My son is a hitter!

[MelissaTC]

My name is Melissa and my son is a hitter. It is driving me nuts. If anyone comes near him at the playground, he hits them. If they want to climb up the stairs and go down the slide, he hits them. If they walk next to him, he hit them. Also, these "hits" are being accompanied with a loud shrill. UGH!

Matthew is the shortest child out of all the kiddies in playgroup, school and friends. There are a few more aggressive kids that tend to bully him around a bit and he has showed them that he doesn't like it. I have no problem with my son defending himself. I guess I am more worried about the hitting of the "innocent". He hit this one boy today at the playground who happen to be standing next to him. I tell him "No hitting" when he does hit. I also say things like "we don't hit our friends" or "we don't hurt our friends" and try to re-direct him far away from the other child. Today, I whisked him off to a bench where I talked to him for a bit.

One of the Moms in playgroup said "You call that hitting?". Um. Yes. If he takes his little hand and hits someone, um, doesn't that constitute hitting?

HELP...please :)

[Mommie2MadLyn]

HI Melissa, I posted last week regarding pretty much the same issue. My DD is 19 mths. old and she has recently been showing signs of aggression to other kids. I'm sorry that I don't really have any advice for you, (if I did my DD would be an angel now wouldn't she?!!) but I just know that it helps to know that you are not alone in this. The stares that we sometimes get from other mothers as if to say "Don't you know how to control your child's behavior?" are very hurtful and I completely understand. All I can hope for is that this is just a stage, and in the meantime continue to redirect her and try to make the connection that this behavior is unacceptable. Today at Gymboree she was much better, but I had to literally follow her around and watch her every move. Especially when she came close to one little boy in particular that she seems to have an issue with. I would just turn her around and focus her attention on something else. I'm sure you know, just as I do that our children have such a loving side to their behavior and this new image does not mean that we are failing as parents to raise polite little children. Hopefully this too shall pass. Best of luck.

[luvbeinmama]

Perhaps I am a bit harsh, but if my son hit someone, he would be immediately given time out and a direct discussion as to why he is not to hit and what else he could have done to accomplish what he wanted. Actually, my son has been hit and bitten by other kids and I've been very displeased at the casual reactions of the other mothers. It usually consisted of a really mild, "We don't do that" and "say you're sorry" (which the kid refuses to do usually) then "go play" as if it was nothing. My son was also literally run over by other kids in a t-ball class and the other parents did NOTHING. I was NOT happy!

If you're still with me... it seems you think the hitting started as a way to defend himself. If you can talk him through what happened and give him some suggestions of other things he could do next time, it may help. Kids don't know what they are supposed to do when they are frustrated, I've found that sometimes all my son needs is me to tell him a good way of reacting to something.

HTH!

[MelissaTC]

I am totally with you in that I don't want to treat it casually. The other issue at hand is that Matthew is not quite 17 months yet. I can't have a real conversation with him because he doesn't quite get it yet. I literally pull him away from the situation and re-direct him, apologizing to the other child & parent.

As far as defending himself, yes, I do not believe that violence is the answer to defending yourself. Again, he is too young to walk him through alternative methods because he doesn't quite get it yet.

I guess this is what the most frustrating part of all of this is -- -that I can't quite communicate with him the way I could with an older child. It drives me nuts. He has a vocabulary of like 15 words and I get a lot of "hi" and "trees".

I suppose I wrote this just to understand if there were others out there that had a child my age and if they were going through something similar. I was very frustrated yesterday.

Thanks!

