3 YO and 14 mo old brother

[peaceful_mama]

She's started hitting, pushing, whatever to get "her way"with him. like when he takes something she wants, whether she was actually playing with it or not.

On another related topic, she also has tried to hit and bite me and calls both me and her grandma names when she gets mad.

WHAT TO DO? She does not do this with DH. He takes them in time out in the morning.
The only time time-out even begins to work with her is in the morning when I send her in to her dad before he gets up. He pretends to sleep and keeps them there. (He works nights, he'd rather have them in time-out with him though if they are being loud/causing trouble than just listen to it and not be able to relax at all.)

Any other time, if I do time out with her she will run back. I'm not for the whole Supernanny thing of sitting them in the spot over and over and over for hours. It's just not practical when I've got two other children's needs, house chores, and cooking to consider.

There is the possibility of me sitting with her. And giving her positive attention.

but if I don't "DO SOMETHING" I've got to listen to my mom, who lives here, that I don't "do anything to her" and that I "favor her and baby her"

So when it's just not practical to enforce an isolated time out and you don't spank....what do you do?! (besides the obvious needs too. She is transitioning to not napping and this is a HUGE factor)

[Magella]

I would focus on helping her learn better ways of expressing her feelings, to replace the hitting, name-calling and biting. When mine were small like that, I would stop them and say something like "You're angry. You may NOT hit, that hurts. You can say 'I'm angry!'" or "Stop! You may NOT hit/push/grab. Use your words. Say 'brother, I want a turn.'" Keep it short, keep it age-appropriate. Help her learn to identify and express her feelings, help her learn to say what she wants or needs, help her learn to stay calm long enough to use those words. It takes a lot of repetition. A lot. I have found that focusing on teaching skills is very effective in the long run. An excellent book to help with this is "Raising A Thinking Child" by Myrna Shure, which is all about helping kids learn emotional, cognitive, communication, and problem solving skills.

Just as a sort of side-not, I'm not against all forms of time-out. I think taking some time to calm down, taking a break, when you're angry/frustrated is an excellent skill to learn. The most helpful way for us to approach time-out here is to simply have the child sit in the same room with us until they are calm ("sit here until you are calm. We'll talk when you're calm" is how it works here, though we've also said "you hit, so you sit here until you are ready to be safe"). I've found that my kids do sit when they don't have to be separated separated from us (so there's no need to keep bringing them back to time-out a la Supernanny), it's that step of isolating them in another room that adds another layer of difficulty. When kids are upset, sometimes being isolated from us is just too much to add.