Any advice for hitting?

TaraLou525

My sweet little boy just turned 2 years, 5 months and now LOVES to hit...not just anyone...my husband and me.  Mainly my husband.  We have tried SuperNanny time-outs and he will sit by himself for 2 minutes silently and then say he is "sorry" and hug with a smile on his face the whole time.  He loves every second of it.  I have tried "hitting hurts", "that makes mommy sad", etc.  Again, he loves every second of it.  He even re-enacts the time-outs!

So now we are trying to just ignore him when he does it and/or move ourselves away from him.  It feels weird to ignore it, but I feel like he loves the attention he gets with the other methods (good or bad, it is still attention). 

 I don't know what to do...any ideas or things that worked for anyone else?

mel72

Curious to see the answers, mine is into hitting/pushing and throwing right now.

WiggleBaby

yup in the same boat.  mostly my DD (2.5 yrs) is even tempered but she had a rough day today because of an overly-hectic weekend and the hitting was in full force!  but she only does it to me!  she wants to see my reaction, and keeps checking to see if i do the same thing.  she'll walk into the next room and say to DH "i hit mommy!" like she's proud.  grrrr.

i've always just immediately stopped whatever we're doing (if i'm holding her, i put her down really fast) and sit her on a couch/whatever, and explain it hurts and that we can't play when she's hitting and i walk away.  we don't do time-outs, but this is basically a stopping of all play until she has relaxed.  for us the key seems to be NOT to dwell on it - cuz that's what she wants!  the more we try to explain it hurts etc, the more she does it!  like today at the grocery store (or any other time today, lol) she decided to hit me and be proud of it, so after i told her a firm "NO" and walked away, my DH took her to pick out pears.  she was a sweetheart after that and didn't hit the rest of the trip.  

i'm not really sure what the answer is. i guess they'll just keep testing for a while, cuz they're toddlers and that's what they do.  but keeping my cool gets really hard after the 30th time of the day!

TaraLou525

Glad to hear I am not alone.  My son runs over to me and says "hit Daddy" ~ like he has to report it!  It does drive me crazy, but I guess it could always be worse.  If this is our only issue, then I guess we will just keep trying!

KathrynMD

is he being mean or just enthusiastic?

Maybe you just need to help him direct his play a little more?

While they were playing, wrestling last night, DD said to DH "I kick in the head with my shoe now.  OK?"  LOL - she just doesn't know where the "line" is.