How do you handle hitting?

[Storm Bride]

This has been an ongoing problem with ds2, and it's flaring up again right now. He's throwing things, hitting people, etc. He doesn't listen, doesn't cooperate, and doesn't stop. I'm finding myself thinking "he needs a swat" more and more lately. I don't know if I think it would do anything. I'm just insanely frustrated with this behaviour and it just doesn't stop!

What do you all do if your child hits a sibling (or anyone else, for that matter)?

[mom2grrls]

I make sure he's well rested.  My son will resort to hitting when he's overtired.

[Storm Bride]

DS2 has that problem, too...but making sure he's well rested is one of the areas where he doesn't cooperate at all. I may reinstitute a nap a couple times a week, but I can't force him to sleep, yk?

Thanks for the input. To some extent, I've reached the point where I'm more-or-less marking time until we start the assessment/evaluation process for him.

[AutumnAir]

I'm having a lot of trouble with this with DD1 right now too.  She's taken to shoving/kicking her baby sister, and slapping/hitting/kicking me.  It's tough to know how to deal with it, because it's not a lack of self-control issue - she's doing it very deliberately in order to make me angry, because she *knows* it's the best, most reliable way to push my buttons.  Other things I can (usually) stay calm and patient about, but the hitting of me or the baby are guaranteed to make me mad and she knows it.  She generally accompanies such behaviour with 'Get angry with me Mummy.  I'm naughty.'  

Sigh...

I don't really know how to deal with it either.  Obviously I try to protect DD2 from her, but that just opens me up to being hit, without recourse to being able to protect myself very well because now I have the baby in my arms.  I usually have to resort to physical interventions - physically holding her so she can't hurt me (more difficult than it sounds) or bodily carrying her to her room and closing the door on her.  I hate doing this because she gets terribly upset by it, but really, what else am I supposed to do? I also sometimes just scream at her in frustration which has the result of her running off to her room and crying too.  She will usually come back all contrite and full of 'Sorry mama' s a few minutes later, but only after she's made sure that I've lost my patience and become angry with her.  The longer I try to be patient and GD the worse her behaviour gets, so it seems that the best thing to do is jump straight to being angry and yelling or physically dealing with her.  Which doesn't seem right to me, but I honestly don't know what else to do.

So, not much advise, sorry.  Just commiseration.

[azzeps]

I'm sorry.  I just wanted to say that, and that I know the feeling of thinking she could use a good smack.  That's how angry I get.  Then I get upset because I've gotten so angry and felt such anger towards my daughter.  But it really pushes my buttons.  The whole, "We don't hit" thing just doesn't seem to cut it, though.  And we're about to have another little one, which I am afraid will just become another target for her, and someone else for me to defend.  Mostly she hits Daddy and Grandma (her other caregiver) and sometimes me.  YAH, I know.  She hits her GRANDMA!!! It is SO upsetting to me when I hear about it.  My mom doesn't seem to be fazed by it except that she asks what I do when she hits me or Daddy, and I really don't have a better response other than "get away from her so she can't hit you."  :(  Sorry I'm not more helpful.

[xzaviers_mama]

How old is your little one?  My 21 month old is CONSTANTLY hitting.  Me, Dad, his brothers, the dog.  Anyone he can reach.

[Storm Bride]

Originally Posted by xzaviers_mama 

How old is your little one?  My 21 month old is CONSTANTLY hitting.  Me, Dad, his brothers, the dog.  Anyone he can reach.

He'll be six next month. :(

We're going to get him a blackout shade. I think part of the problem is that the sun is coming so early and it wakes him up. He was up too late last night, and he was still up as early as ever

[kdaisy]

Not much advice here either...I was here to post the same thing.

My 3 yo's hitting has really gotten out of hand.  It is usually directed at his baby sister, but today he had to leave his tumbling class because he was head-butting other kids! 

We are trying time-outs but they are laughable, really.  He throws a tantrum, won't stay in the time out, hits whomever is trying to keep him in the time-out...etc.

We really are at our wit's end.