[Mommie2MadLyn]

I am suffering with the same problem. There is only so much that you can explain to a child under 2, because they don't get it yet. My DD definitely knows that I am not happy when I pull her away from a situation to talk to her, but I'm not sure that she fully understands, or at least I don't think that she thinks about it later before another "incident". I think she just gets frustrated, and instead of knowing how to communicate these frustrations or coming to me, she just lashes out. She isn't really hitting though, more often its grabbing toys and saying "MINE!!", or pushing, or most recently she has started pulling hair!!! Not that any of this is better than hitting, I'm just telling you the different ways that she is aggressive. When she is a little bit older, if this hasn't passed, I will definitely continue talking to her but the time-outs will be more effective I think. She will hopefully realize that if she puts her hands on another child, her fun is over...period. We will leave the park/Gymboree/playdate etc. Until then, I will do my best to redirect her and to explain that this is not OK. I really hope that doesn't seem to be too casual of a reaction, I never thought of that before, but I don't know what else to do at her age. I hope that both of our children outgrow this soon!!!

[egoldber]

I tend to agree. While a 17 month old may not get everything you say, they do have a VERY large receptive vocabulary. I also don't think that's too young for some form of time out. Probably not the clasic "sit in a chair in a corner" type time out, but a removal from the situation and being made to wait some specified period of time before being allowed to resume play.

And its never too early to start talking to them about other ways to respond to situations. They are little sponges and soak everything up. So while they may not yet have the developmental capacity to stop and think through what to do in a situation, they are not too young to learn that hitting is not an approved behavior and that aggressive behavior has consequences.

But while my talk is good, yesterday DD shoved a child at playgroup who wanted to toy she had. Looking back I see that I should have done some things differently. Its not always easy on the heat of the moment to think things through yourself, LOL!

Good luck!

[newbelly2002]

Because we have pets, we've been dealing with the hitting/pulling behavior for a while. What I've found to work best with Dante--at this age, 15.5 months--is to give him an alternative behavior. When he whacks our poor dog, for example, I tell him: "Don't hit, be gentle. Like this." We've been working on this for months and now when he starts a bad behavior I can say, "Dante, be gentle please," and he moves to a stroking, not a striking, gesture.

Just telling him "we don't do this," at this age, doesn't seem to do much good. Dicussions and time outs have their place with slightly older children, and as Beth said their receptive vocabulary IS amazing, but with the younger ones I think a brief explanation accompanied with a concrete, executable alternative can help.

Now, of course, all this is out the window when the young gentleman actually wants something. But we're working on that.
Paula
Mama to Dante, 8/1/02

[jojo2324]

We've had a similar situation with our cat Boots. He's getting very old and slow, so while our other two cats can dash away, Boots is at Gannon's mercy. I'm surprised his tail hasn't been torn at this point.

Like Paula, we've been doing, "Be gentle with Boots, no hitting, just petting" etc, etc. It does seem to be clicking, after MANY months, but there are times that he just gets so excited, he starts hitting him again. At these points, I don't think it's a malicious thing at all, just a lack of awareness about good ways to show happiness/excitement. And we've had incidents of him hitting kids at playgroup and stuff. That was mainly this summer, and he does seem to be stopping that now.

Gannon is nearly 17 months, and with a very limited vocabulary. (I think we're up to 6-7 words, and all but two of those I have not heard for weeks now.) So I hear no and papa a lot, sometimes an uh-oh. (Hmmm, funny what two of those are...:)) I can tell you that a time out type solution would NOT work for him. I do remove him from the situation, try to focus him elsewhere, say don't hit/slap/bite, etc, and apologize, but for me to *stop* him from doing something or going somewhere would involve full body contact and having to physically restrain him.

I will say that while he still does hit and bite me on occasion, oftentimes he will redirect it someplace else. For instance, tonight, he finally managed to fall off the top of the couch, hitting a lamp on the way to the floor. He was pretty upset, and after a few minutes of cuddling with me, went over to the lamp and kind of started yelling at it.

[luvbeinmama]

Yeah, sorry, I forget what the vocabulary of a 1 1/2 year old is like... DH & I have been explaining things to DS as much as possible since he's been able to understand. It will most likely take a bit of time for you to get through it. If you keep talking to him every time, and consistently, it should really help in the long run. I know it can be really frustrating, though.