Help with toddler hitting

KittyKatMom

Hi everyone. I haven?t been on this board in awhile, but we?re having some issues with hitting and I?m hoping to get some advice. Yesterday, DS (who is 25 months) hit is friend, C, for no reason that I can figure out. The boys were playing outside at C?s house and DS picked up a plastic toy drill, walked over to C, who was standing nearby, and smacked him in the head with it. I was mortified. I bent down, took him by the shoulders, looked him in the eye and said something like, ?You?re not allowed to hit C. You hurt him. He?s crying.? And we left (we live right across the street).

DS was curious about why he was crying, but didn?t seem to care that he had hurt him. He was more interested in what C was saying and kept asking me ?What he say?? And then he would imitate the crying.

He has also been acting violent toward our cat lately. He will hit and kick the cat when she walks by. He likes to ?chase? her because he sees us do this outside when we are trying to get the cat to come back in. We have been trying to stress that we only chase her when we are outside and need her to come in, but he is not getting it or doesn?t care. I have tried different approaches with respect to the cat issue: calmly explaining that we don?t hit/kick, reminding him that we need to be nice, giving the cat extra attention and making a big deal out of what happened (?Are you okay kitty??), firmly explaining that we don?t hit/kick, and scolding/yelling when my frustration has gotten the better of me.

DS has an amazing vocabulary for his age. He speaks in full sentences. So I am pretty sure that he is not hitting out of frustration or inability to communicate how he is feeling. I also don?t have any doubts that he understands what we are telling him. Do you think he is just experimenting with cause and effect? Doing it to get a rise out of us and/or attention?

Any advice for how to deal with this? We have not used any one method consistently, so maybe that is the problem? Do I just keep calmly explaining that we have to be nice and eventually he will get it? I feel like there needs to be some kind of consequence, but I'm not a fan of time-outs and will not spank.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

rosiemomma

https://www.phdinparenting.com/2011/09/28/toddler-hitting-5-strategies-to-handle-it/

AnaKat405

I'm really interested in this and hope that you get more responses.

I'll be a FTM in September so I don't have any parenting experience to share with you.  But I do recall several occasions when I was a kid where I hit or did something hurtful not because I was upset or being malicious but I was just genuinely curious about what the outcome would be.  I, too, had a great vocabulary for my age and was an early reader, but it still wasn't enough for me to communicate what I was thinking and I don't know that I even knew how to form that thought at the time.  Regardless, I remember the distinct feeling of being entirely confused by how upset some of the things I did caused my elders to become (parents, teachers, relatives), yet unable to explain that I wasn't trying to be "bad".

KittyKatMom

AnaKat405:

I'm really interested in this and hope that you get more responses.

I'll be a FTM in September so I don't have any parenting experience to share with you.  But I do recall several occasions when I was a kid where I hit or did something hurtful not because I was upset or being malicious but I was just genuinely curious about what the outcome would be.  I, too, had a great vocabulary for my age and was an early reader, but it still wasn't enough for me to communicate what I was thinking and I don't know that I even knew how to form that thought at the time.  Regardless, I remember the distinct feeling of being entirely confused by how upset some of the things I did caused my elders to become (parents, teachers, relatives), yet unable to explain that I wasn't trying to be "bad".

Thanks for sharing your perspective. In terms of the bolded, did you continue to do the "bad" things, even after it was made clear to you that these things were not okay? That's what I'm struggling with. I feel confident that DS understands that hitting hurts and isn't nice, but he continues to do it.

He is in a phase of wanting to know what everyone (and everything) says in response to different things, so maybe he is just seeing what kind of reaction he will get from hitting?

AnaKat405

Hey there!  I tried to reply yesterday but ran out of time and had to go to work.

It sounds like you're right about him looking for reactions, especially since you said he seemed to be more interested in what his friend said rather than concerned that he was crying.

As far as me still doing things I was told not to do... sometimes yes, but mostly no. I thought about it a lot and in my case, with my mom I tended to view things as more "up for interpretation", if you will.  Whereas with my dad or grand dad, I knew without question that certain behavior was not tolerated with them.  My grandpa had some home movies of me as a kid, some have only me and my mom, others only me and my dad and the difference is my behavior is like night and day.  I just got the sense with my mom that more things would slide.

I'm not exactly sure what I could attribute that to, but I imagine it was many things.  One thing that I think was a major factor was my dad and grand dad more often addressed and treated me like a little grown up, and expected me to behave that way (at least what is reasonable for a toddler / child) to be included in things.  They asked my thoughts and opinions on things and talked TO me in a way that my mom did not.  I could "hang out" with my dad and his friends and watch movies, my grandpa would let me have sparkling cider in a stemmed glass at dinner.  But once I started horsing around and licking the bottom of my feet or something, it was over and no cutesy pouting or stomping and crying was going to get me my way.  lol.

I'm not saying this is you, but that was the case for me in my relationship with my mom as the primary caretaker.

That wasn't always a perfect science, either.  If I didn't get a satisfactory explaination on "why not" from any adult, I often had to suffer the direct consequence of my actions in order to learn.  I've had stitches on more than one occasion, suffered burns and even had my stomach pumped once because of this, along with the usual scrapes, cuts and gashes.

Why is he so interested in what his friend was saying instead of him being concerned that he was crying?

My little sister and I were in the tub together once.  We were left unattended for probably all of two minutes.  I took that opportunity to turn on hot water, fill the plastic cup with it and pour it down my back as I'd seen my mom do.  Then, I filled it again and poured it down my sister's back.  She immediately started howling and crying, my mom came rushing back into the room, realized what happened and scolded me for it.  I was suprised by my sister's reaction and confused by my mom being upset because I didn't react that way.  It didn't make me cry.  Why was she crying?

Same with getting my stomach pumped.  I climbed up a chair, table and shelf while my mom was cooking dinner, grabbed the emergency kit because I wanted to play the "band aid game" (sticking band aids all over imaginary owies).  In addition to the band aids, I found ammonia capsules.  I didn't know what they were, so I bit into one.  It smelled funny and made my tongue tingle, but it didn't hurt me and I didn't cry.  My sister was staring at my, so I gave her one.  She bit into it and immediately started crying, my mom came rushing into the room, saw what happened and off to emergency we went!  The only time I started crying was when they started hosing out my mouth and pumping my stomach.  Up until then, I was fine, but still didn't understand my sister's reaction.

As a kid I was very curious and enchanted by things that I didn't understand and formed some pretty weird ideas about the way things worked.  In neither of the above instances did I feel bad or sorry for what I'd done because I honestly didn't think I had done anything wrong.  I knew I wasn't supposed to play with the emergency kit without my mom, but we'd done it plenty of times together before so why not?  I knew I wasn't supposed to ride my dog up and down the hall (which finally resulted in me cracking my head open and getting stitches) but why not?  Because I'll hurt myself?  HOW?  What did make me feel bad was seeing how worried everyone was, or hearing my mom tell my dad or another relative about what I did.

Anyway, I feel I've rambled on quite enough with my personal recollections of my childhood antics.  I have my own little girl on the way and am bracing myself for all the payback I'm going to get!

MAMAxB

I am really glad you posted this! My DD is 24 months and doing the SAME thing. We had to leave our play group and LLL meeting last week because she hit other kids multiple times I am at a loss. Thanks to the PP for the link!