My son is 7 and in 1st grade. His father and I are not together, however, I have married and have two younger children. When my son is with me, he acts angry and miserable most of the time, only listens a fraction of the time and nothing seems to work. We give him everything we can, I try to spend time with him and offer rewards for good behavior, but rarely is there good behavior. He had some problems at school with listening and showing the teacher respect, but is getting better. At times, he acts like he is so unhappy. He tells me that I am mean to him, that he doesn't love me and doesn't want to stay with me, only with his dad, but I only discipline him in normal ways, no tv, video games, chores, etc. (no spanking). He acts as though he can do whatever he wants and when I tell him that he can't, he just gets so mean and treats me and his two younger sisters badly. Sometimes, for no reason, he acts this way, as soon as I pick him up from school, he is already in a depressed mood when he sees I'm there. Is this normal? Just a phase? Any advice?
Hello
My daughter was quite similar, although her dad and i are married, she is an only child.
she was always moody(still can be) and, even now tells me and her dad she hates us and wants to live somewhere else, she can be very hurtful, etc.
It all sounds so simple but we really think it is attention seeking, we dedicate each weekend to her and ask her what she would like to do, etc, she would be lovely all the time we were out but as soon as we got home she would start, simply because we would come home and think well she's had HER time so we can do what we need to do now, whether it be the washing up or the ironing or whatever but without realising she would be pushed to one side we never really involved her in the simplest things as we felt she had had her time. She loves going to her grandparents, we thought because she was spoilt there but it was just simply that she wasn't left to watch the t.v by herself or given an outing doing what she wanted to do and then, on return, being almost ignored. I understand you can't always be with them but we were almost boxing her off, almost like she was a chore. I'll always remember running down the road with her one day and she turned round and said to me "This is so much fun, you are fun mummy", something as simple as running down the road with her and not a big expensive outing. I feel like the worst mum in the world but we were only doing what we thought was best, to make up for us both working, although she sees lots of both of us as we both work locally, and I fit my work around her.I've spoken to Drs, etc myself, so I know how you feel. My daughter is ver,very aware of peoples thoughts and feelings and nothing passes her by so we knew exactly how we felt and it was a vicious circle we didn't look forward to taking her out as we knew what would happen when we got home and she did exactly that as she knew the situation was very tense and the time we spent with her we just wanted to get over and done with.
When she tells us she hates us we just tell her we love her good or bad as she wants us to argue with her, any attention is better than no attention!!!
She's quite shy and finds socialising quite stressful but we would try to get her to go just to have some time to ourselves but we dealt with it all the wrong way and she picked up on us wanting to"get rid of her"
and therefore played up, saying things like you don't love me, etc, etc.
This may not be your situation at all, but hopefully it will help
Thank you for the advice, my son has actually gotten better lately and we are trying the best we can to pay as much attention to him as we can considering the other children, too. Thanks a lot.
