Mommyof3

I am a married 26 year old married mom of 3 wonderful kids; Crysinia age 7 (will be 8 in a month), Joe-Joe age 3, and our newest addition, Aryanna bord 8/21/07.
So the biggest issues we are having right now are with my 3 year old son. He has been potty trained for 2 years now, but since we brought the baby home he has started going to the bathroom anywhere he pleases. He will actually pull his underwear down and pee or poo right in the middle of the kitchen. Yesterday, he was sitting on my bed talking to me, covered up with a little blanket and peed on my bed. This is getting completly out of control, not to mention SICK!! We have tried everything from time outs, family talks, one on one discussions, and we have even taken the other route and tried to pay very little attention to it when he does it and then give huge praise when he uses the toilet like a big boy, just like we did when he was potty training.
On top of all this he has started to be EXTREMLY defiant!! He will spit on me, slap me in the face, scream at me in the middle of the store, and when you tell him to do something he will simply not do it. When you ask him why he didnt listen he will say cause I didnt want to.
We do not spank, and will not consider it at all, but other then that I am completly open to suggestions!!
Thank you so very much for your help!!

sandmike123

Oh wow.... I really don't have any words of advice but it is baby jealousy at its finest thats for sure. I wish you the best of luck.....

SageMother

This is no time to show gentle concern. You need to get this child to a doctor. This seems to be an abnormal reaction to the new child and the hatred isn't going away on its own! Imagine what he will be like at the age of 6 if you don't take care of this right now!

Good luck, keep us posted!

Mommyof3

Thank you for your response SageMother. I would just like to point out though that YES, he is jealous as he is not the baby anymore. But this is not by any means a medical condition or hatred. He absolutly loves his baby sister, he is a huge help with her. He even sings to her a couple times a day, is always giving kisses and telling her "I am your big brother and I love you very much sister."
So while there is for sure jealousy with him no longer being the baby in the home, he really loves his sister and there is not any hatred :-)
Thanks again for the posts, I look forward to getting some more soon :-)

evilbrent

Uh medical? How could this possible be medical? It's certainly EXTREME, but please don't start bringing up the idea of medicating a 3 yr for age appropriate behaviour. Dragons lie that way. Please ignore SageMother completely. This is the very worst time to become hard with your child, or to attempt to increase the amount of control you exert. This 4 year old will turn into a perfectly happy 6 year old.

I've got a lot of sympathy for your situation Mo3. A la Will Smith in The Pursuit Of Happyness, I sometimes give stages of my life chapter-headings, and I would call this stage of my life "Adventures in poo". I've got a 4 yr old and a 2 yr old and I can firmly say that, after 6 cumulative years I Am Not Ok With Poo.

I feel for you.

My advice is always to trust your child. Listen to him. There's a very strong reason he's acting like this - it's clearly a regression, and the way I read it he's actually sometimes doing it deliberately (?). The most obvious culprit isn't hatred of the newborn (that's being a bit 1-dimensional) but fear that his relationship with you has changed - fear that his needs might not be met.

I think the answer is to just spend time with him - make it clear that your relationship with him is unfaltering. Never once put his needs second to the baby's (impossible, I know), at least until he's started to feel a bit more secure.

I'm glad that you don't spank him, but be aware that praise has its own pitfalls - he may have come to rely on your good side to be his emotional ballast, constant praise reduces a child's ability to internalise their own controls. Every time you tell a kid "I'm proud of you" you've just lost something - that's a decision that the kid should be making themselves. If you have a habit of using excessive praise and attention then you might unwittingly, by concentrating on the baby, be withdrawing his source of never ending praise (I'm being extreme here).

I would suggest that you don't use the phrase "Good boy!" or "I'm proud of you." When he does his poo in the toilet. Instead focus on what HE'S feeling about HIMSELF. Instead say something like "Wow, you did poo in the toilet! That's the right thing to do! I bet you feel good about yourself!"

I'm a big fan of talking about MY feelings with my kids, and encouraging them to do the same. So I think it's also valid to, instead of praise, use thanks. Say "Thankyou for doing your poo in the toilet. I feel glad." It seems plausible that your son is trying to tell you something that he lacks the language to say. I think that the most important thing you can hear a toddler say is "I'm cross."

A sticker chart may be in order but I'm not a fan.

Try not to equate going to the toilet with being a Big Boy. He clearly doesn't want to be a Big Boy. When you praise him as a big boy you make it clear that, in the absence of that praise, he is in fact not a big boy, and not quite up to your standard. Should he one day finally become a big boy, you will finally love him: that's not a good message.

fallon

I think evilbrent is right about a lot of what she said here. Although I must say I would alert his doc to the problem, not because I think it's something that requires med, not at all I just think regression like this warrants letting his doc know mainly for his/her advice and support. Everything else said above is exactly what I would have said but I am a big fan of sticker charts and would probably use one here. When my son was born 5 months ago my daughter who is 4 started regressing mildly by reverting back to whining as her main form of communication. I put up a modified version of a sticker chart and the problem ended in about 2 weeks but this kind of thing doesn't work for every child. We've used it for a lot of reasons with my dd but this may not work at all with ds so it's kind of a trial and error kind of thing. After the baby we also made a genuine effort to take her out by herself at least once a week just so there was still that one on one time for her. Good luck to you, I hope it all works out

evilbrent

Why would a doctor necessarily have any good parenting advice? Is this an American thing? Go visit a doctor every time you get a cough, itch or scratch? I'm not being rude: is it? We only go to doctors in Australia for medical issues - maybe it's different over there.

Yeah, sticker charts.

It's a bit manipulative... but done correctly it can really help a kid develop a sense of achievement.

Just be careful that getting the sticker itself isn't the reward - the reward ought to be the feeling of accomplishment of seeing an entire week's worth of stickers "I feel good about myself because I have a sticker on each day. I tried really hard and I did it."

...OUGHT to be...

(Nobody will mind if it gets the job done. Your sanity is important too. We've certainly used sticker charts, with limited success. I'm just glad that, after making 3.5yr old jump through hoops to get a sticker, he hasn't minded that we just hand one over to 1.5yr old because she asks for one too.)

fallon

I wouldn't say the doc has any good parenting advice to offer, in the end it's the parents that know what's best for the child. I just feel that if there is a backslide in development at this age the doc should be made aware so that everyone involved in the child's health and well being are on the same page. I'm not at all saying rush him in to the office today, I'm saying if the behavior keeps up and and you happen to be in the office for a check up tell your doc what's going on

FooserX

I'd be pretty basic in my dealings.

If he does something bad, take away a privlige. Easy. No dessert, no toys, no games, no tv, etc. Once the kid realizes that his own actions have consequences, he'll be more likely to mind you. Definitely play up this theory by eating really tasty new desserts in front of him once he's lost his. Or watch some cool cartoons or something when he can't...so he knows that he's missing out.

Be consistent, and stay calm. If you give in an inch, it resets the whole plan. :-)

evilbrent

oh wow.

eating the favorite food in front of the kid then denying the oral gratification was one of the parenting catastrophes they used in germany when they were raising the children who turned into the Third Reich. Stop doing that!! What kind of message are you sending to to your kid!

I agree with consequences, but not those that are enforced with spite like that.

I agree with you on one thing: you, fooserz, are pretty basic in your dealings with your kid. Wow.