Severe tantrums lasting up to 2 hours

I'm struggling. My 3 year old is tantruming quite extremely. He only does it when I'm around but he can go on for a full two hours. I honestly dont know where he gets the energy. I'm at a loss of what to do. He hits, kicks and bites. He won't let us sit anywhere or do anything. He says 'no you can't stand there, stand over there' and then if I do, (which we often don't give in to his demands) he will say straight away. 'No don't stand there. Sit here.' and it goes on. If you do nothing he gets worse. Sometimes when he's being quite violent, we have to put him in his room and shut the baby gate because he keeps going. He will scream get out, go away. And then when you walk off (I need to gather my strength sometimes), he turns instantly to 'no mummy please don't go screaming', then when I come back, instantly goes to 'go away'. I've recently tried restraining him in that bear hug holdto calm him down. It doesn't calm him down. It makes him more angry but then he'll start saying 'owh owh don't hold me' then I'll loosen my grip and he'll start yelling to 'holding him harder'. He strips down and had recently started weeing on the floor. And that seems to snap him out of it. I don't really know what I want from this post. Maybe to just see if anyone else is going through this? Any techniques that have worked? Thanks for reading x

Show your support

Distraction! Do you ask him what's wrong? Hungry, tired, in pain, bored, sad are generally the reasons for a tantrum. With my eldest running a bath would snap him out of it

Speak to your health visitor. There’s services like CAMHS which can help teach you techniques to deal with extreme behavior

@Mel yes we do try. There is no distracting him. It's like he's in a rage that he can't get out of!

My daughter born Aug21 used to do that back in April, spring time for some time. I don’t have a solution but to make you feel better it stopped… hang in there.

We went through this. For us we needed bigger consequences. It was "if you don't stop by the count of 3 then X toy will be in the bin". After following through twice she realised it was in her interest to listen. Now the second she starts to escalate we send her to the naughty step to calm down (imperative that you are calm too) and within 30 seconds she'll come back and say "I'm calm now/I've done my breathing" and we quickly discuss why she was sent away in an upbeat tone and thank her for calming done quickly. I think we had gotten so bad because our threats had no meaning. Now they do!