[umsami]

Both of my older boys have gone through phases of hitting and throwing.  My eldest (7 almost 8) still does on occasion--even biting.  It's very frustrating.  A lot of it has to do with managing his emotions/anger.  We try and employ the "kids do as well as they can" type mind set--and have been working with him on anger management techniques.  Of course, when he's angry, the last thing he wants to do is do anger management techniques. 

At one point, we had an inflatable spider man thing that he could knock down and it would bounce back up.  He enjoyed playing with it--but it didn't seem to keep him from hitting his brother when his brother did something.

I have gotten better at knowing his triggers, though--so now I'm working to actively diffuse the situation before he hits/bites.  It's not ideal--but getting better.

We also say "You choose the action, you choose the consequence"--having a chart of hitting and the punishment, biting and the punishment, seems to have helped a bit--because it doesn't seem like whatever punishment we may impose is random.  

[hakeber]

DS went through a brief phase of this and my niece has always been a hitter.

I am sure by the age of six you have probably tried all these things but here goes:

The thing that worked best with DS was to start really paying attention to his cues and triggers and pre-empting them as much as possible (pretty easy with one kid to worry about though, with four on your radar it is no doubt really hard).  I made sure he had a protein packed breakfast and stayed away from anything with artificial coloring in it.  Those two things helped enormously, and the minute he started to show signs of iritability I offered him more food and he almost always took it and it helped to cheer him up.  If he didn't I'd offer a distraction, a video, coloring, a craft, any activity that was quiet and relaxing.  On days now when for example DH is in charge of breakfast and he gives him a bowl of Daddy's secret stash of Frosted Flakes (grrrrrr) and it's 12 noon and he still hasn't had so much as a peanut's worth of protein, he is aggressive, whiny, irritable and I just sort of try to take a deep breath and remember it isn't really his fault.  Usually on those days I down load a new video and try to go with distraction and restfulness.  I also resign myself to the fact that I am going to have to watch his every move all day to look for signs of crashing.  It's SO annoying.  

I turned the clocks ahead 30 minutes a day for a week until his bed time was about 6-7pm, then just put them back one day and he never noticed...and when we lived in scotland and in the sum mer the sun was setting at 11:00 pm and then rising again at 2am, I taped opaque black garbage bags over his windows to keep the sun out...he'd sleep from 7pm -11am some days.  But now at about 6 he'll sleep for 12 hours if his room is dark enough.  If you can't get blackout blinds right now, try the garbage  bags, I know it's not pretty, but it's effective.

How are his writing skills?  Can he write down some of his feelings? Or maybe draw pictures to release it? 

Once you already have an overtired under fed anger machine with fist of fury flying around the house though, the only thing I have been able to do to stay safe and calm him down was to pick him up and move him to another space and sit him down and sit down NEXT to him, side by side. I remember reading somewhere that boys respond better to the side by side approach when really upset than girls who need the face to face thing....I wish I could recall where.  I don't know how reliable the study was but it has worked great with DS.  I sit him firmly up and on his bed or a step or a chair and I sit beside him rather than facing him, and I say "What do you need?" and I calmly but firmly and in a slightly lower pitch than my normal voice (the same article I read said boys do not hear the high pitched voice of stress, terror and placation that most women tend to use when trying to communicate with children) and I just keep repeating that until he gives me an answer. If he swings at me I intercept his arms and hold firmly and say "No, we don't hit.  What do you need?"  and if he runs away I firmly return him to the talking place and say "What do you need?"  until we get an answer.  The longest this ever took was about 2 and half hours.  It took place in the backyard on the swing set.  I remember saying at one point, "Buddy, we're not going anywhere, or doing anything until I get an answer, because I need to know how to help you.  It's up to you, Benjamin.  I can wait here all day."     Luckily DH ws home and able to take care of DD.  I can't imagine anything practical that would allow you to also look after a toddler...any chance you could get a little help from your partner?

