Question in the title. Our kid 21 months old - prime hitting stage territory. We don’t spank, and we give time-outs in response to hitting, but he still does it.
Now, a couple of things:
He doesn’t hit me. I don’t know why, but he only hits my wife.
I know it’s only a stage.
I’m pretty sure he only does it when he’s sick or feeling under the weather somehow.
BUT, my wife is taking it very personally. She feels like he doesn’t love her, etc.
In most respects, he’s a happy kid. He’s smart and responsive, and he has no trouble understanding questions or directions, even unaccompanied by gestures or repetition (in other words, in a normal, adult, conversational tone of voice, with no exaggeration, etc.) I’ll ask him to please hand me the spoon I just dropped on the floor, and he’ll bop over, pick it up, and hand it to me.
I mention this because it makes him, 75% of the time, seem almost like he understands his own actions - such as hitting - and that he’s doing it for a consciously chosen reason.
I know this is preposterous. He’s a toddler. Toddlers sometimes hit, and toddlers are unformed proto-humans, from the standpoint of mental development.
So how do I make my wife understand that, and stop getting so damn dejected and angry at these things?
Tell your wife that it might be that your son only hits her because he trusts her. He knows that her love is unconditional, so he feels safe to express his anger or frustration fully.
Also, toddlers “unlearn” this kind of behavior gradually…it’s going to take some time. And he’s probably a little young for time-outs. When he hits, just take his hands and say a stern “No!”. If it’s in the middle of a tantrum, walk away. (not always possible, I know). If it’s in the middle of play, same thing…if he hits, he loses your attention, play time is over. He’ll figure it out eventually.
I think there is something to this. Though my 7-year-old daughter loves both of us, she is clearly closer to my wife than to me, and (although she is a very good girl) she manifestly gives my wife more shit than she gives me. My wife and I have speculated that it’s just this–since she’s closer her mom, it feels ‘safer’ to vent to her mom, or put mom’s affection to the test. So paradoxically it’s flattering to be singled out for abuse by your child–it means your child knows you won’t stop loving them no matter what. Obviously, the kid has to learn that there are unacceptable ways of expressing anger and discontent, but that’s part of child-rearing–all of us parents go through that.
I know that I need to don my asbestos undies for this possible solution.
Every time he hits her, she needs to scream and fingerflick him. He needs to know it hurts and he will get a penalty for hitting.
IMHO, a fingerflick is nowhere near spanking. It is a short sharp shock more than a pain. The scream is also for shock value.
[I once got the 18month old son of a friend out of screaming randomly by outscreaming him every time he screamed. All I would do is open up and screach at the top of my lungs back. Having sung for years, I have some impressive volume when I scream =)]
Our daughter is 3 years and 2 months, and our son is 14 months, so we’ve gone through the terrible twos (which actually begins at about 18 months) once, and still have a little while to go before we get to them again.
Each kid has his/her own personality, and kids interact with their parents so differently, that it’s impossible to give a one-size-fits-all advice, even if one knew all the answer, but a couple of things jumped out at me.
While you and your wife actually do realize that toddlers aren’t “defective” adults, that apparently was the thinking for centuries. It’s really fascinating to read and study about the actual stages that juvenile brains go through, such as the development of the frontal lobe and the relationship to reasoning. Here’s one article which talks about teenage brains.
And the article goes on. So, if a teenager isn’t going to be able to fully access reasoning capabilities, then what chance does a child who is less than two years old?
And this doesn’t even begin to address emotional control, which isn’t going to happen for a while yet. As you said, looking at the ability of children to comprehend instructions means squat when the emotional meter gets pegged.
What is called a “stage” is that the toddler first develops the strong passion for something (NO I WILL NOT DO THAT) well before the ability to even process that thought, let alone control it. Sometimes getting children to (loudly) verbalize their emotions can help the processing and eventually the control.
I know that the more studying I did, the more it helped me understand what if felt like for the child, how the frustration would come out, and how to develop strategies to deal with it. It looks like we’re going to have to develop completely different ones for our son, because his temperament and personality are so different. Things which worked for our daughter don’t faze him.
The quicker your wife can learn to derail the thought that children’s actions have anything to do with the degree of love for their parents, the easier it will be to get ready for the teenage years, “I HATE YOU!”
For the question why does he hit your wife and not you, it could also be that she is worried about his reactions more than you, and then gives off a less clear signal that hitting isn’t permitted. Before hitting 2 1/2, my daughter had already figured out that there were “Mommy Rules” which meant “maybe” and “Daddy Rules” which were less equivocal.
