One of my daughter’s twins is bullying the other - biting, pushing, etc.
If she puts him in his crib, it has no punitive effect He sings, talks, and so on. When the timeout is over, she talks to him about why he’s in there and why it’s wrong; he promises to behave, gives his brother a hug, but in no time is back at it.
Oh. She removes all toys from the crib.
Spanking is out. Any suggestions, please?
About all you can do at this age is use timeout. I’ve always heard of using a chair or something else to sit on in a corner (a crib is associated with comfort and should not be used) , one minute for every year of age. Might help to curb the behavior before it starts, with distraction and positive attention. Bad behavior= no attention and/or timeouts, good behavior= positive attention and praise.
A two-year-old is not quite at the level where you can tell him why something’s wrong and he’ll stop doing it because he knows better. Nor is he to a point that he will see a crib time-out as “punitive” and cry or think about his crimes if he would rather sing.
Alice has a good suggestion; I would switch to a chair in a corner. But the fact is that a two-year-old isn’t much good at impulse control, and it takes a lot of repetition before the lesson sinks in. She should keep explaining, and keep doing the time-outs, but that’s a long-term lesson and she needs an immediate help.
So prevention is a pretty major strategy at this point; it’s difficult if there are twins and one is dominating the other, but as much as possible Mom or Dad should be supervising to make sure to prevent the behaviors before they happen. When they can’t do that, separate play areas might be necessary for a while. The child is not going to be able to control himself for some time yet–so make it impossible for him to hurt his brother until he can.
How do you get the two-year old to stay in the chair? I never could.
I am afraid that my advice is more difficult for a parent of twins than for parent of a singleton. But nevertheless, here it is: the hands down best way to stop hitting and biting is not to let it happen. By the time the timeout comes up, it is in some ways too late. The reinforcements are working at cross purposes by then.
Hitting and biting usually comes at the end of a string of rapidly escalating frustration or conflict and the trick is to cut it off before it gets that far. With some kids that string is, er, shorter than with others. A mantra is useful in this connection – “if we cannot play nicely together we cannot play together” works pretty well, if it is accompanied by removing one child from the situation (physically or otherwise).
That it happens a lot is par for the course, two year olds are not noted for the strength of their empathy in general, nor the length of their memory for things they ought not to do.
I think a lot of people talk a great deal to very young children about their behavior and I think what the kids hear is that sound from the Peanuts tv shows: bwah bwa bwah bwah bwa. When I spoke to my children at 2 about their behavior my communications tended to be quite short and to the point. I did not elicit or encourage general promises to behave, for example, because they were meaningless to the child. I did encourage commitments to behave in specific ways for specific periods of time.
Honestly, most of what I found effective in dealing with my toddler sons I learned from many years of training and working with animals. Really, I hate to put it like that but it’s true. They want to do what you want most of the time: half the battle is getting them to remember that this is true at the relevant time and the other half the battle is making clear what it is you want. And the other half of the battle is patience. (If I could perform simple arithmetic I would have gotten an honest job).
It is good to catch them being good, this is worth a great deal – even though it seems sort of idiotic to congratulate a child for not hitting somebody even though they really wanted to, it does work.
Some kids see timeout as a fun power game (had one of those) and some are not bothered by it (had one of those too). I once confined my toddler son to his room and took out everything but his clothes…and looked in to find him happily carrying on a conversation between his left and right slippers. My only real effective use of “timeout” was when it was used before the hitting and so on, and I said then to my child that you have to leave a situation to get yourself under control sometimes, so you don’t hit. Even though you want to. So it was not really a punishment for us but a tool.
One of my nieces went through a biting stage. Her mother used a drop of hot sauce on her tongue any time she bit. By the end of the first day, my niece would open the refrigerator, see the hot sauce and say “Can’t like that”. She didn’t bite any more. I’m sure some people will be up in arms about that, but it was fast, it fit the crime and it worked.
StG
That approach was touted quite a bit a few years ago, and some states have deemed that it is child abuse. I would recommend checking your state laws before proceeding with the hot sauce.
(One person advocating this was actress Lisa Whelchel, who played Blair on the TV sit-com “Facts of Life.” Why I remember this, I’ve no idea.)
Twin parent here — separate them when it starts happening. And then distract, distract, distract, distract. Put enough toys away and out of reach that it’s easy to grab something “novel” (i.e., they haven’t seen it in a month and have forgotten about its existence). “You can’t have that, but you can have THIS!”
