Head banging?

JulyMomma2U2 · August 2013

Anyone else have a LO that does this?? DS1 will sit in his crib and bang his head against the rails when he doesn't want to nap/sleep! It's infuriating!! He will also sometimes do it in his highchair when he's fighting a meal.. is this normal??? Seriously, in his crib, I can hear him hitting his head against the rails all the way downstairs!! Of course, I go up and try and get him to stop, but as soon as I walk out he does it again!! Please tell me this is just a phase!

FmrAFBrat · August 2013

DS1 does it all the time. He's done for almost a year now. No idea when it will stop.

martinimomma · August 2013

DS did this for a brief period around 18 mos when he was tired and fighting sleep. In our case it did not last long, wasn't every day, and he never did it long or hard enough to make a mark. We took the tack of ignoring it (watching on the video monitor to make sure he was safe) and he stopped after a brief period. Hope it is the same for you!

JulyMomma2U2 · August 2013

@martinimamma So you didn't go in or tell him to stop? I feel like even when I go in, he doesn't stop.. And I don't think he understands what I'm "yelling" at him for (not yelling, but you know what I mean).. Maybe we should tr and just ignore it for a while?

CdnFarmGirl08 · August 2013

My son has started doing this too in his highchair. He will rock back and forth and hit his head. Or he'll bump it once on the wall or something and then keep doing it. No idea why.

martinimomma · August 2013

No. We watched his intensity on the monitor and it was more of a regular thump than a major bang. We thought that intervening would risk reinforcing the behavior (ie, do this and mom and dad come in). When he did it in the high chair we tended to calmly say something like "big boys don't do that" and just keep on with whatever we were doing.

Babi2comingSoon2014 · August 2013

its a phase

Junebug060609 · August 2013

My ds did it for a while at about six months. I asked the pedi and her response was that it was normal and that "kids are weird sometimes". He's done it some recently, mostly out of frustration I think. I just make sure he's not hurting himself but otherwise ignore it.

luvmyducks · August 2013

DD1 went through this when she was told no or didn't get what she wanted. She woukd head bang the floor or the couch or us. It lasted maybe a month and she stopped doing it.

CheesyPeas · August 2013

Oh yes. DS did that for months, usually when he got emotional. He would usually bang his face on the floor though, and then then cry because it hurt. It was sooo frustrating. I wanted to ignore the behavior instead of giving him attention for it but when he was hurting himself by doing it, I had a really hard time just watching. I think I asked the pedi about it around the one year mark, and he told me I was the third person who had asked about it that day because he had seen a lot of 1 year olds that day. Apparently very common.

DS has moved beyond that phase now but I'm not sure at what point it happened. I guess it was a few months ago when he mastered the melting-toddler, thrash-about-on-the-ground tantrum. Equally fun for mama.

damabo80 · August 2013

luvmyducks said:
DD1 went through this when she was told no or didn't get what she wanted. She woukd head bang the floor or the couch or us. It lasted maybe a month and she stopped doing it.

Ditto. She stopped around 24m-ish.

I just ignored, because attention is what she wanted. They probably won't do it hard enough to seriously hurt themselves. Sometimes she would do it harder than intended and she would cry because it hurt. But then I noticed the next time she did it much softer. She learned

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