Parenting Advice

[asecretchord]

Don't know if this is the right place to post, but here I go. My son is 2 1/2 and he was hitting a little boy in daycare this morning. The daycare lady put him in time out and I had a talk with him about hitting. Is there anything more I should do to stop this behavior?

[Colorawdo girl]

Hi...I nanny two boys, besides raising my own two. Time out is great. With some conversation about not hurting others.
I tell them how it hurts them to get hit and we dont want to hit others, as it hurts them. It is never ok to hit.

These boys do not get hit as discipline either. That makes a difference. If they did, they see violence begets violence.

Their discipline is mild and rarely needed. A favorite toy taken away for a while works well.

It does pass. Onto bigger stuff..haha eeeeeek.

[asecretchord]

Thanks!!!..................

[rawbabymama]

Don't know if this is the right place to post, but here I go. My son is 2 1/2 and he was hitting a little boy in daycare this morning. The daycare lady put him in time out and I had a talk with him about hitting. Is there anything more I should do to stop this behavior?

I think it is important to teach about empathy early...just letting him know when you hurt people, it hurts their feelings and whatnot. You can do this with play acting - like, make puppets with him and put on a play where one of the characters gets angry, hits the other, then the other is sad and has friends/parents comfort him. The angry puppet watches, then realizes he hurt the sad puppet and apologizes. If the sad puppet did something obnoxious to anger the angry puppet, the sad puppet can apologize too, they can be friends again and promise next time to talk it out.

My son used to hit other kids a lot at that age, and the empathy thing helped a lot. He doesn't hit anyone smaller than him or the same age because of this (larger than him...still working on that, LOL, but my son has neurological stuff going on, so this probably wouldn't apply).

Mainly, though, remember this behavior is normal at age 2 1/2.

Best Wishes,

Michele

[asecretchord]

Thanks a lot. Hopefully this won't happen again.

[ShantiLove]

Children go throug periods where they "experiments" with hitting. No need to take it to seriously as most children stop after a short time, but of course saying that it is not ok and teaching empathy is a good way. Im not a big fan of timeout. I belive that talking about it with both children is a better way. Ask the hurt child to tell how he/she feels about being hit, and give the child who hit a chance to explain why he did it. Expressing their feelings will teach both children to talk insted of using physical signals. They will learn other ways to deal with frustrations and anger and learn empathy from knowing what the consequesce of thier actions are.

Adele Faber wrote a great book on communication and Non violent communication is also great to use with children.