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@winniebee: hmm maybe he is enjoying the reaction he gets from his big brother when he does it. I feel like DS hits his baby sister because he is waiting for a reaction from us. Maybe similar? Don't know how you could get your older LO to not react to that though- hair pulling hurts!

If he is trying to get a reaction... Would only paying tons of attention to T while totally ignore R work? So no punishment but zero attention either and yet T gets all the love for getting hurt?

@winniebee: E does the exact same thing (usually either hair pulling or biting) to K. it's almost always at times where either I am not right there (e.g., cooking dinner) or can't immediately deal with it (e.g., feeding R). sometimes it's frustrating/anger, but most of the time it's trying to get a reaction out of K. so we have talked about staying calm, telling her "no" or "i don't want to play like that" and walking away. but clearly it's hard for a 4.5yo to stay calm and do that when i barely can! we don't really discipline, other than to calmly tell E that that hurts K, and then we focus the other 99% of the time/attention on K. if K is really upset, we'll try to tell E "look how sad K is because you did x".

it's frustrating and not a quick solution, but nothing else seemed to work either.

Following for my own benefit. T does this constantly (although I hate to admit it's actually gotten better now that O figured out to hit him when he goes in for the hair pull). Any reaction he thinks is hilarious. But I can't tell O who is 15m to just ignore him. Especially because he pulls HARD! And we can't just ignore it either. He's been like this since 7 months, though, when he rolled into the closet, touched the garbage can and started cracking up when I told him no. Uh oh....

@winniebee: This is a regular thing in our house and I've tried all the same things as you. If you ever find a solution I would love to know. It's so frustrating, so I feel your pain!

Similar situation with my almost 3 year old not giving a darn about most punishments (although she does have a breaking point). My tactic for her misbehavior was to remove toys or privileges...unfortunately, the other day she just looked at me after doing something she knew she shouldn't and snarling 'What are you gonna take? TAKE IT! TAKE IT!" sigh....

Is there somewhere really boring you could make him sit instead of his room? Like the office or if you're getting ready in the AM, stick him in your (dry) bathtub with no toys and make him wait it out? And when it relates to him harassing your older DS, can you get him on board with not reacting? I've been rewarding DD1 for walking away and getting me instead of throwing a screaming fit when DD2 pulls her hair.

I'm not sure how "accepted" this is.. but I had a younger brother and I used to kick him.. yeah I know.. big bully... well nothing worked until my mom let my brother kick me back. OUCH!! it hurt and I remember it to this very day. I learned my lesson and stopped kicking my little brother. I obviously know that you don't want to advocate hurting each other but maybe if big brother gave little brother a hair pull back he might realize that it hurts and it's not nice.

@winniebee: Our second is the "bully" in the family. She beats up on big sister all the time. We have the series of books that includes "Feet are not for kicking" "Hands are not for hitting". We used the feet book with great success this past week when she intentionally kicked big sister in the face. I wonder if the hands book would work, you could change the words up to be hands are not for hurting/pulling hair.

@winniebee: Bummer, K cried and got really upset when I read "Ouch! Feet are not for Kicking" in a stern voice. She now walks around the house saying, walking feet, no kicking feet.

The dynamics are so similar, K gives the best full body hugs and is very sensitive to my stern voice/look but gosh she's so rough and tumble and aggressive.