desperate need of help from my 4yr old.

[jacinta]

Hi there,
I am at a lose on what to do with my 4 yr old monster!!!!! i do love him so dearly to the point that when he isn't acting up we have the most amazing relationship but when things go bad they really go bad. I have recently finished your book Loving our kids on purpose and i have had my eyes completely opened up to what i need to be doing but i am am at a lose.
When my child and i sit down and have our chair time to discuss an issue sometimes he is not willing to discuss it, so i say to him that i will we back in a couple of minutes to talk about it again and see if he is more willing to talk about it. i walk away and it all goes to pieces from there. I come back and he has destroyed his room pulling all his books out, pulling the bookcase down and throwing toys around the room and putting holes in the door from doing so. he also has put holes in the wall and this has all happened in the last 2 days!!!! 
By this stage i am besides myself mad and angry. i chose to swallow all this and do the whole love thing with the removal of all books and toys for a whole week but it still goes on with more bad things. What am i doing wrong? Its almost like hes a completely different child. i have never been so reduced to tears and anguish over what he's doing??
What should i do? 

[MommyX3]

Hello Jacinta,   I feel for you girl.  I have a 4 year old and a 3 year old.   Both have had issues with meltdowns.  Especially our 3 year old.   For example, bedtime was brutal.  She would cop major attitude and fight us every step of the way.  Initially we only tried to give her more choices... but she would choice something but not follow through with her choice. As a result, we would keep reminding her of her choice and would try to remain calm and patient but she would wear us down to the point of complete frustration.   So then I realized she was HASSLING mommy as soon as she didn't follow through with her choice.  But instead of having her take responsibility for hassling me, I let her continue to hassle me till I was completely frustrated... I felt manipulated and controlled by her meltdowns.  So my husband and I decided to take a more proactive approach, where as soon as a hint of hassling begins to happen we say,  "Oh no (sympathetically and calmly), are you hassling mommy?"  If they don't respond, I say "You are hassling Mommy. Do you really want to hassle me?"   If they don't respond well or at all, then I say "Oh no (sympathetically and calmly),  you have to have hassle time now cause you chose to hassle mommy."  And I take them to their room or to a NO fun chair depending on the situation.   My four year old had a harder time with this concept of hassle time at first-  she freaked out and didn't understand why she was being put in her room.  but I still let her be in there for a little bit until I heard her calm down...  then I went in again saying "oh no, you had to have hassle time cause you chose to hassle mommy."  Then she said, sorry for hassling you.  Now I rarely have to take the 4 year old to her room cause as soon as I say "Oh no, are you hasling mommy? she stops and says sorry.   And now back to my 3 year old,  the first night we used the hassle time concept on her worked great with lots less crying and meltdown.  ever since we held her responsible for hassling.  she has been much better.   Some nights she doesn't even fuss at all.   
     

[MommyX3]

Now specifically with your son making a mess of his room.  What I would do is let him make the mess of course but after he is calmed down, go in and reitterate why he had to have hassle time or room time with sympathy.   (I find with my kids respond a lot better when I am sympathetic about their consequences.)  Then I would hold him responsible for his mess by saying, "Oh no,  oh my, you made a mess of your room. now you have to clean your mess before you can leave your room."  I have had this happen before, usually my 4 year old feels overwhelmed by the mess she has made and begins to have another meltdown... that is when I ask her if she would like some ideas on how to clean up her mess.  Of course she says YES.   That is when I encourage her to focus on one thing at a time, by saying maybe you can pick up your books first then make your bed.  Sometimes she doesn't like the idea and comes up with her own ideas.   Depending on amount of mess I stay with her to help direct her other times I can leave her there to finish it herself.   Now I can even leave the door open and she still stays in there until she is done. I hope this all helps.   The hardest thing for me was to recognize when I was being hassled cause I was so used to them doing so until my blood boiled.  I feel that they have grown to respect me more through this process as I learn to respect myself.   I pray for God to strengthen you and encourage you right now in your relationship with your son:)
   

[jacinta]

