OMG, my 3 year old is driving me crazy!

[melanie83103]

Ok, don't get me wrong, I LOVE my little guy with all my heart. And he has such a wonderful loving personality - he's so affectionate and tells me he loves me all the time. BUT - oh my gosh, he has been CRAZY for the past week or so! He'll just run around the house like a tasmanian devel, laughing and finding things to get into. And I got a report from his teacher - seems he's doing the same thing there.

Basically, what he'll do is anything he knows he's not supposed to do. If we're leaving the house, he'll take off his clothes and refuse to get dressed. He'll put things in his potty chair (gross). He runs from thing to thing, doing anything and everything he's not supposed to do. And the thing is, we don't have a lot of rules in our house. We are VERY laid back when it comes to discipline.

Is this what 3 year old boys do??? Tell me this is a phase. A SHORT phase. I feel like I'm telling him NO every 2 seconds! I yelled at him yesterday and felt horrible about it afterward. He, however, wasnt phased. I can't think of anything that changed when the behavior started..... any input??

Melanie

[hipumpkins]

3 year old boys don't get to corner the market on crazy behavior. I just want to say that 3 was the hardest age for us...3 1/2 was awesome. Can you close your eyes and pray for 6 mos ? good luck and take it very slowly that is what we had to do...slow and calm in the midst of the turmoil.

[melanie83103]

Thanks for the reply! It's good to know that my son is not the only one. Last night my DH and I were just looking at each other in awe of Owen's behavior! As Owen grabbed all his utensils off his dinner plate and put them in his potty, DH looks at me and was like "um, do you think other kids do this?"

Melanie

[ShanaT]

Sounds like our house

I couldn't help but smile at this post. It describes my 3 yr old perfectly, except that he hasn't put too much in the potty. Definitely the Tasmanian devil and the getting into stuff. Everyone warned me about the terrible 2s, which turned out to be not such a big deal, but I assumed that meant that things got easier from there.
I'm with you hoping this phase will pass soon, too.
On the other hand, I love every minute of his curiousity and rapidly growing understanding of how things work. I just need to remind myself, "if I'm going to laugh about this later, laugh now."

[mamma.mia]

Well, maybe it is worse with boys but my daughter started acting like that at around 3 too. Nothing seemed to work but it eventually passed. (Sort of)

She can still drive you crazy but it's not intentional destruction. Now, it's asking about 1000 questions every single day and not being about to sit still.

[lissabob]

Ahh.. as I'm typing my dd is screaming like a banshee because I refused to nurse her until she A- went pp in the potty, or b- let me put a pullup on her since it's been about 5 hrs since she pee'd and I didn't want an accident during her nap. Since she is being SUCH a handful this afternoon I also told her we can't go to her friend's house as planned because mama's head just hurts too much (and I'm freaking exhausted just listening to her rage). *sigh* I feel you...