Biting/hitting

++southerngirl++

My 1 yr old bites the 2 yr old. She doesn't seem to be doing it out of anger - she laughs about it but she is biting my 2y/o hard enough to leave an angry bite mark. I don't know what to do bc it seems like once I get to them she has forgotten - really she seems totally oblivious that she's doing it. 

 And my 2y/o just will radomly walk up and hit you. Spanking does not work w him so I am trying time outs - you hit you sit - but as soon as he gets up he will do it again. Any advice? I am at my wits end with these situations!!

celiabwatson

I don't do spanking or time out. With hitting I hold his arm(s) and say "I won't let you hit." Sometimes he gets mad, sometimes he thinks it's funny etc, but I just stay calm and say "I won't let you hit" and he eventually gives up. It takes less and less time now and I have been adding in explanations about hitting hurts etc. I also give him plenty of outlets of things he can hit. 

I'm not sure about biting. I guess I use a similar approach with biting, or you can see the post below where I wrote about my 2 year old biting the baby, but that's different than your experience. 

kcisthebombdotcom

We encourage doing nice. We show (and model) gentle touch and offer praise when LO is gentle. Rough behavior means that you don't get to play and you get ignored. Over time kids learn that nice behavior=attention and bad behavior=ignored (and what toddler wants to be ignored?) Most of the time kids do something for a reaction. If they don't get the kind of reaction they want (which is attention, and they can't differentiate between good attention/bad attention yet) they find something else to do.

If my older child is getting too wild and rough, I won't do a time out in the sense that they sit in the corner for x amount of minutes, but I do remove him from the situation so he cannot hurt my younger one.