2 year olds behaviour *warning, a long post*
I look after a 2 year old who is 80% of the time the sweetest most gentle and polite child you will ever meet. The other 20% of the time he is very very challenging.
With mum he is 90% challenging 10% asleep (her words)
In a split second with absolutely no warning he will completely flip and start screaming, shouting, hitting, throwing things etc.
These tantrums will last anywhere up to 2 hours!
On wednesday he hit me so I gave him a time out for it. I sat him in the hall, I then sat on the floor in the playroom with the other children. He ran back in the room and hit me across the back of the head with a toy. I put him back in the hall he then got back up hit me across the face so back he went. He then got up and ran at one of the other children sending them flying. I ended up strapping him into the pushchair in the kitchen just to keep the other children safe.
This is the worst he has got. Normally he will hit, do his time out, say sorry and that'll be the end of it.
About once a week he will have a complete meltdown and will roll around on the floor screaming for hours at a time. When he does this I put him somewhere safe and ignore it til he's finished.
I've had his mum in tears this morning because of his behaviour. At home he is a complete nightmare for her. He doesn't listen to a word she says. Nothing is working to change his behaviour. We both do exactly the same with the way we deal with the unwanted behaviour. I believe she is really consistent with him but it's not working.
We've tried reward charts, ignoring the behaviour, time out (currently doing this one) and all sorts of other approaches but if anything the bwhaviour is gettimg worse.
Mum is really struggling with it and last night ended up having to get 1 of her friends to come over and deal with him while she went for a walk round the block. She's a single mum, working full time with 2 kids struggling to make ends meet. I really feel for her but don't know what else to suggest.
Anyone got any ideas on what else to try?