How do we work with this one?

Marmee · #1 (**permalink**) 04-07-2007, 10:21 PM

Looking for the wonderful help that I always get here at NP!

Our darling 21 month old is challenging us at present.

She is journeying through a throwing, scratching, sometimes biting, and hitting phase.

Her poor brother (6 years) cops a lot of it. At times his sweet face has looked as if a cat has been sitting on it

Actually, it is only directed at us, her immediate family. Yet to happen with friends, other children etc.

The scratching and biting seem to happen for no rhyme or reason. For example, with our newest additon, we have had to put DS in the middle in the back of the car. Little Miss 21 month old thinks it's great just to sit there and scratch her brother. She just keeps at him and at him until we raise our voices.

The hitting happens if she doesn't get what she wants or if something is taken from her and she isn't happy. This behaviour is probably the least of our worries....but where does it come from? She has never seen us hitting anyone, nor can I think of a time that she's seen anyone hit or lash out at another person. Weird....

The throwing is usually when she has finished something (her dinner or a book for example), or if she has something that she knows she shouldn't have and she's been caught out (eg: a camera or mobile phone). This wouldn't usually bother us, except now that we have a 2 week old baby, books are getting thrown in his face!

In all cases we try to divert attention, tell her what she needs to do (eg: keep hands to yourself, put book on table), ignore, and even smothering the victim with cuddles (after all, DS is suffering here!!)

Ahhhhh dear.

Any thoughts on how we can move through this phase with our darling girl and remain relatively sane???? As you can tell....our son passed this phase completely. We are very unskilled at this

xoxo

Marmee · #2 (**permalink**) 04-07-2007, 10:25 PM

Oh - and I should add, most of this has been going on for at least a month now.....does it only last for 6 weeks

We can do 6 weeks!!

emd · #3 (**permalink**) 04-07-2007, 11:16 PM

Oh gosh. I hope it passes soon!

Sophia went through a stage of doing this only to her trusted people (me, DH, MIL) at this age. It passed when Sophia was able to use her words to express frustration or needs.

Jools went through this phase much earlier - around 1yo - but with EVERYONE. It passed when she was able to use her words, and when she started walking and was therefore less threatened by other older children. It lasted months, and caused a bit of distress at childcare.

Marmee · #4 (**permalink**) 04-07-2007, 11:19 PM

I remember Jools' journey, Emma. And you're still sane......

Hailstorm · #5 (**permalink**) 04-07-2007, 11:26 PM

Hailey went through a similar stage when we moved from QLD to Melb, she was about 18 mths, she would head bang things and throw tanties left right and centre (don't blame her really the move was really hard on all of us...) She then went trough it a few weeks before Ben was born and for a little while afterwards, she is still quite young and prolly isn't aware of any other way to get her point accross, her life has changed dramatically with the arrival of a new bub and she might be trying ti find out where she fits in iykwim, I found that taking time with Hailey to do something special just me and her whenever i could helped to reassure that she was a massive part of my life...am I making sense? I hope so.
HTH

Emmandcasp · #6 (**permalink**) 05-07-2007, 12:40 PM

Just wanted to add- O is biting and hair pulling non stop to me and DH. He has pulled handfuls of hair out of my head and made C bleed with bites. I do think its a age thing and am also at a loss with how to deal with it. So far he just laughs at me if I get cross...

emd · #7 (**permalink**) 05-07-2007, 02:33 PM

I just remembered another trigger for Sophia in that phase - if I sat down to bf Jools. Sophia would start hitting me, and if that didn't work then she would hit the baby.

I adopted a zero tolerance policy for hitting by pushing her away and refusing to acknowledge her til she stopped hitting. This is a very slow method of getting the message through to a toddler, but it works eventually.

After a few months, I worked out that if I offered Sophia a feed as soon as the baby was finished, she would be happy about baby bf'ing for the rest of the day. If I refused it, she would be at me and at me and at me... She never learned to attach properly, just wanted to know she was still my baby too.

I didn't tell many people when I was doing it at the time. But as MIL says, you can only do what you can live with. DH never had a worry about it, and the hitting stopped.

Marmee · #8 (**permalink**) 05-07-2007, 02:39 PM

Thanks everyone. yes - you make perfect sense, Kylie.

Emma - hopefully it will soon pass for Otto aswell??? It's not easy, heh?

No-one has told me it will only be a 6 week phase, though

C'mon friends!! Make it easy on me

emd · #9 (**permalink**) 05-07-2007, 02:49 PM

Couple of months isn't much longer than six weeks

I also did what Kylie did with spending some special time with the toddler. I could only do it on Saturday mornings when DH could take Jools for a few hours. It didn't help as much as getting her to use her words and the bf'ing thing, but all those little things can add up to a whole lot of improvement.

Hippy_Lover · #10 (**permalink**) 15-07-2007, 09:18 PM

Hi, been awhile since i seen you guys but Hunter (almost your DD age has been doing the same thing for about 3 months now, ive been told its a faze but im hopeing it will end sooner or later.
No real advice but i huge hug and hope it works out verry soon, i am the one who cops most of it in this house from Hunter and at times i get so upset with what he dose i walk away crying cos i cant understand why he is doing it. I know he wants something but i dont know what, so i guess try to work it out? Thats what im doing.