Jealous?

[littlebabydoll]

I have an 18 month old lil boy. We visit the park every morning and there I see another mommy who also comes every morning so we have formed a friendship. We talk as we swing our lil guys, follow them around and assist with buckets, dump trucks, slides, etc. We never just leave them to talk alone. My boy always says "bye bye" to them wanting them to go away though when they arrive or tries to leave the park. I think he knows mommy will give him 20% less attention. All of the sudden the last two days my boy has gone to hit my friends son who is 19 months. I feel like he is taking out his anger on my friends son. I blocked his hits and took him away from the other little boy asap explaining he can not do that, lil friend has feelings too and hitting hurts. It also would upset me and his mommy a great deal. We returned to the conversation twice and my DS also woke up reenacting the situation. I've been taking a break from the park for a few days for some extra one on one attention with my lil man. I'm a little scared to return for fear of any more hitting incidents. Will this pass? Is he just having a bad week? My DS needs to learn somehow mommy can have friends, right? The rest of the day/night is all dedicated to him as I am a SAHM.

Background: He has been talking a TON for a month now and said words since he was 12 months as well as signs. He seems to be putting together two words this week more too. I feel there is no home stress going on. He suddenly started telling me when he pees or poos and is very open to potty training. This week he also decided nursing to sleep isnt what he wants, he wants a car ride to go to sleep! He asks "car". Erg, what is up!?! Is he weaning? It is just a frustrating age?

[ellemenope]

DD had a verbal explosion at 18 months, too. In her case, one week she started saying any word she could think of. The next week, she stated combining words. The week after that she was speaking in sentences. Within two months time she was full blown conversant.

And, there were some disturbances in her behaviour and sleep during the first couple of weeks. I didn't know at the time how big this language explosion was going to be. I kept waiting for her to level off at each new verbal miliestone. But, she never has.

My point is, during those first few weeks I kept thinking to myself she was a bit off. Now, I fully believe it had something to do with her brain just being consumed with learning how to talk. I get a feeling you are suspecting the same thing.

[littlebabydoll]

thank you for the insight! It does seem like a time where everything is changing all at once, yet again! DS really understood how to share the last couple months and him suddenly being so defensive of toys and the hitting is out of no where! I'm trying to nip this one in the bud with lots of talks about it, but when I bring the hitting up he goes to hit who ever is close reenacting it all.

I'm trying to tell him the words he can use instead of actions. Maybe that will help a little?

[physmom]

Sounds a lot like what is going on here too. DD (also 1.5 years old) been going on a rather consistent verbal leak (not quite an explosion )for a few months now. She'll sign sentences but won't speak them yet but she will say stuff like "car" and then wait a second or two and say "blue" so I think she's getting there.

As for the hitting, we have the same. But in our case, I think she's jealous of the cat! We got our cat very young and she does something like nursing (she'll cuddle into my arm and lick it and kneed it while purring). Many times she'll do this on the opposite side while DD is nursing and sometimes she gets very upset! Lately she's been grabbing the cat's tail and squeezing as hard as she can. We just remove her hands and tell her "no" and explain that that hurts our cat.

She's also been squeezing our cat around the neck. I *think* she has been trying to take off our cat's head because she has a doll that has a head that can be removed (unfortunately DH showed her that) and she's been really obsessed with seeing us take the doll apart and put it back together. So I think the head thing is more seeing if that works on living beings also. But we do the same, tell her that she can't do that to our cat, that it hurts her etc.

FWIW, I think it's good for kids to see parents have friends/hobbies and that they don't need our attention 100% of the time. We've slowly been introducing DD to independent play and many times will step back when she's playing so she learns that. She also sees me reading a lot at home or cooking/cleaning. She's even started to join in and will pretend to read while I am too or try and sweep at the same time, etc.

[ellemenope]

Originally Posted by physmom

She's also been squeezing our cat around the neck. I *think* she has been trying to take off our cat's head because she has a doll that has a head that can be removed (unfortunately DH showed her that) and she's been really obsessed with seeing us take the doll apart and put it back together. So I think the head thing is more seeing if that works on living beings also. But we do the same, tell her that she can't do that to our cat, that it hurts her etc.

For a while DD was obsessed with taking mommy and daddy's necks off. At least that is how she verbalized it. She would constatly say, "I want to take you neck off." Luckily for us this only consisted of a nice little hand hug around our necks, nothing violent. Oddly that was the only body part she wanted removed.

So, yeah, you are probably right.