Anyway, welcome to parenting! I’m still a rookie myself, but I really like it. Other people look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them how fascinating the terrible twos and other stages are, but it’s this process is so interesting. When you don’t want to kill them, of course.
Ogre, your child sounds like a perfect angel to me. My son is 21 months old also and he hits us both and bites on occasion. Also, a new thing he’s been doing lately since I have long hair, he loves to get a death grip on it and rip out a few strands every so often.
It’s all out of frustration and the inability to communicate the way he wants to or do the things he wants to do. He never lashes out at his grandmas or anyone else. Just mom and dad. I agree what others said, he trusts you enough to be able to “vent” to you.
It’s a hard phase for sure, but I heard that the terrible 3’s are worse! Haha! Good luck to you and Little Ogres mom.
Since he doesn’t hit you he has demonstrated that he can control who he hits. He doesn’t hit you because he knows you won’t put up with it, it’s somehow in your interaction and demeanor with him that he knows this. Your wife is giving off a vibe that he can hit her.
She needs to be firm with him that he can’t hit her. Does she use a firm voice or a pleading voice? “Honey, it’s not nice to hit mommy” in a whiny voice doesn’t have the same authority as a firm “We do not hit people” voice. The parents I know who use the whiny, pleading voice have kids who walk all over them.
I’m going to second this. Grab the hand FIRMLY and hold it AWAY (not just holding it, but moving it away, probably up so it’s at the end of his reach) and don’t just SAY a stern “No!” but SHOUT it. You need to scare the kid for a second. I know it sucks making your kids fear you–it’s one of the (many) reasons I never spanked my own child–but fear is an attention-getting and very deeply felt emotion. He needs to be really pulled out of the moment in a negative way that lets him know under NO uncertain terms that what he just did was BAD. This needs to be done IMMEDIATELY. Not a minute later, not after you’ve explained hitting is wrong, but IMMEDIATELY after the hit occurs. THEN you explain that hitting is wrong and proceed with a time out (since you said you do those).
An additional bit of unasked for, and purely anecdotal advice, since your child is at that age… if your child has tantrums, ignore them. Unless there is a danger (tantrum right next to a busy road, etc) give the child ZERO feedback. Don’t look at him. Don’t talk to him except to say “I will talk to you when you calm down”–say it once, then ignore. Kids do tantrums for attention, and if they’re trained early that they get the exact opposite when they throw one, they’ll quickly stop doing it. My son had maybe 3 full-on tantrums during the “terrible twos/threes” and this is how we handled it. He very quickly got the message and stopped throwing tantrums completely. Swear to god.
Our neighbors a few years later had a 3 year old girl who threw tantrums ALL the time, and every time one or the other of her parents would immediately focus all of their attention on her and–what’s even worse–would usually give in to what she wanted (her tantrums were usually in response to being told “no” to something). We moved away when she was about 5 so I don’t know how she turned out in the end, but they were well on their way to raising a spoiled hellion!
I agree with both Opal and Peski on the hitting response and provide a tantrum anecdote of my own.
My daughter didn’t start throwing tantrums until she was about 3. I once walked away from her in a supermarket (out of her sight but I could still see and hear her.) Once her audience was gone she stopped screaming, got to her feet and toddled off to find me. She stopped with me after a couple of months of reacting the way Opal describes. About a year later I was picking the kids up from the ex’s house when I walked in on a full blown “I didn’t get what I wanted” tantrum. Seems my ex had been giving in to her every time she threw a tantrum and ignoring her the rest of the time. Not surprisingly she continued to throw tantrums with him until she was almost 6.
I tend to view this as more an attachment issue, ie its easier to feel betrayed by the person you’re most attached too. And its a two way street, ie as a parent you have a stronger reaction because you’re more attached to them. So punishment is an issue for both parties, as is withdrawal.
This is one where the goal is to teach them the skills to manage it. In my view the most important thing is to feel like you know where its going, ie that you feel like theres a strategy thats going to help over time.
Everyone tends to have strong beliefs about parenting so this isnt a ‘this is the only way’ post, more that I havent seen this way offered ye. In practise I think there are multiple ways, and its always a question of what works for the particular family in question.
Have you tried giving him something he’s allowed to hit?
Obviously this might not work for you, depending on his reasons for hitting, but our kid’s a few months older than yours and she experimented with hitting around the same age. She hit when she was frustrated - when she couldn’t make something work, her manual dexterity let her down, stuff like that. We went ‘NO,’ showed her a cushion, told her she was allowed to hit that as much as she wanted, and then shoved it in front of her hand every time she tried hitting.