I usually made mine play in different parts of the room and that was enough to keep them apart. There are a lot of kinds of gates on the market, find something that’ll work in her house.
It may or may not be possible to find something punitive that really gets his attention.
Taking away toys is my favorite punishment, really. I put stuff on the fridge where it’s out of reach.
Talking? Reasoning? Explaining? Mmmm, not so much.
OK, sometimes I’d escalate to yelling when repeated attempts to communicate failed. I even spanked once, when he yanked her off the rocking horse and she hit the floor. On the whole, though, any kind of hitting on my part merely set a bad example, as they immediately began “spanking” each other. Ay yi yi.
The downside to punishment, if he’s like my son, is he’ll be very confused and hurt that following his natural desire to push and grab everything in sight is somehow worthy of punishment. I think my son felt unloved when he caught hell for it. I had to go out of my way to demonstrate that SHE got in trouble for taking HIS stuff, too. So, don’t attach a lot of meaning to it. He’s just being grabby - encourage your daughter not to label him as a “bully”, even when he’s being one.
Also recognize his triggers. Sometimes it’s particular objects, or being hungry, or tired, or having too much sugary food. Or - if the parents are having a tough time, the kids will often absorb it and act out a day or two later.
The full moon is also bad. My son has been a PITA today.
Another technique - give your granddaughter a minute to figure it out and she’ll bit him back, you can bet. That will teach him cause/effect real quick. She’ll have to go into timeout, just like he does, but…
Emphasize the positive “Hands are for loving”, all that stuff.
Some people advocate making a big fuss over the victim, while giving the perpetrator the cold shoulder.
My daughter also learned to bait-and-switch on toys, and to scream loudly when angry. For a while there I never did get a decent potty break, they’d go bananas whenever I stepped out of the room for just a fricking minute.
Another thing, give him an alternative besides biting. Is he verbal? Does he know any sign language?
My daughter bites when she’s really mad – but I quickly learned to recognize the sound of an escalating fight and catch them before she chomps him.
At age 2 I think I just separated them and settled the squabble (or, went ballistic, depending on how I was feeling), but now at nearly 4 they know how to argue and negotiate (it works about 65% of the time). How we got from there to here was just a LOT of days of trial and error.
Louise Bates Ames wrote a WONDERFUL series on child development, published in like 1986 and still on the shelf at my Borders. Really helped me. I’m SO GRATEFUL that I’m past 2.5 and 3.5 because each of those periods (about 4 months long) was absolutely hellish over here. Daycare, preschool, relatives and babysitters are the best option. And rum.
These are her kids? Then you BarnOwl can do nothing but follow your daughter’s lead. Unless you are babysitting, in which case I recommend what I do with the Hordling.
I use time outs with my daughter. Started with timing her out in her crib (emptied of everything), then gradually worked her way up to time out on a bench. Occasionally she tries to run away, but I just grab her, put her back on the chair, and tell her that the two minutes start again because she got up. On second and further offenses I just put her back and say “time out” – or nothing at all. No need for an explanation or interaction.
At the end of two minutes, I walk up to her and ask if she’s ready to apologize. If not, she’s told she’s there for another two minutes because she won’t apologize. If she’s still there after 3 reminders I’ll let her off as long as she’s being calm.
Some days are better than others, and some worse. Just be consistent in your approach, and try not to express your anger.
You know, if anyone had tried that on my brother or me, it’s quite possible that we would have taken to biting people on purpose. So depending on the kid, it may be counterproductive 
Oh yes, they’re my daughter’s boys. I started this thread with her permission, because although she’s read and read on the subject, she’s at her wit’s end.
I’ll be emailing her the link to the posts here in a nanosecond.
And I thank every one of you for your contributions.
I used to bite my younger sister. Nothing worked, until my mum bit me.
I don’t agree with not expressing your anger, as the mother. I think it’s really good for kids to learn that some of their behaviors make mom angry. And also that mom will forgive them for screwing up. Of course, there’s angry and there’s ANGRY; I do agree with keeping things in proportion.
Extinguishing bad behavior is just really tough and it takes forever. And then stuff comes back, doggone it.
But if your grandson likes being in his crib and doesn’t mind having his toys taken away, then that approach just isn’t going to work. She needs to keep experimenting to find something that DOES upset him.
And then whatever she does will have a downside that she’ll need to address a few months later. Such is life.
