It's taken me 46 years... lol.
Actually what's helped me a lot was realizing that I can calm my kids down by calming myself down. It's seriously taken me forever to figure this out though. It's one thing to understand the theory behind it, but to actually execute it (and feel the calmness and control) is quite another thing altogether.
Btw my kids are 10 and 8, and we're the calmest we've ever been. Last night I was at school and poor DH had to contend with a sibling battle that I could have extinguished handily in about 3 minutes. HOWEVER... when my DD was four like your son (my DS would have been 2.5), that was not the case, lol. Oh, chaos...
You could try deep breathing exercises, maybe... like if the two of you start to escalate, step away and concentrate on slowing your breathing. This is assuming you remember in the heat of the moment... that was always my problem: my emotions always trumped my desire to control them (whatever I was feeling seemed more important than the idea of calming down).
Hang in there - it gets better
