Professional Help

I continued with the playgroups hoping that Armanno would improve as he got used to his dad being away, but his behaviors only worsened. Armanno kept getting in trouble at playgroups and became more aggressive towards Emilio hitting, pinching, pulling his hair and biting seemed to become the norm. Even his time outs became aggressive, every time he hurt the baby he would go in a time out. I reserved the bottom step on our stairs for Armanno and the paint wore quickly, you can imagine how many time-outs he was getting during this period. It was obvious he didn't like the consequence, he would kick he would scream, he even started biting himself, pinching himself, throwing stuff, but yet the behavior wasn't changing! What else could I do? I was being consistent with the time-outs, I was doing them properly after all I watched supernanny do them in over 15 different episodes, it worked for the other parents!

I needed the supernanny but the closest I could get was the public health nurse! I was willing to accept any help at this point, I was over my head with no techniques.

I called my local public health and said I need help with my 2yr old, his behaviors are out of control and I don't know how to deal. The public health nurse was great she came to our house and brought me lots of information on typical terrible 2 behaviors which was great a lot did apply to him, like not listening! I could talk to Armanno until I was blue in the face, he only responded on his terms. I could ask him to pick something up 20 times in different tones and volumes and got nothing! As you can imagine frustration was at an all time high and physically intervening was the only thing that worked. For this she told me about the "1, 2, 3 magic", 1 Armanno I'm asking you to come here, 2 if you don't come here I'm coming over taking you by the hand and bringing you here, 3 I'm off my but and coming for you! "Magic"you can say that again, he responded to it! I only had to get to 2 I was amazed, it became my new best friend! The only drawback was I was using it constantly and that is a lot to say in one breathe to get him responding to the simplest of requests!

To deal with keeping hands off little bro she suggested putting Emilio in a backpack for 3 days or so and keep him on me at all times until Armanno gets used to not being able to put his hands on him! My first question was, seriously? My second was, how is that going to teach Armanno to interact with his brother properly? And my third question was, is she crazy? It didn't happen, I didn't see how it could work for Armanno or for me.

 As for the problem with his aggressive time-outs this could be met with switching to time-ins, where you sat with them and talked about the behaviors, made sense until I tried it. I was on the receiving end of his aggressive behaviors during time-ins because they were still happening he was now kicking, punching, pinching, and biting me. Her last suggestion which proved to be the best, was to call Valley Child Development and do a self referral to get help and look into getting a developmental assessment.

 There was one thing she kept saying to me which deeply affected my heart and it was "Armanno is dealing with some serious issues right now and you need to get help for him." This saddened me, he was 2yrs old he should be filled with joy, fun, and silliness, don't get me wrong Armanno did engage in these things but 80% of his day was discipline! The public health nurse put a much more serious tone on his behaviors opposed to the "terrible 2's" and "he's just a boy" label I was getting from everyone else. I now knew it was time to stop blaming his age and seek professional help!