Maine Nesties
Jake blowing out the candle at Katie's coming home party
)
Katie Belle
Kristen, Chad, Jake, Katie & Sadie the Wonderdog, est. 6/17/06
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
What do you do when your toddler hits you?
Jake has been on a hitting rampage lately if the slightest thing doesn't go his way. We have always said "we don't hit" or "hitting hurts", etc. and then put him in time out. After he he's done w/ time out, we ask him why he was sent there and make sure he understands why, and again we tell him that we don't hit.
The hitting just keeps getting more and more frequent. Is he testing our boundaries, or are we handling it wrong?? Also, do you force an apology or not? DH & I are back & forth about this...
Jake blowing out the candle at Katie's coming home party
)
Katie Belle
Kristen, Chad, Jake, Katie & Sadie the Wonderdog, est. 6/17/06
Re: What do you do when your toddler hits you?
When Helen hits I (1) tell her hitting is not acceptable, (2) put her in time out, and if she hits again, (3) take away something that she likes.
I have no idea if I'm doing it right or not. I think it's important for her to know that hitting is not ok, so I keep doing the scolding/time outs, even if it doesn't seem to make an immediate difference.
I think hitting is something that kids need to grow out of to some extent -- when they learn how to handle and express their emotions better, they hit less. Helen definitely hits less now than she did, say, six months ago.
We're pretty inconsistent on requiring apologies. DH asks her to do it more often than I do. I never really thought about it.
I would keep with what you are doing, making sure to keep following the TO with a follow up why were you in TO? and if they don't know then tell them why, try to get them to ask the other person if they are ok, I wouldn't force an apology from a toddler, but I might from a preschooler ( but I think it is against 'best practice'), end the TO with a hug to let them know you still love them and carry on the day. 1 minute of TO per year of age.
Also, I have heard that if they do say sorry, that you say that you something like "I didn't like it when you hit me, I forgive you, but please don't do it anymore" rather than "that's ok" I don't really like being told how to accept an apology...
As they get older, if they are still hitting (age 5+) after the TO brainstorm why they hit and what is a better choice next time, along with making sure they know why they had to have a TO.
Luke was on a hitting rampage this summer too. We would tell him that hitting is not nice, tell him he was going in TO or actually putting him in TO, and making him say sorry. One thing we did is not let him just say sorry, he had to look at the person and say sorry. He gets it now and we haven't had much of a problem since we've been consistent, but that doesn't mean it doesn't ever happen.
I think your doing great. I think he is probably just testing boundaries.
We've tried a ton of different things. If Owen hits Ellie, it's INSTANT time out, if he hits me I try to do some version of ignoring him -- not exactly ignoring the behavior and not exactly ignoring him 100%, but trying not to give him too much of a reaction because I know in those moments, attention is what he wants, so I don't want to reward it. I've also been known to take away privileges, toys, etc. (The toys usually go away for two minutes -- same as the length of time out.) Good luck, it's definitely a challenge!! I just keep telling myself "at least he's not a biter!"
Jake blowing out the candle at Katie's coming home party
Katie Belle
Kristen, Chad, Jake, Katie & Sadie the Wonderdog, est. 6/17/06
Ok, I can't resist any longer. Every time I see this post header "What do you do when your toddler hits you?" I mentally think "I hit him back!" and then usually tack on something tasteless like "Gotta show that kid who's boss," "I'm bigger than him," or "We don't mess around."
This of course is NOT what we actually do. I'm just a smart alec like that. When James hits, it is usually out of frustration, so we tell him that we don't hit, it hurts people and is bad manners, and if he keeps it up, he'll get a time out. If he's already on a time out track for hitting or other known obnoxious behavior, it's straight to a time out. If it's just straight tired frustration where he doesn't really mean it (if that makes any sense) we try to calmly tell him it's ok to be angry, but you can't hit. (And he'll get a time out.)
James doesn't generally hit for attention. But I suppose if he did, we'd still stick to the mantra of knock it off, that's bad manners.