A look into Nancy Thomas parenting

I guess it depends on how you look at it. All of his tantrums that I can remember resulted from control issues. He's Dx'd as ODD and BiPolar. I don't think there's ever a "need" to hold a three year old for safety issues. His tantrums were violent and horrible to watch. But I was much, much larger and faster. I was never afraid that he was going to hurt me or hurt himself badly. Usually we ended up holding him because he would not comply on any level. He'd be told to go to time-out. He refused to go. You'd then carry him to his bed and place him on the bed. He refused to stay in his room. He'd come out of the room and scream curse words, throw things, fall down on the floor kicking and screaming. Soooooo....what do you do with a child in that situation. Ignoring him didn't work. Trying to apply the consequence later when he was calmed back down just resulted in a repeat tantrum. He was waaaayyy too young to reason with. I wasn't willing to do a pyche hospitalization or RTC with a pre-schooler. I think that would have been far more damaging to his trust and security. But we had to be able to have some way to force him to comply. You simply cannot live with a child when they refuse to comply with anything. So he would start a control battle that always needed in him not complying with the consequence, which resulted in a rage, which resulted in us holding him until he'd gained control. Then we'd have him go back and go back and serve the consequence, THEN we'd have him go back and perform whatever task had caused the original issue. So it might be he'd have to stay in his room for 10 minutes, then he'd have to come out and clean up the plate of food he'd winged across the kitchen, and then he'd have to eat the greenbeans that caused the whole thing to begin with. And I can tell you that Coach and I were the only ones who could "handle" him for years and years. Anyone who was soft or kind with him, he just flat ran over. Once in elementary school we always asked for the strictest, meanest teacher for him. If an adult couldn't control him, then he didn't respect them. And if he didn't respect them, he sure wasn't going to trust them.