I love my little boy so much, and in so many ways he is just lovely, but for a while his behaviour has been getting worse. It will sound like the usual stuff, and I know people will think it's just normal but it seems so much more extreme than other children we see.
He is extremely whiny. Everything makes him whine. I can give some examples but really every day he will have a whine anything between 2 and 50 times. And by whining I mean complete over-reacting and crying and thrashing about to just whiny speaking. Of course some whining is reasonable, he's a 5 year old after all but it's all the time about everything.
We have to tell him to do something/not to do something over and over again and then he still doesn't act. Again, normal in 5 year olds, but again with us extreme.
We have answering back, obnoxious teenage type responses "I know that". Manners have completely disappeared.
Finally he is very ungrateful. We can spend all morning at a Christmas party as we did today. As we come out he his unhappy and whining because we had to miss another party on another day. He has the not unusual behaviour of wanting the biggest piece etc but unless he deems he has the biggest piece this will again bring on whining of oscar-award performance standards.
Ok, so I know there is a range of behaviour that is all normal, and children go through cycles etc. I'm not so much looking for reassurance this is ok. What I would really appreciate is how to help the behaviour improve. We know that much of a child's behaviour is a reflection of their parents' behaviour and have been speaking (DH and me) about our faults, how we act toward each other and our children and looking for ways to improve this, stay calmer etc. Any more advice in this area would be great.
With regards to helping our son develop better behaviour does anyone have any tips? Has anyone developed family rules? What consequences do you use? We try to do natural consequences but this isn't always possible. What about rewards/incentives? We've never explored this so would be grateful for advice.
Anything else?
DH and I are sitting here tonight thoroughly depressed at how things are between us and our son at the moment. Our house is not a happy house. Our son's self-esteem must be very low too at the moment from all the negativity. And DD (2) I dread to think how this is all impacting her.
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Behaviour/development
5 year old boy behaviour wearing us down - ADVICE DESPERATELY NEEDED
18 replies
Gottalottaquestions · 09/12/2013 07:05
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