I’m not sure how I did it, but time-out in this household can be anywhere. It kind of surprised me. If I put her anywhere, couch, chair, floor, corner and tell her she’s in time-out, her little butt turns into concrete and super glue, she will not move.
That being said, she’s at the hitting stage and not even time out seems to be working. She is speech delayed and they have said that she has frustration because of that, so we are working on it.
I laughed about the hot sauce. My daughter is 2 and loves wasabi, Franks Hot sauce, curry, gyoza sauce (made with hot chili oil).
Please, keep the suggestions coming, I’ve been beaned in the head with a sippy cup too often. (Damned kid has great aim)
For a toddler with a language issue, I have somewhat different advice: get a magnetic whiteboard. Set up a calendar - when mine were that little I did one day calendars: now they are older and I use a month calendar.
Make or buy magnets with pictures or symbols or icons on them for the usual things you do and especially the ones she will hate (dentist, doctor, visiting Aunt Mabel, whatever). Every day, you start the day by going to the calendar and looking at the icons for today in the order in which they will apear. (I don’t remember when I went to the whole day; at one point I had before lunch and after lunch. Depends on her sense of time). If there is a change, go change it on the whiteboard in her presence. Or let her do it. Let her go ahead and have her feelings about the things she hates right there, it cuts down on tantrums later. (more on feelings later).
Also on the board you can put the date/day of the week and the weather.
At the bottom run a row of “emotion” icons. Faces with feelings on them. Have her rate her emotional state regularly in the beginning, and you do yours. As she gets used to it you can direct her there when the frustration cycle begins.
Eldest has a full blown language disorder (though at two he was just speech delayed) and I cannot tell you how much this helped.
Uh, adults, why do you always assume punishment is the answer? At that age, the answer is redirection. You must redirect them into a more productive activity. While you can explain why it is wrong (because it does slowly seep in), you cannot expect an easy fix at that age. It’s a trying age. And, usually it is the parents being tried!
Punishment isn’t the only answer, no, but IME it’s one of them.
Having twins can mean (depending on the kids’ temperament) that you HAVE to address this kind of thing on a daily basis. It’s not the same as having one kid (who can be taken home from playdates) or siblings with enough age difference that at least one of them has some self-control.
I did the redirect-redirect-redirect thing pretty well (to the extent that my kids imitate me by using all kinds of alternatives to a simple no), but it STILL came down to situations where the answer was a flat-out NO and TOUGH SHIT when they didn’t like it. And then negative consequences (i.e. punishment) when they persisted beyond that.
Age 2 is such a prickly time, and there’s a huge range of behaviors. 2 years 3 months is so different from 2 years 6 months, and 2 years 9 months. The same is true with age 3.
But tell your daughter, BarnOwl, that no matter what she does, there are going to be times when nothing works and the best she can do is just get through one day at a time. Sometimes there’s no such thing as “effective” discipline. Things WILL change, though! It DOES get easier, I swear!
Because some kids are stubborn and won’t be redirected. My daughter, now eight and a much more reasonable person, at two had a tantrum, fell asleep forty five minutes later mid-tantrum, and woke up to continue the tantrum.
Also, some of those smart little angels figure redirection is reward. If I bite my brother, mom comes and sits and reads to me. If I hit my brother, mom brings me my favorite toy. When redirection becomes reward for the kid, its not really effective at stopping the behavior - short term, yep - long term it creates a kid who acts out to get attention.
Redirection can be a great solution, but it needs to be one part of a parents toolkit. Some kids don’t respond to it, some respond too well to it and start to misbehave knowing they’ll get attention.
Where is the Voice or the Tone in here? My kids knew when they had gone too far (none of them were biters) by the tone of my voice, no smile on my face, stern look. Take the nice out–tell him, NO. and then redirect him. Not much else is going to work at 2 (I didn’t have much luck with timeouts–they were a helluva lot of work for me and didn’t do much).
When they got older, they got the Look. You all know the Look.
Are people redirecting after the kids bite/hit/whatever? In place of some kind of negative response or punishment?
In my house the purpose of redirection was to prevent the biting/hitting/whatever, and took place before that. As I said, if the biting/hitting has already happened all you can do is let the offender know that was bad in one way or another. But the real toddler fu is in redirecting before the hit/bite.
For a lot of kids, the actual hit/bite is self-reinforcing, it’s a great Rush of Power for a person who rarely has any. And once that has happened, then there is a great rush of attention and fuss (that it’s bad attention doesn’t really matter). So that’s what I mean by the reinforcements working at cross purposes.