emotionally manipulative too. I am convinced that this is because they are becoming free thinkers and they don't like all the rules. But they need to learn that following directions gets them the freedom to do the other things that they want. Likely this is not a situation that will completely go away. My son is smart and energetic and independent. Likely his independent thinking will manifest in other ways as he gets older. I have abandoned the notion that this is a phase. I am just trying to use this as an opportunity to teach him that he will ultimately get what he wants if he listens and plays by the rules.

So far so good....Good Luck and hang in there!!

I feel your pain. I have gone through similar things in the past with similarly aged children.
I read an interesting book that you might find helpful - it is called Unconditional Parenting. It is a little over the top about its methodology - sometimes kids just need a time out! - and like most parenting books it read like a lecture about how everything that I had been doing was really destroying my kids, but it gave me a couple of other ideas/ways of thinking about the situations that I found helpful.

In the meantime, maybe it would be a good family activity to go through and create some house rules and talk about how daddy and mommy work together and how you help your son. For me, it has been very important to both find ways for my kids to make their preferences known and for us to honor them when we can, but for us also to maintain enough authority to make decisions that are best for the family not just for one of my kids. For instance, we agreed that daddy was going to do bath time on Sundays because mommy got a night off that night. Once we all agreed to that, every now and then on a day in the middle of the week, we "pretend" that it is Sunday and dad can give them a bath. This has worked really well for our family because I needed that break and it makes me a better person the other days.

Hope that helps and good luck!

We JUST went thru this. I think it was part of his growth spurt. I'm not positive but that's my theory.

Maybe that's what's going on with your little guy?