Her hitting phase lasted three or four days. I think she hit someone a grand total of five times. (Touch wood. The second I click Post, obviously, she’ll start hitting.) This is probably at least partly because of her being her, nothing to do with us, but I like to hope that some of it is because we didn’t give her the impression that the impulse to hit was something terrible in itself - which I think would’ve left her baffled and in need of doing more hitting in order to figure it out. (Again, this is who she is - other kids are probably different.) Instead, the NO and the cushion said that there’s nothing wrong with wanting to punch something, but there are good ways and bad ways to cope with that impulse: you cannot deal with it by hurting other people, yourself or anything breakable.
My then-2-ish daughter had been biting for a couple of months and it was getting to be an issue. During that period once, she and I were wrestling, when she bit my clavicle, of all things - hard. Getting your clavicle bit can really hurt - who knew?
In an auto-response, without thinking, I shouted “NO!” pulled her away from me, flipped her over and spanked her, hard, twice. She cried of course but also said “sorry daddy” a few times.
She never bit me - or anyone else, IIRC - again.
Please hear me - I am NOT advocating corporal punishment. As a rule, we didn’t do it - they probably ended up spanked maybe once a year. In this case, the big reaction probably had the most impact - it hurt, I yelled and it freaked her out.
I have to say that any parent who decides “if he loved me, he’d WANT to X” is setting herself up for grief. This is not a productive decision on your wife’s part. It’s not good with another adult and it’s horrible with a kid. It gives a child too much leverage. If he uses the leverage, it causes everyone grief and teaches him to manipulate people. If he holds the leverage responsibly, he’s turning himself into her parent. Not good.
I agree. The real problem here is the wife’s belief in what the toddler’s behavior means. The toddler’s behavior is within normal tolerances for his age. ALL my friends’ kids had times when they were biting and hitting. If I understand it correctly, its because the intensity of emotion, outstrips the child’s toolbox for dealing with emotions. The child at 2-ish does not even fully understand that other people can be injured or made sad by their actions. Empathy is a learned trait and it takes a long time to develop, and it nowhere near fully developed at 2.
It’s basically like thinking if your cat pees outside the box, its doing it because it doesn’t love you. I think most rational people recognize that the cat isn’t actually capable of this chain of reasoning, and actually pees outside the box because it is stressed or sick. A 2 year old is actually less capable of linking cause & effect than a fairly smart cat. This is why one perfectly timed reprimand is so effective - the linkage of action/reaction is fairly weak, so unless it comes at just the right time, the reprimand isn’t properly associated.
Just because it looks like a miniature adult, doesn’t mean a toddler reasons like one. The wife has… a series of unproductive beliefs, to put it kindly, if she treats a baby like an adult writ small.
The most loving thing your wife can do right now is to set consistent limits with the child. The whys really don’t matter, what counts is that Junior learns that hitting is Not Allowed. If I were in your shoes, I’d sit down with her and figure out what the appropriate consequences should be and how they’ll be handed, since the current time outs don’t seem to be working. (For example, perhaps the kid needs a time out in his crib, with the lights off and the door closed, instead of in a corner of the play room.) Whatever you decide on needs to be immediate and consistent, and laid out in enough detail that Mom won’t have to think twice about applying it. It’s also important that Mom handles it dispassionately, which may be really hard for her.
With a clear plan hopefully your wife will focus less on the emotional content of the situation and more on the ‘hey, he’s breaking the rules’ side of things. Junior isn’t allowed to hit her, no exceptions. If he does, she acts in her rightful authority as Mom and disciplines him. As nerve wracking as it can be, setting firm boundaries is the best and most loving thing that she can do right now.
I’m right there with the OP - with the hitting, that is. Our second actually entered the terrible twos right at 2, unlike her brother who started around 3. Anyway, if she takes a swing at one of us, we usually say “NO!” very loudly, then walk away. If that doesn’t work, we firmly (but gently) hold her arm down. With our son, time-outs were effective at this age; our daughter puts herself in timeout and sings, so we had to figure something else out.
Anyway, you and your wife should do whatever works for your family. As long as she’s consistent and you both agree on the punishment (i.e., one of you isn’t going to step in and correct the other), you just have to wait it out. If possible, make sure you’re not subtly undermining your wife. I used to give my husband “suggestions” mid-argument because at one point when what he was doing clearly wasn’t working, he asked me to step in. It doesn’t work. It only lets your kid know that the parent on the receiving end doesn’t know what he or she is doing. If you have something to add, do it in private.
I wish I could give a recommendation for your wife taking things personally, other than, “Don’t take it personally.” At this age, really that’s all you can do. And, as stated above, it’s kind of a back-handed compliment. Little ones at that age can frequently hold it together until they’re with someone they know will love them always, no matter what. When they let loose, it’s usually because they trust the person they’re venting on.