How to deal with a pushy kid

[MamaBell]

My daughter is 2 and I'm going to start by saying she is not aggressive or pushy. She shares her toys, food, hugs, mommy, drinks, and anything else. She shares and shares and is always willing to go with the flow around new kids or old friends. I'm a stay at home mom and her uncle lives with us so she understands if an adult tells her to stop or please don't she respects the request and will correct her behavior.

We have a friend that is not like her at all. Refuses to share. Takes her toys. Hits her in the face. Pushes her out of the way. Goes out of his way to push her. It's really awful. His mom tries to get him to stop but nothing works. It's a battle from start to finish. I try asking him to be nice and to give her space. It doesn't matter if it's her toy or his or in our house he just takes and pushes and acts really hateful to her. I really like my friend and she knows her son is acting badly. The worst part is after he leaves I spend days correcting her to not hit and to be a nice young lady. I don't want her getting these ideas from him and I don't want her to never have play dates.

I'm lost as to how to deal with the boy when he does this all the time. And of course because it's my daughter I want to protect her. I've wanted to push him down and really yell at him to not be a jerk. Obviously I can't do that but it's so hard to see my kid get pushed and kicked over and over. His mom really tries to get him to stop. She even took him home and came back without him. It's not a lack of her doing something.

[mamazee]

Lots and lots of toddlers go through an aggressive stage at some point, I bet more than half even, and it isn't fair or right to label them "bullies", as it's just a developmental stage and not a personality trait. So long as kids aren't treated in a physically aggressive way, or taught that physical aggression works, they outgrow this stage. All a parent can do is tail their toddler and do damage control until it's outgrown.

Your daughter could also go thorugh an aggressive stage, as it is very common, and it wouldn't be fair to assume she "caught" it from another toddler. It's about not knowing how to interact, not knowing how to deal with frustration, and sometimes not having good language skills to tell people how you feel with words.

It might be a good idea to give these play dates a break for a few months to give this little boy some time to go thorugh this stage, and see if it's improved. If you do keep seeing the little boy during this stage of development, try to keep on top of things and protect your daughter, but also try to understand that this little boy is not a bully or bad, he's just going through a very very typical phase.