"he's mean"

[moss]

This is what a little boy said about my little boy (aged 3) today. It's true. He can be really mean to other kids sometimes. He pulls toys out of people's hands, yells/screams at them, pushes and pounces on kids.

We do all kinds of things to try to encourage empathy and 'niceness'. we practice scenarios with ds and give him alternative ways to deal with things and help him practice at home. we model the kind of behaviour that we want him to use. tv is extremely limited--i have a few nonviolent videos that ds watches occasionally. we follow the feingold diet, and he eats really clean, natural, whole foods. he's NEVER been spanked, and i've only yelled at him once (and i apologized afterwards). i've read dozens of gd books, and i feel like we're doing everything the 'right' way, yet, still, there's this MEAN-ness. i realize that this can be a normal developmental thing for this age, but i really want to get it to stop because i'm totally not comfortable with my son playing the role of the bully.

[LiamnEmma]

He's normal. In my opinion, the kids who don't show aggression are the atypical--albeit more pleasant to be around--kids. I have one really aggressive child and one normal aggressive child. I also did the redirecting (well, I guess I still do, it's just not as necessary anymore), modeling appropriateness, acceptability, and finally resorted to a swift no-tolerance removal from the premises policy. I think he mostly aged out of it. He's still a wildly active child, but is far less aggressive now and very compassionate. I'm sorry. I think you're doing great things and have to wait it out a little.

It's also helped me along the way to remind myself that dh and I are both aggressive people. These days we're probably considered "assertive" and "opinionated" with "strong personalities" but the bottom line is that we're aggressive people who have learned to channel ourselves positively (for the most part). So given this, why would we expect anything but a double dose of it from our gene pool, kwim? This may not apply to you though. Hang in there. It gets better, and it really is within the developmental spectrum.