This week on Parenting, one parent asked how to go about stopping her three-year old from hitting his siblings.
Family psychotherapist Joanna Fortune's parenting advice this week was to change the approach when speaking to a toddler if he is being aggressive.
“In the last couple of months, my three-year-old has begun pushing, hitting and hurting”, they told Moncrieff.
“We've tried everything: talking to him and telling him why it's not okay, rewarding removing toys if he doesn't stop. That doesn't seem fair or a long-term solution.
“I can see a lot of what he's doing is for our attention, but I don't understand this as we give him so much of our time.
“I don't like the pattern we're getting into of constantly giving out to him. We're exhausted from the repetitive behaviour and losing patience with the whole situation and it's causing some bickering between me and my husband too.
“I also wonder how it must feel to him like we're all against him, always giving out and correcting him.
“He can often be a lovely kind boy. He loves helping me sometimes with housework or with changing his brother's nappy and can sometimes be really good with him, but it's usually short-lived.”
Parents teaching child letters. Image:Alamy.Family psychotherapist Joanna Fortune said that the emotion the parent reads on her child's face is likely the intensity of the emotion he’s feeling at the time rather than a manifestation of his desire to hurt anyone.
She stressed the importance of trying new methods to address the child’s behaviour.
“You’ve tried so much. You've tried behaviour modification things that rely on an understanding of cause and effect thinking.
“I really feel they're ineffective because developmentally he's too young for them to be anything other than ineffective.
“So I would stop doing those. They're going to drive you nuts.”
Parenting advice: Changing the approach
Joanna Fortune argued that at three-years old, the child probably doesn’t have the emotional vocabulary or fluency to express what he's feeling underneath this behaviour.
She said approaching boundaries with a toddler is very different to how one would do for an older child and recommended using shorter sentences to address him.
Toddler having a temper tantrum. Picture by: Alamy Stock.“Say it in fewer words”, she said.
“Then redirection and distraction. Instead of always listing out ‘don't do, don't do, stop doing’, is add in what he should do.
“So if you are saying ‘No, no hitting, give your brother a hug, give your brother a high five, group hug all together, and you redirect him into something, then bring him into a block building or his trains or his dinos or whatever whatever it is he likes to play, set him up with that, sit with him for a minute or two and get it going.
“It's OK then to let him see that you're comforting the hurtee rather than the hurter.
“It seems like he has a truckload of pent up frustration and energy and impulsivity in his little body.
“Get him out moving, jumping, crashing, rolling schooling, all of that stuff to help him work some of that out.”
Ms Fortune said the phase was likely to pass but that if it doesn’t the problem should be addressed.
Main Image: Babies playing on the floor with toys in a creche. Picture by: Alamy.
