Handling misbehaviour

[Lee-Bee]

Like mickyc I separate from the other kids if he can't be told. My handful is nearly 4 though, much different than a 2 year old. He gets whatever he wants from his mother, and is most days, an awful child....I know that is a terrible thing to say, but the kid is just constantly being awful to the rest of the group, this is just the past 6 months where he has been getting gradually worse. It's almost like he acts out more with me because I won't be manipulated like his mother and he resents me for it. Who knows?!? His latest thing this morning in the car driving my kids to summer school, was during tickling and laughing with my 12 year old son, he bloody well bit him! What the hell kid!! He is not a biter, although he is way to hands on with the others in my group. He had full attention from someone in the car and it was totally uncalled for. He has a massive attitude problem and I swear, I have tried everything under the sun to help correct his behaviour. Unfortunately, it isn't reinforced at home, in fact their actions undo all of my hard work. I'm friends with his mother and regularly see them interact in other settings. I also took him and his sister for recital pictures because mum was in the hospital and wow what naughty kids they were, even in public. Makes me sad considering how much time and effort I have put into these siblings over the past 5 1/2 years. Yesterday he wanted to open my husbands workout backpack on the bench at the front door. I opened it and showed him all the compartments as its pretty cool and unique, because why not, he wants to see it and no harm done. I'm not a party pooper lol He continued to ask to look the ENTIRE day! I said no over and over. They sit on the bottom step with shoes on ready for their parents at end of day and he asked again. I reminded him we had already looked and that we were not going to touch it again. The very second his mother walked through the door, he started to unzip the bag all the while looking at me like the Horace he is with his smirking face. I said no thank you what did I say, and he just says " I don't care I want to look" at which point I physically removed him from the bag. His mum in a very gentle voice said, when Amy says no, it means no. He knew he wasn't allowed, he doesn't care and there are no consequences so no incentive to behave. I told his mother last week that if it weren't for me closing in a few weeks, I would be terminating because it just isn't okay for him to be so disruptive and hurting the other kids. He has made me hate my job the last few months which annoys me even more that I'm unable to have a positive last time period doing this "normally" very rewarding job. On the rare occasion he isn't here, it's absolute bliss! I imagine your handful makes your day tedious when you feel like all you do is deal with his issues. Can you remind me of his age? I wonder if this is an ongoing issue and as chronic as it sounds, that if he understands enough, he can start to be penalized prior to a fun activity. As in he needs to earn your trust back. He has to sit and watch from a far because you can not trust him to keep his hands to himself. Not time out as such, and he would obviously get a turn, but not just back of the line, more watching from afar and being somewhat left out with him having a clear understanding of why he has to take a back seat in the activity. Depends on his age. My nearly 4 year old has that happen regularly if he has had back to back incidents in recent days. He usually approaches the activity with much more caution towards his fellow play pals and treads carefully because should something occur, he goes right back to watching rather than participating. I just don't even want to have to deal with this with every single thing we do, it's exhausting. Obviously this method may or may not work depending on this child's ability to comprehend why you are doing what you are doing. Additionally, I would be stuck to him like glue. Shadowing him, only allowing him to play right next to me regardless of what he is doing. He would not get to play with any of his friends if he was unable to keep his hands to himself.

For a 2yr old (as OP's child) it is legit, not acceptable but they are 2 and as much as they may know the rule they just don't have the impulse control to always wait their turn etc. But, at 4yrs old it is just sad. If they are raised to not have to follow rules and not behave socially then they are just being set up to fail in school, fail in friendships, fail at work and fail in marriage. We can hope that they just figure it out after a few years of school and seeing how others behave but having been raised to act this way only makes their life harder and the lives of all the people around them harder.

It just doesn't make sense to raise a child that way. I get it, raising kids is HARD. I have a 2yr old, she drives me up the wall. BUT I want her to be a 2yr old for 1yr not the rest of her life so I have to be the adult and set limits, set consequences and follow through. Otherwise it'll go on FOREVER!