Help with my 4 year old?
Answers:
First of all, I think your son is old enough to know the truth, not the whole truth, but a 4 year old version of it. You can say "Daddy is having some problems right now. He is not feeling well and needs some help to get better." Your son may know more than you think he does. Children are very observant. He could be angry because he feels you are not being truthful with him (just a thought).
Empathize with him as much as possible. "I can tell you really miss your daddy. You love him a lot. You must be feeling (angry, frustrated, mad, hurt)." He should learn to express himself rather than lash out.
It sounds like he is trying to find ways to feel powerful at school. He has found the power when he hurts others. Try and find other ways to give him power. Say things like "Look how high you climbed! You used so many colors on your picture! You worked on that for a long time! You did that by yourself!" These types of phrases are great confidence builders.
Invite a playmate over and keep a close eye on them (or you can visit his daycare and do this). When he hurts another child, go to that child and empathize with them. "Wow! That must have hurt! I can tell you didn't like that! You must be really (angry, upset, annoyed, hurt.)" Ignore your son. He will not like feeling left out. You can also help the other child express their feeling to your son. "I don't like when you (hurt me, tell me what to do...). I don't want to play with you if you are going to treat me that way." It is a very powerful message when coming from another child.
You can also work with his teacher. As soon as he hurts another child, have the teacher call you and pick him up right away. Tell him "You can't stay at daycare if you're going to hurt people." Have the rest of the day be very boring. Maybe (if you can) keep him out of daycare the next day and tell him "I'm afraid you will hurt someone so you can't go."
Help him to empathize with the child he has hurt and help find better ways to express himself. "Jack was really upset when you pushed him. It looked like you were (angry, upset, frustrated) with him. What can you do next time instead of hurting him?" It will take some practice and some effort, but he should soon learn to be gentler and respect him playmates.
I know a lot of parents don't like this idea, but consider taking him to a play therapist. They are great with children and really help. Best of luck!
Other Answers:
The best thing is to take him to a counselor and have him/her evaluate the situation.
wat the first one said is correct
Keep him busy in activities he really likes, eg. sports, games, arts/crafts, etc. Make sure you can spend as much time with him as possible. He needs the extra attention (not indulgence) from you, Mom. This is a really tough time for both of you but you know how to express yourself and control your emotions...he doesnt have these tools yet. He's frustrated and doesnt know how to express it. Give him a lot of one on one time and spend time doing things together that he really likes.
Also, does he have other relatives like grandparents nearby? It would really help if he could get out of the house and be around people that really love him. It would give him a chance to do other things and get his mind off of things he cannot understand.
It's good you didnt tell him about his father. He is way to young to understand a thing about it. It would make him more confused than now.
Hang on in there and the key here is love. Give him lots of it. Spend time just talking to him about silly things, read stories, go on little trips to the park, zoo, library, etc.
Also, make sure you appear to be happy around him too. Don't look all depressed and down around him. Don't go into this silent periods. Kids detect everything when something is wrong. He will 100% pick it up and show it in strang and negative ways. Be very positive for his sake.
I wish the best for you and your son. Good Luck!
other than spending a bunch of money you could always set him down and talk to him that is if he is as smart as he sound he will understand, but no matter what it will take time to get him to stop simple disciplinary things every day like when he talks about these things tell him that it is not nice and so on make certain he knows that what he is talking about is not a good thing to do or say.
My oldest son went through some of the same things yours is going through, and it's scary, but keep being positive about his situation.
In my case his symptoms started at age 5, and now at age (almost)10, we've discovered that he is bi-polar with psychotic features and has ADHD. Like in your situation, there were issues with his father (an absent parent, not a drug user), and so when he didn't understand why things were going on it would make him even more frustrated and out of control.
The good news is that it doesn't have to last forever, and if you can get help for him, you won't have to go it on your own.
I'm very lucky in that I have a lot of support, and got immediate attention to his problem. My son is what his school would classify as a success story. After 4 school years in special education, he was placed as of yesterday, in a regular 3rd grade class, and will continue in a 'regular' grade level class from now on. In january, he tested for the GATE program (Gifted And Talented Education), and may even skip a grade because, like your son, he is academically gifted. Don't wait until kindergarten to get a diagnosis for your son, and stand up for yourself.