When my niece comes over for a visit I just keep constant vigilance over her and hr interactions with the others and the second it looks like she is going to get violent (which is about every 30 minutes or so) I offer a distraction. Her parents are just resigned to the fact that they have a hitter and the first offense they say "Ruuuuuuuth!" and the second offense they say "do you want a smack on the bum, Miss!"  and the third or fourth or fifth time around they finally pick her up and take her upstairs and smack her bum and then she comes down stairs and starts throwing thing, and pinching people again. This wasn't really working for me in terms of keeping people safe in my home.  The vigilant approach has limited the violence a lot, but it's is exhausting and I am glad I only see them for a week or so at a time when they visit or we go there.  We have also told her sisters and my son to recognize the cues and stay away from her, saying "it seems like you want to be alone...we'll be over here when you want to play nice.", closing doors if they have to to protect themselves, and if she does tough them violently to say NO very loudly and firmly (so an adult can hear), deflect using typical self defense slip away moves and blocking techniques, call for an adult immediately and get up and away. According to my SIL she has gotten so much better this last year.  I hope that's true.  Since the day she left her dental records on my son's face I have been hard pressed to trust her with my children out of my line of sight.

I guess this has not been very helpful.  But you're not alone.  How much longer until the ped visit?

[Storm Bride]

Originally Posted by hakeber 

DS went through a brief phase of this and my niece has always been a hitter.

I am sure by the age of six you have probably tried all these things but here goes:

The thing that worked best with DS was to start really paying attention to his cues and triggers and pre-empting them as much as possible (pretty easy with one kid to worry about though, with four on your radar it is no doubt really hard).  I made sure he had a protein packed breakfast and stayed away from anything with artificial coloring in it.  Those two things helped enormously, and the minute he started to show signs of iritability I offered him more food and he almost always took it and it helped to cheer him up.  If he didn't I'd offer a distraction, a video, coloring, a craft, any activity that was quiet and relaxing.  On days now when for example DH is in charge of breakfast and he gives him a bowl of Daddy's secret stash of Frosted Flakes (grrrrrr) and it's 12 noon and he still hasn't had so much as a peanut's worth of protein, he is aggressive, whiny, irritable and I just sort of try to take a deep breath and remember it isn't really his fault.  Usually on those days I down load a new video and try to go with distraction and restfulness.  I also resign myself to the fact that I am going to have to watch his every move all day to look for signs of crashing.  It's SO annoying.  

The protein thing helps, but there are days that he absolutely refuses to eat anything with protein, and trying to get him to have some will actually trigger a meltdown (including hitting). He likes hard-boiled eggs, but only when he wants them, yk? He doesn't get any cereals with a lot of sugar, but he does eat cold cereal almost every morning. (We have a separate issue, in that I'm exhausted, and my body clock is messed up, and I'm the last one up almost every morning.) Distractions vary. He's been 100% resistant to arts and crafts until recently (and what a relief when that changed!). He loves screen time, but gets really, really obsessive about it. So, it's a little crazy sometimes.

I turned the clocks ahead 30 minutes a day for a week until his bed time was about 6-7pm, then just put them back one day and he never noticed...and when we lived in scotland and in the sum mer the sun was setting at 11:00 pm and then rising again at 2am, I taped opaque black garbage bags over his windows to keep the sun out...he'd sleep from 7pm -11am some days.  But now at about 6 he'll sleep for 12 hours if his room is dark enough.  If you can't get blackout blinds right now, try the garbage  bags, I know it's not pretty, but it's effective.

I hadn't even thought of doing that. I'll give the garbage bags a try. He's definitely having trouble with waking up too early. That also has a domino effect, because he wakes up his older sister, and sometimes his younger one, and me and dh...and then everyone is over tired and cranky!

How are his writing skills?  Can he write down some of his feelings? Or maybe draw pictures to release it? 

His writing skills are poor. He's getting to where he can form all the letter reasonably well, and his spelling is very good. But, he uses the written word in very straight descriptive terms...so he mostly uses simple nouns, or colour words. He doesn't really write about feelings at all. And, his picture drawing hasn't really gone in that direction yet, but I can try to encourage that.

