Parenting: 4 & 5-Year-Olds Community

My oldest DS was like this when he was your sons age. We follow the 1, 2, 3 Magic disclipne method. At 8 he still has issues and isn't by any means an angel. He still attends therapy. He still spends alot of time in time out. My son has so much energy that we don't always do a time out. He goes for a run. A 20 minute run really helps him get rid of the excess energy. My son also has ADHD. I'm not saying that your son has ADHD.

I would change therapists. This one doesn't seem to be the right fit for you and your child. For us consistancy was the key. It still isn't a walk in the park. He is a handful I'm not going to lie.

Just another thought when he does these things do you show any emotion? We learned that he was just trying to get a rise out of us. When we showed no emotion to his outbursts they started to go away. It took weeks but the outbursts finally started to slow down. Our therapist told that for every year your child is it will take 1 month to undo his learned behavior.

Ok stupid question for Sarah.....We are thinking of putting MIchael in therapy. He has a really hard time with self control. When he gets upset, he can;t snap out of it and it becomes a 30 - 60 minute tantrum. Time outs make it worse and the more we reprimand, the worse the tantrum. When we do get him to stay in his room, he is throwing things, kicking things, etc. Once he calms down, he is able to tell us what the problem was but if he would have just told us in the first place, everything could have been fixed without the tantrum.

So my question is....if he sees a child psychiatrist, the doc would speak to me and my husband as well right? How does this whole thing work? We also want to have him tested for ADD....

We actually see a Social Worker who specializes in children's therapy. They have several different kinds of therapy. The schedule that we have set up for Jacob is he goes every week but everyother week his dad and I go in with him for family therapy. We get updates and suggestions on how to better handle him. After each session our therapist give us a brief rundown of what occured. We see a child psychiatrist for meds. Our therapist really works with us. At first we kept being told that there wasn't anything wrong that he was just a normal little boy. Then one rule was changed in the office and he had a melt down like you wouldn't beleive. After they saw the "melt down" they finally understood what we were going through and they were better able to give us the help that we need. For the last several months his meds haven't been working and we are trying to get that sorted back out he is back to a melt down every few minutes.

The biggest thing I want to stress is show no emotion when they have a meltdown/tamtrum. They actually feed off of that attention. We have been doing therapy for a few years now and 1, 2, 3 Magic was suggested by our therapist. I really think this approach has helped us tremendiously. I still get to 2 most times but the inappropriate behavior stops. Consistency and showing no emotion are the key. This even works for kids who have ADHD. When I started 1, 2, 3 Magic I changed our time out place to the bathroom. Yes my bathroom was destroyed but he soon learned that this was the consequence for not minding. My SO and I had to be on the same page. There were days that I think he literally spent all but an hour in time out. But being consistant helped.

Jacob has also attended other group sessions where he has learned about anger management and other topics that he has needed help with. We still have to remind him to use his tools to tell us what is going on. They aren't second nature to him yet.

I actually asked the therapist at one point when he was going to be a normal child. She told me that this may be the best that he ever gets but we aren't giving up hope on him. He has his good days and his bad days. We just have to be proactive and try to remove anything that we know will cause a melt down. We can't remove everything but we do try to reduce the number of melt downs.

I have also learned that there are some things that he just can't handle. Going to a store is one of those things. Jacob doesn't go shopping in a large store. He only goes to our small grocery store in town. I don't know why but the big store is just to much for him. Jacob's melt downs are also more frequant when he doesn't get enough rest.

I have another child who has ADHD but doesn't have the mood swings, tantrum throwing and other unwanted behaviors. He doesn't see the therapist as often. We go in every other month for a "check up" on how things are going. Each child is different.

Sorry this got so long winded.

Well, we got my son tested for mental disorders now after we saw a new therapist and the results came back and they don't believe that he has any mental disorders. They feel that his actions are because of his former best friend teaching them to him. They became friends when my son was 2 and I cut off contact last October when the other boy became out of control and I didn't like the influence he was having on my son. So my son was about 4 and half at that time when he last spent time with this child, but I guess the therapist said that all my son talks about it this other boy and how this other boy is still telling him to do all these naughty things that he does everyday even though I don't allow them to see or talk to each other. This other childs mother was actually my best friend and I don't even talk to her anymore because I don't want her child around my children. This new therapist said the that the child shouldn't be holding an influence on my son if he hasn't had any contact with him for the last 7 months. Yet here I sit trying to un-teach what a child taught my son. No progress has been made yet I have been trying to show no emotion like you say, now i have never heard of the the 1 2 3 Magic method but I'm going to research it and give it a try because nothing has worked so thank you for a new method to try out. My son can be the sweetest boy at times he really can but then there are those days that he makes me wanna rip my hair out and i just want to help help him because he shouldn't be that frustrated he's just a little boy!