Wow...just wow

So let's recap shall we.

Bailey loses privileges for misbehaving at school.  The more days he gets sent home with anything less than a smiley face the more he loses.

Bailey loses privileges at home when he misbehaves.  The more days he misbehaves the more he loses, same as school.

He gets time out just as he did before, except now the timer doesn't start until he stops screaming at us and stops anytime he starts back talking.  No more ignoring him when he's in timeout, sorry Super Nanny.

He gets a timeout when he gets home from school for his behavior at school.  Then if he's really really bad he gets a swat from Bo at night.

He gets 1 unhappy face and he does not stay the night at my parents.

He is now in charge of cleaning up the living room every afternoon and cleans up his own room before he goes to bed.  And anything else I can think of to keep him busy.

And guess what, he's no better.  He lost his games, lost his cars, lost books at bedtime, lost going to stay with my parents for three days in a row and all he had to say about it is "I can't wait to see what the sad face looks like today".  Then he was good, he got in trouble a few times but nothing to not warrant a smiley face. 

Then Monday came, and with it that damn attitude again of he does what he wants to do and he tells everyone no.  But today, I got ANOTHER call from his teacher saying he screamed and yelled at one teacher and had been just as horrible to her all day.  I knew this morning when he would not mind for shit.  I knew he'd do the same at school.  I finally asked her if he can see the school counselor and she said she'll talk to him/her and see what they say about it.

We don't expect him to be a perfect angel, but my God, screaming no at the PE teacher because 'I thought about yelling so I did' or screaming bloody murder and then ramming his Tonka truck into the wall so hard it left a dent when I told him he had to set in time out because he once again was overstepping me and trying to parent Jocelyn, is too much.

He's only 5, there's only so much you can do at this age.  But we've taken everything he has, one by one, away at some point and it only affects him for that day, the next day he doesn't care anymore.  We've told him he can earn things and for the first 5 minutes he's all into it, after that he could care less because he other things to distract him.   Timeout has become a joke.  Everything we do to discipline him is a game to him because he gets everything back in a day or two, so he wins in his head.  We're not no rules, let the kids do whatever they please parents and never have been, but we're not so strict we dictate everything our child does.   We've tried nice, we've tried scheduling which has become my job and my pain in the ass and is nothing to him.  What else is there?

We're discussing emptying his room of toys, as much as we hate this idea.  But if we take his cars away, he's fine, he has his legos, and so on.  For instance, he lost his cars today, so he's pretending his letter magnates are cars and he's driving them across the living room.  He just moves on to another toy if you take something away.  So, maybe by taking it all away and making him earn his things back will be more effective.  I don't know, but at this point the only thing left is spanking his ass every time he does something bad and I'd rather not do that.  But then it gets kinda sticky since Christmas is around the corner, so we're thinking of saying we struck a deal with Santa and he's bringing his presents but can't have them until he is good.

We really don't want to be that strict with him, but we don't know what else to do...