Hi everyone,

A little background first. My wife and I are expecting a second child in February. Over the past few months, my three year old son has become very aggressive with us at home, and has become a choosy eater which was never the case before. He also had a period of 6 weeks where he stopped eating. There is no change of routine, he is regular in attending nursery and sleeping on time, our work timings and routines are the same. But off late when we go to collect him from nursery, he becomes emotional and shows displeasure to demonstrate that he was not happy that we left him in the first place. Once he even refused to leave with his uncle to the point that his grandfather had to come to collect him. Even his grandfather had a problem! His teacher had also pointed this out as unusual and also stated that he is playing alone and does not interact much.

Aside from this, he is really testing our patience to the point where unfortunately I'm losing my cool and end up shouting at him :( this really makes me sad and worries me that I'll be spoiling my relationship with him long term.

I'm really getting frustrated especially as the pregnancy has been quite difficult on my wife physically and mentally (the first one wasn't so bad).

We spoke to a child psychologist who said that this is normal behaviour as he is realising that his mommy and daddy aren't giving him the same attention that they were before and he's acting out because of it. I show him all the love and care I can and before this year never even shouted at him. It breaks my heart to have to shout because it makes him angrier and scream/meltdown even harder but I'm only human...

Has anyone experienced this behaviour before? How do you go about your normal routine without blowing up if he throws a tantrum? Any tips on how to manage him? (distracting him from the current issue helps but it's not easy especially with a kid screaming and hitting your at the top of his little lungs)