Ds smacks his head when I try to teach him to be gentle

[mamada]

Does anybody else have a child who did this? Ds is almost 2 years old. Sometimes he gets rough when playing with me or dh, and he'll push our face or smack us. I know he's not doing it to hurt us, he just gets carried away with the excitement of playing. When he does this, I say in a serious voice, "No. It hurts mama/daddy when you hit." And then I say in a gentler voice, "Be gentle when you touch." Then I will take his hand and touch it to my face or dh's face (or wherever it is that he's hit or pushed) and I'll show him the amount of pressure that I think is acceptable, all the while saying, "See? Be gentle like this. Soft, soft, gentle...."

Ds will allow me to show him, but immediately after I let go of his hand he'll smack his own head. I don't know why he does this. Is he punishing himself? I used to take his hand and do the same thing, where I'd say, "No. We need to be gentle with you too" and guide his hand to pat his head gently. But as soon as I let go he'd smack himself again. So now I just ignore it when he does it because I'm afraid that paying attention to it will increase the behaviour. I have found that he smacks himself fewer times when I don't pay attention to it and pretend my focus is somewhere else. However, I would like it if he would just stop it altogether.

Ds doesn't have a problem with hitting or roughhousing. He has never hit other children, and is rather quite shy around other kids. He is very gentle when petting dogs. The only times he gets rough is when he's excited and playing with someone very familiar to him, like me, dh, or grandma. How can I emphasize the importance of not hitting or pushing when playing with his loved ones, without having him smack himself?

[InDaPhunk]

Worry not, my DS does the same thing. We tell him "soft hands" when he smacks us/his dearest friends/whomever- and then he looks us right in the eye and smacks his face. I was worried that this meant that he didn't like himself or some such psychologically damaging thing, but a quick search on the net showed me that this is fairly common behavior and tends to peter out with the advent of verbal skills. We're extrememly non-violent, no hitting, no spanking, no yelling, etc, so I have no clue what precipitated this behavior.

He seems to do it more when he's tired, at the end of along day, etc. It comes and goes. Last week he did it a lot, this week, not even once. I try to make saying "yes" a top priority and keep the "no's" to a minimum thereby keeping his frustration low, that seems to help. I try to do that anyway but you know how it is....

On a side note, DH thinks that it means that DS has a bit of an "edge" (or a little "crazy" ) due to the look he gets on his face right before he goes smack....like "Ok fine i won't smack you- I'll give you that much- but you can't keep me from smacking entirely so watch this *smack*". DH thinks this teeny bit of edge will help him later in life . I try to follow DH's lead and not take every darned thing too seriously or worry too much (and I think DH is the one with a little bit of "crazy" ).