3 year old hitting and kicking little brother

[chkpea]

I know this has probably been posted many a time but I don't have time to sift through old threads, and I am at a loss! He seems to quite enjoy picking on him. It's when James is sitting on the floor I see him lifting his foot off the floor, etc. Is it a call for attention? probably. But he does get a lot of attention from us. I wonder why he does it and then laughs about it, then he apologizes? What should his consequence be? How do I get him to stop? When he does this it really really really angers me! Tonight I just blew my top with him and yelled. Not something I like to do but I am sick and exhausted and that is what happened.
Please Help

[mommy2AandZ]

I really have no advice. As we are in the same boat kinda. Once in awhile I see my son getting a little aggresive towards the little one. The other day he was in a bad mood from a bad nights sleep, and he walked up to the baby, put his hand on her head and kinda pushed it forward. I was so angery, at this. I didn't know what to do. and when I say, "why were you mean to your sister" he says, "yeah I was"... ugh.

[Erin+babyAndrew]

I have a 1 year old and a 3 year old. Sometimes big brother will push the little one and I ask him to remind me what he's supposed to do if the baby is in his way, or he wants the baby to be moved. He knows he is supposed to ask for help to move him, trade the toy with him, share snack etc... 99% of the time now he is asking for help, or moving on to do something else and is super nice to the baby. hth

[swampangel]

I have to say I'm a bit hard lined on this issue. I strongly feel that it's important for my children to feel safe in our house and family. Hurting someone else is never OK. We make that very clear to our son (we actually did this more with peers when he was about 2 and we have had no issues since our ds #2 was born 9 months ago. Older ds is 4 now.). We didn't go into lengthy explanations or engage him in a conversation (he was also quite a bit younger then). We just said "we don't hit". We talk a lot about feeling frustrated or angry and ideas for him to deal with those feelings, always reminding that hurting someone else isn't an option.

Can you pre-empt it? By that, I mean can you see when it might be coming and address his feelings of anger or irritation with the baby before he comes into contact with him? We did that with our son because for him it was an impulse control issue.

Good luck...I can really understand how exhausted you're feeling by it.