Once you already have an overtired under fed anger machine with fist of fury flying around the house though, the only thing I have been able to do to stay safe and calm him down was to pick him up and move him to another space and sit him down and sit down NEXT to him, side by side. I remember reading somewhere that boys respond better to the side by side approach when really upset than girls who need the face to face thing....I wish I could recall where.  I don't know how reliable the study was but it has worked great with DS.  I sit him firmly up and on his bed or a step or a chair and I sit beside him rather than facing him, and I say "What do you need?" and I calmly but firmly and in a slightly lower pitch than my normal voice (the same article I read said boys do not hear the high pitched voice of stress, terror and placation that most women tend to use when trying to communicate with children) and I just keep repeating that until he gives me an answer.

Side by side doesn't seem to work with ds2. He just throws himself into my arms, or continues to meltdown. Sitting across from him is a little better, but he generally ends up in my lap, no matter how we start the conversation.

 If he swings at me I intercept his arms and hold firmly and say "No, we don't hit.  What do you need?"  and if he runs away I firmly return him to the talking place and say "What do you need?"  until we get an answer.  The longest this ever took was about 2 and half hours.  It took place in the backyard on the swing set.  I remember saying at one point, "Buddy, we're not going anywhere, or doing anything until I get an answer, because I need to know how to help you.  It's up to you, Benjamin.  I can wait here all day."     Luckily DH ws home and able to take care of DD.  I can't imagine anything practical that would allow you to also look after a toddler...any chance you could get a little help from your partner?

DH helps a lot when he's home. He actually mostly takes over the parenting when we're both here. But, this goes on a lot during the week while dh is at work. I can remember doing something similar to what you describe with my nephew, but ds1 was older than dn, so I was able to kind of let him go. If dd2 sees me spending that kind of time with ds2, she'll break in to nurse, which makes bringing ds2 back to where we were talking (If he bolts, which he usually does), very difficult.

When my niece comes over for a visit I just keep constant vigilance over her and hr interactions with the others and the second it looks like she is going to get violent (which is about every 30 minutes or so) I offer a distraction. Her parents are just resigned to the fact that they have a hitter and the first offense they say "Ruuuuuuuth!" and the second offense they say "do you want a smack on the bum, Miss!"  and the third or fourth or fifth time around they finally pick her up and take her upstairs and smack her bum and then she comes down stairs and starts throwing thing, and pinching people again. This wasn't really working for me in terms of keeping people safe in my home.  The vigilant approach has limited the violence a lot, but it's is exhausting and I am glad I only see them for a week or so at a time when they visit or we go there.  We have also told her sisters and my son to recognize the cues and stay away from her, saying "it seems like you want to be alone...we'll be over here when you want to play nice.", closing doors if they have to to protect themselves, and if she does tough them violently to say NO very loudly and firmly (so an adult can hear), deflect using typical self defense slip away moves and blocking techniques, call for an adult immediately and get up and away. According to my SIL she has gotten so much better this last year.  I hope that's true.  Since the day she left her dental records on my son's face I have been hard pressed to trust her with my children out of my line of sight.

I can understand that. DS2, fortunately, hasn't really developed the biting thing. (*knock on wood*)  That one is incredibly hard on everybody - one of my nephews was a biter, and I remember what it was like. We definitely need to work on some better strategies. This whole situation is wearing on everyone in the house, but especially ds2, dh and me. And, I can't parent any of the kids well if I'm this exhausted from dealing with ds2 (obviously, it's not only from dealing with him - dd2 keeps me awake at night, too and I'm just really wiped, all around). It's just...draining.

I guess this has not been very helpful.  But you're not alone.  How much longer until the ped visit?

I have to double check. I wrote the date down somewhere, but misplaced it before I transferred it to my calendar.It's in July - I keep thinking it's the 17th, but that's a Sunday, so it's not! I'm pretty sure it's mid-month. 