Thank you for your reply it sounds like you also had a really tuff time too.
Well that night we had the issue we ended up with holes in the wall, bookcase and the door. For some reason he gets so violent but i dont understand why.
Tonight we have had some more episodes and it doesn't seem to matter if i give him choices or not cause he doesn't listen and he refuses to choose. i have given discipline due to his lake of choice but it just doesn't seem to hurt him enough, cause he doesn't seem to care. and if i send him to his room he gets violent.  He has come out with this heavy as attitude and smart allic remarks and i don't know where he's learning it from. but i think it might be kinder cause that's the only place he goes too.
I have taken away all his toys all his books and his outside play stuff is in the shed. Tonight he went and did the very same thing that he was disciplined for last week but i have run out of things to take away. Unfortunately i have left him with a choice and he must give me an answer by the morning. He gets to choose whether we sell his bike to repay for the damage he has caused or we give his toys to the op shop (opportunity shop). This is very hard for me because he loves to go for rides on his bike and we are the one who brought all his toys. But i am at wits end at what to do....   It feels as if everything i take off him he's ok with it!!!!

Why is it that a 4yr old can be so condescending and bring an adult to tears......

I will keep trying but if anyone has any suggestions please feel free to talk to me!!!!
Thanks heaps for your advice

Jacinta

[MommyX3]

What is happening before he gets violent?  Can you pin point a trigger?  Sometimes my 4 year old gets really angry and mad when she doesn't feel heard.   Have you tried to ask what he is feeling before he goes in his room? We have found that when my daughter starts getting snippy, we ask her what are you feeling? Usually she says "BAD".  Then we ask her why and get to the root of the issue rather than deal with the symptoms.  It sounds to me that your little guy is hurting.  I know when I am hurting my first intial response is anger, then when I calm down I actually start to feel the hurt.  Now with my daughter, when she feels bad its usually because we started to communicate poorly to her and she feels frightened, unloved, and rejected.  According to Danny, people start to get violent when they feel controlled, it human instinct. I think your son my feel threatened in some way.  I know there are many times my kids feel threatened when they don't feel freedom.  It is never my heart to want to control them ( or at least most of the time) but I still do it without even realizing it, it is a very hard habit to break.  I may be offering a million choices but if I have any hint of trying to control them, they smell it and don't respond well.  Do you feel in  your efforts of getting him to stop being violent, is it out of fear or out of love?   Sometimes I do react in fear towards my childrens behavior but it usually ends up more messy and much needed apologies on both sides.  But when I respond in love when the fail, they feel loved and want to change.   I hope this helps.   I feel like God wants you to know that He sees your heart and delights in you!!!!  And even when you fail He still loves you and LIKES you.  I hope you find the answers you need

[jacinta]

Hey there again... I have tried thinking about what triggers this kind of behaviour and i think it just gets to a point where he just gets so unbeleivable tired. He's recently started Kinder and at nite times he tends to go to bed but not to sleep. It's not the case where he's got toys to play with its the fact that he lays in bed and talks away and then falls asleep at about 10 or 11pm. I think it gets to much for him and this is the behaviour he displays.
When it comes to asking why and getting him to answer why he's doing what he's doing he just tends to either say sorry or i don't know. He thinks that sorry solves everything or its just what we want to hear.

I like what you have said about the reason he might get violent is due to him feeling controlled, i suppose you maybe right about not relising that im doing it but when i sit back and look at it maybe i am.
So today i tried to give him complete control and man was i scard he would choose something really bad but he didn't and he came around...
He kept telling me how he hates his room and doesn't wanna live here anymore. this is after the real issue. But i decided to tell him ok you can go live elsewhere if you want but know that mummy will really miss him and how much i love him. After a while of him not knowing what he wanted to do he finally agreed that he did wanna live with us and that he would go sit in his room till dinner time. (that was the condition of him living with us). I was quite weird to give him a real world choice and letting him choose.  I just stood there hanging out the washing saying things to him out of a sympathetic heart and him hearing that i will really miss him. It was great to see him come to the conclusion that he actually really wants to live here.
I think you were right about sometimes trying to still control him without relising it. Wow abit of a revelation.
If you could still pray cause i still have so many issues with him.
Todays real issue was that he didn't want to leave his friends place and in that he was rude to me the friends mum and hitting me. i came up against a brick wall with him not wanting to apologise. even with telling him that i would leave him behind if he didn't apologise. Came to the point where i put him in the car and told him about the consequences he was getting when we got home.
I know i still have a long way to go but im finding this all really hard still and getting my husband to also did it right. But pls Pray for us and that God would guide me in everything i do.

