Moving on to the Brightside Part 29

[AndrewP]

Hmmm - he does sound a bit like GS3. He has this "thing" where he needs to know the ownership of everything and then announces that item x/y/z is "his". He is well known to take things like B's glasses for example and hide them for himself. He stole the keys for my house until I learned to put them out of reach before he gets there. He also pushes boundaries quite a bit. Perhaps this is common with a 3 year-old - it's been a long time. Given a chance I think that he can become quite physical but B puts a stop to that quickly. He has had bruises after being with other children.

B says that even having raised 6 kids and done baby-sitting that she's never encountered someone like GS3 before. Perhaps part of it is that GS3 has had a lot of uncertainty in his short life, being shunted from one place to another and also having people popping in and out of his life certainly can't have been easy on him.

What B says is effective for her and I've seen work is that she sits with him on her lap, rubs his back, lets him play a game or watch a video on her phone and that calms him down. Yelling, or the usual sort of time-outs etc have no impact on him. Otherwise he just gets wound up more and more.

He's an outwardly sweet kid but I do think more than a bit messed up inside. Hopefully the little boy you are dealing with is a bit more straightforward. I do see similarities though at least through the stories you tell.

I've not dealt with them personally myself, but suspect that adopted kids need a special kind of love and attention.