Suddenly my 3.5 yr old thinks it’s hilarious to bolt when we are out in public. At a store, the library, even the doctor’s office yesterday, he takes off and hides. I’m 37 weeks pregnant and can’t chase him down very well right now. He laughs and doesn’t seem affected when I scold him. It is absolutely terrifying, I nearly have a heart attack every time, my biggest fear is him getting lost or abducted, and when I lose sight of him in public, I panic. This is not just a nuisance behavior that I can ignore until it goes away, this is a safety issue. I can’t believe when I yell his name and tell him to stop in an authoritative big momma voice he just ignores me. I have never spanked him and generally don’t believe in it, but I feel like I have to do something big to convince him this is not a game and he can’t do this. Like spanking plus no movies or treats for the rest of the day. I need to get tough and really start enforcing serious consequences, for his own good, which is really hard for me to do. Complicating this is that he is in the middle of a course of terrible tasting antibiotics right now and the only way to get him to drink it is mixed into chocolate milk. So he is getting chocolate milk twice a day regardless of how he behaves at the moment. I work full time and am divorced (remarried), so I have a lot of mommy guilt and don’t get to spend as much time with him as I’d like and I just want our time together to be wonderful and special but I feel like for his own good I need to rain down hell upon him the next time he does this. What do you think Bees?
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How about putting him in a stroller? Tell him if he cant stand by you then he will have to be strapped in the stroller!
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I used to teach threes and for behavior like this I would recommend to parents that they discuss expectations before going out and then follow through. I usually think cutting the errand short is best, even though this is not always feasible and often sucks for you. So you'd say, "I want to talk to you about something before we go. You have been running away a lot... [get kid's acknowledgement that this is true]. Running away isn't safe [explain why]. I won't let you run away from me when we are out. If you run away, we will go home immediately." Talking about it before and after the fact can be helpful, when you're home/calm. Another thing to do, if your son is reasonably verbal, is to ask him at a time when you're home/relaxing to brainstorm about ways that would help him not do this. He *might* be able to talk about what makes him want to do it and might have ideas about things he could do instead. Good luck--sounds soooo annoying/scary!
I wouldn't worry about taking away the chocolate milk. I think he would perceive that is pretty random and you just being mean--I think he'd have a hard time at that age connecting it to the running.
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My son is almost there. One thing we have done is teach him words like freeze and games like red light green light. They have been reasonably successful with him and his older friend. Another thing we do with our son is have a bad consequence such as a leash. If he can't behave on his own he gets the leash put on and in that way he loses freedom. Or we bring the handle for him to hold or I put him on my back in a carrier (may not all be options for you).
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I agree about the harness. If he sees that, he might change his mind. My daughter likes her harness, so I can't use it like that. She's only 2 but she tries to run, so she is often in a buggy.
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4 comments