About two weeks ago our sweet lovable 10 month old morphed into a little monster who hits, slaps, scratches, pinches and grabs. He slaps the spoon away from us when we bring it near his mouth, he slaps his Cheerios off his high chair, he snatches glasses off our face and throws them, he pulls stuff off shelves in the store as we walk by carrying him...you get the idea it is exhausting. Both DH and I are losing it quickly. I have tried researching methods to deal with it but have had a tough time finding anything directed at LO's smaller tha n 18 months. On our own we have tried telling him no- he laughs, holding his hands- he laughs some more, putting him down- he cries until you pick him up and then hits you again. We are at a loss. Please someone tell me there is hope and he will either outgrow this or we can fix it!
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Commenting to follow. My 9.5 month son has started doing a bit of this as well.
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I think it's normal and he'll outgrow it. My LO did that too and we tried the things you tried and she laughed. She's 16 months now and still does those things but not as often! I think it's a phase.
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I think some of it is the development stage he's at. He likes to throw/smack things because he's learning cause and affect. If he drops something, it makes a noise on the floor. So he drops things over and over again.
I've noticed with 9.5m DS, he tends to swat the spoon away more when he's tired. If we have dinner too late, he gets fussy and is much harder to feed.
As for the scratching/hitting stuff, I don't have much insight. DS loves to scratch and smack me too. Especially my chest :-/. I think some of it is a tactile thing - he likes to touch everything and feel his nails on stuff. The smacking I'm at a loss about. Apparently it's very funny.
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It's a developmental stage and totally normal.
We used positive phrases like "Let's be gentle" while holding her hands so she couldn't hit more, and she quit doing it after a while.
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@tillma: my LO was doing this too, along with biting. But similar to what I posted in the throwing-food-while-eating thread, recently my mom told me to try not responding AT ALL. Don't say "no", don't practice "gentle touch" right after she hits or slaps, just don't respond negatively OR positively when she does these things.
It's been really hard for me to do, because my instinct is to try to correct her, plus I was worried that not responding would make her think hitting is normal. BUT my mom pointed out that LO would get excited, like it was a game, when she would slap and then I would grab her hand to do "gentles touches"... She'd be laughing and squealing while gentle touching. So it was like in her mind, she hits, and then mommy plays a fun game with her. Or..she hits, and mommy says in a big bright voice this funny word "no, no" several times, which is just SO entertaining! So there's more reason to keep hitting.
Anyway, I started not responding to food throwing or hitting/slapping/biting--not even crying out in pain (before I would cry out in pain in an over exaggerated manner, hoping it would teach her that it hurts me. But it wasn't working).
And long story short....it has really been working. She's been throwing way less food and not hitting at all.
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@anagram I think that is brilliant and we will try it. It makes total sense to me when I see him laughing at us trying to discipline him.
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For those little ones, you can just stop the action and then say, "can you show me your gentle hands?" and show them how to rub gently.
Then I redirect and say, "It looks like you need to do a throwing work" and show them to some little bean bags and put a target on the ground so they can throw beanbags at it.
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Our 17m old has been ramping up the hitting, biting, pinching over the past several months and we have tried it all and I got to the point where it was extremely stressful for me. Like @Anagram suggested: we are going with completely not responding now [and if in public / around other kids at the park not letting him get the opportunity]. It seems to be working much better than our prior methods [saying no, gentle hands, redirect, pretending to be very hurt etc] and I wish I had just used the ignore method from the start! I figure its somewhat like when I gave up on redirecting / saying no and just took the handles off of the bathroom cabinets...after a few days of nothing happening over there anymore he just forgot about it and gave up. Hope it is the same with this behavior. I definitely feel your pain on this..........I was just looking at his sweet little baby pictures and wondering HOW that little angel turned into this biting / pinching machine.
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