The Angry And Stubborn Syndrome

My son is now 2 years old and has started to challenge the boundaries and guidelines set by Mama & Papa. He has developed the AAS syndrome (the angry and stubborn syndrome). If he does not get what he wants he will get angry and stubborn.

He started doing this 3-4 months back, however in the last month he would have a freak out twice a week, that would last approximately 15 minutes, where he would not listen to anyone. He would scream, lye down, kick to things and just be angry and uncontrollable. It’s a behavior that Mama & Papa had not seen before.

During this freak out, he would not listen to us, or to his grandparents, or to anyone else. We could talk calmly to him, we could use reverse psychology, we could tempt him with sweets, we could get angry, it just bounced of him (Papa used the analogy of superman and bullets…). We couldn’t stop wondering whether this disturbing behavior had roots in something else. I talked to Papa and we suspected something happening at the Nursery, that somehow builds up rage in him, which he lets out when he is back home.

So Papa had a word with the Nursery management, who could not relate to this. Junior was behaving/being treated like any other child. They did however advise us to react in a similar manner as they do with naughty children and do it consistently. This is because a child can be confused if the people marked as an authority in the child’s mind act differently under similar situations.

Their advice was to say in a strict voice “No, you cannot do that” and if he wouldn’t listen, then say “If you want to do that, then go away. You cannot do that with us”. There were 2 benefits in this method:

1. This is what the nursery staff did, so we would do it the same way. Thus the child would understand when boundaries have been crossed.
2. The child does not like to be alone and isolated. So by excluding him from the group of Mama & Papa (or the other children at the nursery) the child would quickly change his mind and correct himself.

We did this for 2 weeks, and thank God, he has not done it since. By acting in a similar manner, being consistent (regardless of how tired you are) and cooperating with the nursery, we have managed to solve this problem in a simple fast manner. As a side benefit the staff kept an extra eye on Junior, and they let us know that nothing special was noted.

So in conclusion, we managed to get rid of this new bad behavior and our suspicion about something happening at the nursery was shot to the ground. Till next time, a happy mother…