[hakeber]

The protein thing helps, but there are days that he absolutely refuses to eat anything with protein, and trying to get him to have some will actually trigger a meltdown (including hitting). He likes hard-boiled eggs, but only when he wants them, yk? He doesn't get any cereals with a lot of sugar, but he does eat cold cereal almost every morning. (We have a separate issue, in that I'm exhausted, and my body clock is messed up, and I'm the last one up almost every morning.) Distractions vary. He's been 100% resistant to arts and crafts until recently (and what a relief when that changed!). He loves screen time, but gets really, really obsessive about it. So, it's a little crazy sometimes.

You'd be surprised what you can sneal protein into.  I bought this vanilla flavored protein sports shake mix stuff it has 5 gms of protein per teaspoon.  I put one or two teaspoons (depending on the sleep factor) into the follow items, and he has not ever noticed the difference, and he has a very sensitve palate:

Smoothies

Pancake batter

Milk for cold cereal

Yogurt

Hot chocolate

Granola bar batter

Chocolate chip  and oatmeal banana cookie batter (These last two I put in a half cup to distribute across several portions)

Cream cheese for cinnamon raisin bagels

I got it at the supermarket near the diet and health stuff. 

I also try to keep whole grain pasta and bread in the house and he has gotten used to these and doesn't really notice, but the difference in protein is pretty major.  I also let him have left overs for breakfast sometimes, like a slice of cold pizza, or left over meatballs, it doesn't have to be breakfast food (that's why god made the microwave, right?) 

I suppose some moms might think it is deceptive and cruel to trick a child to eat certain things, and that it might teach them inappropriate eating habits...but I'll resort to anything to keep him from becoming the beast he can be when he is carb loaded.  I just cannot handle him like that.  I feel it is the lesser of two evils, the other one being the two of us in a deadheat non-stop all out no holds barred conflict all day long.  It's not like I'm dosing him with prozac or lithium or anything, ya know?  It IS good for him.

The middle of july is a long way away.  I hope the bags work and maybe you can find a way of sneaking extra protein into his favorite breakfast foods.

[Storm Bride]

Originally Posted by hakeber 

You'd be surprised what you can sneal protein into.  I bought this vanilla flavored protein sports shake mix stuff it has 5 gms of protein per teaspoon.  I put one or two teaspoons (depending on the sleep factor) into the follow items, and he has not ever noticed the difference, and he has a very sensitve palate:

Smoothies

Pancake batter

Milk for cold cereal

Yogurt

Hot chocolate

Granola bar batter

Chocolate chip  and oatmeal banana cookie batter (These last two I put in a half cup to distribute across several portions)

Cream cheese for cinnamon raisin bagels

I got it at the supermarket near the diet and health stuff. 

I also try to keep whole grain pasta and bread in the house and he has gotten used to these and doesn't really notice, but the difference in protein is pretty major.  I also let him have left overs for breakfast sometimes, like a slice of cold pizza, or left over meatballs, it doesn't have to be breakfast food (that's why god made the microwave, right?) 

I suppose some moms might think it is deceptive and cruel to trick a child to eat certain things, and that it might teach them inappropriate eating habits...but I'll resort to anything to keep him from becoming the beast he can be when he is carb loaded.  I just cannot handle him like that.  I feel it is the lesser of two evils, the other one being the two of us in a deadheat non-stop all out no holds barred conflict all day long.  It's not like I'm dosing him with prozac or lithium or anything, ya know?  It IS good for him.

The middle of july is a long way away.  I hope the bags work and maybe you can find a way of sneaking extra protein into his favorite breakfast foods.

We only use whole grain bread, but are usually about 50/50 with pasta. DH doesn't like meals made with only whole grain pasta. *sigh*

I have no issue with sneaking in protein - just never thought of using the powder. We still have meltdowns, but they're not generally quite as intense (or frequent) when he starts with some protein. I'll give that a try. I'm not usually up when he has breakfast (I've got something going on with my health, too), but if dh or dd1 makes it, they could sneak in the powder, too. We may not even need to sneak it. If he likes it, he'll be fine with it.

[Cyllya]

OP, your description of your DC reminds me of all the stories I've heard of kids with food intolerances. Have you tried anything like the Feingold Program?