Friday, July 1, 2011

My Child the Hitter (and not with a bat)

My sweet little, darling, innocent, wonderful child is a hitter! Yep, every time we get together with friends, he hits them (oh and pushes and takes toys out of kid's hands too)...I know, he is only 22 months, this is a stage, he doesn't mean to do anything wrong...I know. I know. But still...he is hitting other kids...sometimes me and Nate. What do I do? How do I teach him that is not okay? Soon kids everywhere will run and hide when they see him coming...The child will have no more friends. I just want my kids to be perfect and that's all. Now, really, is that asking too much...sigh...

4 comments:

Harmony said...

I loved the line "I just want my kids to be perfect and that's all."

Truly, I just want my kids NOT to be the ones that the teachers dread. NOT to be the ones that, when they're absent, the teachers give a sigh of relief. We want the good kids.

Don't worry. He'll be fine.

Kate said...

We went thru this with Hannah too... Just with us though, not with other kids. We just had to come up with a consequence and stick with it. Different things work for different kids. First we tried time out. That lasted about two days before it stopped working. Then we tried leaving her went she hit us. We used a line like "if you are going to hit we don't want to play with you." that worked for A few days. We also tried holding her arms down for A few mins if she hit. The thing that worked for us long term was completely ignoring it. Punishment gave her too much attention. Each kid is different. Good luck! As a parent of a kid who is often hit in nursery, I appreciate your concern! :)

Unknown said...

Good luck figuring it out! What Kate said above is VERY true: each kid is different. Try out different things and see what he responds to best. Is he seeking attention? responding to being overwhelmed in some say? just wanting to be active? As a mother and nursery worker I can assure you that as long as I can see the parents care and are working on fixing the situation it is easy to deal with. It's the kids where I see the parents ignoring it or not trying to fix the issue where I'm more likely to want to not be around them. I once heard one of my brothers in law (my husband's sister's husband) "jokingly" tell their 2 year old boy to kick back when one of the older cousins kicked him. It is not okay for the older child to kick, but seriously?!?!?! Kids will take you seriously! Fortunately it didnt' turn into a big issue (it's been a couple of years since then) but I was rather more watchful when my kids were playing with him!

Lesley said...

I've been wanting to comment on this post for a long time, but, well, things have been busy around here.

First, know that nearly every mom on earth can relate to this phase: if not hitting then spitting, biting, pushing (or, perhaps they can relate to ALL of them, like me!)

My advice is to remember that all it is is a phase. You should definitely react and make sure your adorable little Spencer knows it's not acceptable, but do try to remind yourself that this is JUST a phase, and it gives no indication as to who Spencer will be as an adult, a preschooler, or even a big brother. It's a passing phase that most kids enter and exit regardless of what you do to "stop" it. My experience is that you have to ride the phase out -- it won't stop regardless of what you do until he's passed that developmental stage.

I agree with the advice that picking a method of discipline and trying to stick with it is the best course of action. For us timeouts made it worse. The best thing for us was taking the child into the corner and "discussing" at their level why it hurts people when we hit, and why we should think of things to help other feel happy instead.

Now that my boys are older, the way we handle most things is having both parties involved sit on the bottom stair. They both say what they did wrong, and what they could do next time. Then apologize, ask for forgiveness, and give a hug and say "I love you". It has really really worked for us!

But for Spencer, I bet it is really just experimenting. And all that stuff on the stairs is probably overkill.

It'll stop before you know it! Keep up the great work. You are a GREAT MOM!