Toddler hitting self on head

[MuseMom]

My DS - 16 months - recently started hitting himself on the head with his hands. Hard! : Is this something to worry about? It bothers me a lot - especially when he does it in public. He is teething very heavily at the moment (6 are trying to get through) So I wonder if that is part of it?

[Yooper]

I think that is pretty normal. My dd did that, she has moved on to banging her head on the floor or wall to show us how mad she is. They stop pretty quickly when they figure out that it hurts. She is funny, she moves to a soft surface mid-tantrum.....

[mraven721]

Yes, DS, 19M, does that too. I don't know of a soultion. I tell him not to hit it hurts, then he'll kiss himself.

[Danae]

Liberty will do that too when she is teething. I try to ask her if something hurts and then she will, usually, point to where it hurts. Recently she started smacked herself on her left ear and lo and behold she had an ear infection!

[sleet76]

We're going through a phase in which my DD (21 mo) is sometimes hitting other children (and out dogs). We've been trying lots of different things to deter this behavior, and for a while, we were giving lots of attention to the child who had been hit. Well, when she realized that you got attention if you were hit, she started hitting herself. The first time, I screwed up in my reaction and gave her the response I had been giving others, "oh, no! that must have hurt, are you okay?" And a hug. Well, after that, she did it more and more... I've been completely ignoring it since then and she's not not doing it much anymore. Probably not the same thing as you are going through, but that's what's happening here...