Kindest Regards
Jacinta

[MommyX3]

Hello my dear friend, Jacinta.  Thanks for your response.  I am glad I helped you some. I really appreciate your honesty.   I know this loving on purpose is not easy to grasp and especially put in reality.  Before I heard this teaching, I felt I had to control my kids and the only way to do that was spanking mainly out of frustration.  This was hurting my kids hearts.  Then I started to try to love my kids on purpose, and I went extreme the other way by letting them do whatever they wanted with NO consequences and let them completely walk all over me.  This of course was hurting my heart.  I realized too that initially I would try to use the tools and principles to still control my kids.  I just couldn’t handle them failing.  Then God showed me that it is because I couldn’t handle myself failing.  If I failed, I felt I was a failure.   I expected perfection from myself so all I could do was expect the same from my kids- perfection.  God used this material to actually bring deeper healing to me.  He showed me that what I do is NOT who I am.   This was hard for me to grasp since all my life my acceptance and love was dependant on how well I performed.  Actually God really changed my mindset with the book by Joyce Meyers called “Approval Addiction”.  But now that I am learning how much God loves in spite of my mistakes and sin, I can truly love my children.  Before all I could see was what they were doing, but now I can see their hearts.  Its amazing.  Now after two years of many mistakes and healing, I am growing in giving consequences out of love for them and love for myself.   And as for the husband goes, it was hard for me at the beginning because I felt he was doing the teaching all wrong-  again I focused a lot on what he was doing and not his heart behind it.  I actually learned that I have expected perfection out of him too.  That expectation was actually destroying our marriage but praise God we are all finding freedom and real love now.    I just wanted to encourage you that will not be perfect in this and to just ask God to reveal the why you do and respond the way you do.  He is ready to pour on you all his love and affection so you can do the same to your own children.   God bless again

[jacinta]

Thankyou so much for your help and your honestly and your support through these really hard times. i have really appreciated it.
I think sometimes deep in side all of us we all have that thing of trying to do everything perfect with out failing and we do put that in our kids without even realizing.  I keep trying to remind myself that 'just remember the heart connection' when im about to lose it with them.  It helps me to try to remember to focus on the real issue at hand and not so much the behavior but also following up with consequences for the behavior.
I had someone speak to me regarding maybe try to change there diet for awhile by taking them off wheat and see how he reacts to it. i might try it out cause i have heard that when it get built up in their systems it can cause behavioral issues. im still not sure about it but i think im willing to give it a try. My little man Josiah has such a beautiful loving heart, that is so caring and kind but when he get angry or up set it comes out with a lot of frustration and anger.
Once again thank you for all your support and prayers.
- Jacinta

[lmjulian]

That sounds a lot like my 5yo DD.  I am trying to apply the principles with my DDs but it is very hard.  I just read Loving Our Kids on Purpose, I think I need to read it again.   So the problem with my 5yo is that when she has to go to the time-out chair she screams and storms off.  Sometimes she will actually go sit in the time-out chair but other times she storms upstairs and goes to the playroom to play.  I don't know what to do when she does either of these things.  I have 3 girls are the noise in my house is unbearable sometimes.  Between my 6yo aggravating the 5yo and her screaming and then the 2.5yo screaming, I can't stand it.  Also I have to tell them to do things several times before they will do it.  Sorry if I'm rambling.......
Lynn

[MommyX3]

Hi Imjulian,  Just recently I came upon another great resource for raising our kids on purpose.  Its called Love and Logic.  It gives a lot more practicals and tools to actually implement Loving on purpose.  That is what I struggled with most too even still, to go from knowing the principles to actually walking it out.  Check out Love and Logic.com.  I hope it helps you.  I would've reccomended it before but I just discovered it this past week.   God bless:)