If you'd like, you can email me with any specific questions, and I'll try to help if I can.
On of my foster children has a father, like this one, and isn't in the picture at all...he thinks he doesn't see his father b/c he is mad at him. We tell him that his daddy is sick and so forth, and he usually calms down. But, he is much the same as your child. He will self mutilate him self / harms others and such. We have had to put him in therapy to work out some of his issues that he has that make him do the things he does and say the things he says and it's helped out tremendously! Good luck, but try re-directing his thinking when he says stuff like that. And as far as day care, if the center itself isn't worried about his behavior then I wouldn't worry too much about it there, just when he is with you.
The best thing to do is get him into counseling. You can also try to get him on a behavior contract. The teachers should break up his day into 1/2 hour time frames. Then they give him a star or sticker on the chart. Have him bring the chart home daily. Then you can reward him for every 10 stickers with a special dinner, trip to the park, computer/tv time, or whatever he likes. Hope this helps.
i haven't read any of the answers, BUT make sure that you make a huge deal out of all of the positive behavior. It helps.
Source(s):
I have 4 kids
My daughter hit that stage at 2 1/2 ( though her birth father isn't a drug addict he did stop being around quite so much ). At that stage she was the opposite of your son, she was aggressive at home, hitting, kicking, biting, scratching, yelling etc at me. Talk about looking like I had been beaten at times ( I bruise easily which runs on my mother's side of the family ). Anyway what I ended up doing is, after taking her to a speech therapist because we also had issues with understanding her speech and learning that she was trying to speak at a 4 yr old level, that and that she too was extremely intelligent. We asked her Doctor about finding some kind of help for her. He recommended a Play Therapist ( they are psychologists specially trained to deal with children ). The Play therapist has many different ways to learn for a child at that age just what it is that's going on that's making them so angry, upset etc. They don't sit/lay your child down on a couch, nope; they have a special room that has all kinds of fun toy's, drawing/painting items as well as dress up stuff for a child to interact with while the counselor sits out of the way observing the child's actions and writing their findings down. Then ( depending on the therapist ) they will take the child to another room that has two big tubs with sand in them. One with Dry sand and one with WET sand. Here is where the child can use the items around them ( animals, dolls, doll house type stuff etc ) and create a Picture showing what is upsetting them the most at that day. Now sometimes you won't get anything from the child, other times you might get a very detailed picture or some kind of action/reaction to an item from the play room. Play therapists are trained to decipher not only the body language of the child but how they interact with the things around them as well as how they choose to "voice" their fear/anxiety/anger etc. through sand pictures.
I'd suggest talking with your pediatrician about a good play therapist in your town then setting up a private meeting between you and the therapist to tell them what has been going on, what other people have said to you about your son's behavior etc. I'll warn you this isn't a QUICK fix for your child, however it does work. The play therapist I took my daughter too, took her from an aggressive child to a happy child, although she never managed to break through my daughter's walls regarding her anxiety and panic attacks that she still suffers. We are actually going to send her to a new Play Therapist starting this summer in the hopes this new lady can do what the other could not. My daughter is 9 and will be 10 in July. She was in Play Therapy from 2/12 till 5 yrs of age, the change was markedly noticeable by not only myself but also my mother and grandparents as well as her kindergarten teacher.
Hope this helps you, as I said I can totally understand your frustration, although my daughter didn't go to the extreme on wanting to harm people or animals, just the kicking,biting,hitting etc of me.
The only other thing to do is when your child gets physically abusive or even verbally abusive towards you is to pull them to you and just HOLD THEM, rocking them gently. I have found that when my daughter would lash out like she did to me if I pulled her into my lap and held on to her ( not letting her go even when she tried to get out of my arms mind you ) and just Rocked her, telling her constantly that I loved her so very much no matter what she did to me. Usually after a few moments she would start to calm down and even cry softly in my arms finally relaxing enough to even hold onto me too. This is a trick I learned about from either a book I read or some show or movie I happened to see ( can't remember what sorry ). All I know is it would work. Never, EVER yell at your child when they are in this mode, most times they honestly don't know why they feel the way they do because they don't truly know how to verbally express their feelings at this young of an age.
Hope this helps you some.
Source(s):
Personal experiance dealing with my 2 1/2 year old daughter whi is now 9 going on 10.
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