Toddler Hitting Problems

Toddler hitting problems can be downright frustrating for parents to deal with. Controlling child behavior problems requires parents to be patient and to learn to understand what is going through your child’s mind and to learn how to properly guide your child in the right direction. After all, your toddler may have no clear concept of the difference between right and wrong. Your child may be blissfully unaware that his actions have very real consequences that can be felt by the victim of the hitting.

Toddler hitting problems are a means of expressing himself. It is not that your child is necessarily doing it out of pure anger and frustration. He may simply be trying to get a point across or communicate an idea. Toddlers also like to experiment with cause and effect. Perhaps he may want to see what happens if he hits another child.

So how can you, as a parent, deal with toddler hitting problems as such? Here are 5 tips on effectively controlling toddler bad behavior:

1. Do not hit your child as a punishment if he hits another child. By doing this, you are absolutely sending him the wrong message, that hitting is okay sometimes. So if you are one of those parents who believe in hitting your child as a form of discipline, it might be a good idea to rethink your strategy at this point. The key is to get inside the mind of your child and try to understand things from his perspective. It is not necessarily the case that your child is intentionally trying to hurt the other kid.

2. Pay attention to the child who was hit, not to the child who did the hitting. The idea here is to not reward your child’s hitting with attention, as that might encourage your child to think that he can get more attention from mommy and daddy if he hits more and more. By paying attention to the victim, you are disrupting your child’s thought process that associates hitting with pleasure (in the form of garnering parental attention), when he sees instead that the victim gets attention instead.

3. Explore alternative forms of discipline. You must make eye contact with your child and clearly explain to your child that what he did was wrong and that he hurt the other child. You may also punish your child with a timeout or other similar form of punishment.

4. Learn to anticipate hitting before it happens and redirect your child’s attention. If you are able to determine a discern-able pattern of repetitious behavior that leads up to hitting, then you should intervene and redirect your child’s attention or energies in such a way that he would not end up hitting in the first place.

5. Guide your child on how to use other means to achieve the same end. For example, if your child is hitting another kid due to a squabble over sharing a toy, then teach your child alternative means to resolve the dispute, such as by teaching him how to assertively but politely talk to the other child.

Toddler hitting problems are common. Controlling toddler behavior requires you to get into the mind of your child and to teach him. By hitting your child or screaming at him, you are sending him the wrong message.