Advice for high energy, egoistic kid

Hi All

I have been going through this forum lot many times since several months hoping to find a solution to my problems with my 4 yr old DS. I am thankful to several tips i have got from many mothers here on parenting esp shanvy!

However, like every kid, my kid is also a different one and has some specific plus and minuses. He is in Jr.Kg and is quite intelligent. He likes to know lot of stuff and is very inquistive in nature. He likes to talk to people and make friends and is quite outgoing. We have encouraged all his plus points and never fail to answer any question he has in any subject be it science, general knowledge, cooking, any random questions that he asks. I was working till he was 4 yrs old and he was taken care by my parents. Now i had another kid 7 mths back and am at home since then.

The problems with him are , he is quite egoistic, gets angry easily and is aggressive. Also, he has a high energy level which makes him prone to do lot of mischief. This mischief gets him scolding from us which hurts his ego and he gets into his angry mode. When angry, his behaviour will start worsening and he will do some more things to make us angry e.g. doing things which we have forbidden him to etc. So, whenever he does mischief, nowadays we try to control our anger and explain to him in the gentlest of language. However that does little good and he is back to his mischief in some time again due to his high energy. Also, his aggressive nature causes him to push/beat other children. If they tease him/make fun of him, he gets angry and tries to get physical or his behaviour worsens. His aggressiveness got highlighted when we was around 3.5 yrs. We thought that having a sibling will help him learn how to play with other kids and i had another kid(son). He loves his little bro but again sometimes gets aggressive with him. Also some tinges of jealousy can be seen sometimes. That we are anyways handling by giving him more attention and praising him whenever he does something minutely good also. His teacher in school say he behaves strangely at times i.e. he is unpredictable. he beats other children with/without reason in class. This has made me very worried about him. At home, we keep a positive parenting approach i..e we tell him very gently if he does anything wrong to avoid hurting his ego but outside home, everyone will not behave like that and this causes him to misbehave.

What can be done in this case. I have been reading parenting books/articles over Internet/forums in Indusladies hoping to find some approach which will click but have not been able to get an optimal one. Also, he troubles a lot for sleeping (he cannot sleep wihtout help) and doing h/w. However these are minor things and major thing i am worried about are his temper, aggressiveness and ego. I am considering getting him homoepathy treatment to correct these things but not sure if it will help/needs to be done.

Please advise me if these are normal in a 4-5 yr old kid or whether i should go the treatment way. Also, any parenting tip/approach would help me out.

Thanks in advance,
aquarian80

 

Thanks Teacher for your quick response.

Yes, he is quite flexible to changes in his environment. Like after my younger DS was born, my elder one had to make some compromises like mummy will be feeding baby first and then come to give him lunch, make younger one sleep first and if baby starts crying, mummy has to rush. He does not complain about any of these. Also, when younger DS is sleeping, elder one has to maintain very less noise and he listens. He is also quite understanding, if we give him a logical reason for anything that we ask him to do, and he gets convinced, he will stick to it and never repeat it again. However, we cannot just order him "Dont do this" or "Do that". If our statement is accompanied by a convincing reason, he will follow it.

I will surely do this and i have been doing this also for some time although not in a systematic way like this. I will give one incident which happened yesterday.
a) what happens just prior to the behavior
DS's hands were dirty and he went and wiped them on this dad's shirt. This made DH angry and he scolded him.
b)exact behavior
This made DS angry and he raised his tone and got his frown on this face. And sat at one place with that frown. When i asked him why he did this, he shouted "because my hands were dirty".
c)what is the consequence of his behavior...(what is your reaction, what is the others' reaction, does he get or avoid something, etc)
I explained to him in gentle but firm tone that this is very wrong behaviour to wipe your dirty hands on someone else's dress and asked him not to repeat it again. Also not to shout like this. He said he wont.(but it might happen again).

Like i said before, when we give him a logical reason, he understands perfectly. But his anger or hurt ego needs to be healed first. For that i have to cuddle him or say he is a good boy and he should not be doing bad things etc etc. Then it gets healed and he gets into a listening mode and tries to understand.

Not always physical aggression, but sometimes other things also. Like for instance 2 weeks back teacher showed me the book of his neighbour in class. DS had scribbled on it just because the neighbour finished his work before DS. This made him angry and he did this scribbling.

He has thumb sucking habit while sleeping but not at other times(as i said he has trouble falling asleep on his own). When he goes into his high energy state, if we scream/shout at him, it makes him worse. But if we take him to one side and talk to him gently or divert his attention to something or start discussing something with him, it helps him wind down and becomes calm and his mind starts thinking about whatever we are discussing with him.

I used to think he is hyperactive, but no, if we make him play computer games or do craft(he likes doing craft) or watch tv he can sit for long periods focussed on it. Also, if i read him stories he can sit focussed and he is quite calm during that period. So, whenever i need to wind him down, i read out stories to him and this calms him down. But this is not always feasible because i am not free at all times and he needs to learn to wind down himself when he is outside.

His teacher tells that he gets so hyper/happy on seeing his friends in school that he gets into the high energy state and is not able to express his happiness and behaves like this. Friend circle wise he has a good number of friends and is quite friendly/playful with them. He likes playing with friends very much. Just to add, he missed out playing with friends his age when he was less than 4 yrs because he used to stay at his grandparents place and there are no friends his age there. Now only since last one yr he has started interacting with people his age in the building. He is not physically aggressive at all times, but the aggression comes out in form of shouting etc. And he likes it if we tell him he is a good boy and tries to behave like one for some time before he gets into his angry/mischief mode again

Please let me know if you have any more questions. Thanks a ton for your help.

 

Also to add, we have been observing such things in him only since last 1.5 yrs. before that he was a very well behaved child no tantrums anything. even now he does not have any tantrums. we can go to a toy store and return wihtout buying anything and he will not complain. He likes eating his food vegetables(touchwood). He is otherwise normal in every other manner.

 

Thanks a lot Teacher. I will try out your suggestion.

 

Thought will add one more point. He knows what he has to do when his hands are dirty and he has followed that before many times. But yesterday what he did was totally unpredictable and was not expected out of him. I dont know if this will be of any significance but thought will add.

 

Thanks Teacher, that is what i am also trying to. To diagnose what is the exact problem and come up with the solution whether external intervention or environment changes. Just to add another instance, he is very much expressive and goes and talks to people all of a sudden. Yesterday when i was bringing him from school, while i was taking out the vehicle from the parking out, he walked over to one guy standing nearby and told him " See this is my school and here the teachers themselves make mistakes". Actually yesterday what happened was DS pointed out a printing mistake in his book to the teacher and teacher praised him for that. He was really excited with that and was going around telling everyone teacher does not know to teach!! I later made him understand never to talk to unknown people like that and never talk such things about his teacher.

I am just narrating this incident to check if this qualifies for impulsive behaviour? Sorry wiht so much overload of details but i am just going nuts trying to figure out what might help DS Really appreciate your support in this!