Hey All,

I feel like I just check in here every few months to crowd source but here I am again. Just wondering where to draw the line between normal behavior vs. I should speak to my pediatrician as a next step.

My son will be 4 in June and lashes out violently from time to time. There is what I think is "normal" hitting or pinching myself or my husband when we discipline him. This is not every day but every week for sure. He has a younger sister who is pushing 14 months. He sometimes will be rough with her when she is playing with a toy he wants or if she gets too close to a block tower he made. While not acceptable I think this is mostly normal too.

The part that is upsetting me is he is rough with our dog. He went through a phase of pulling her tail. It got a rise out of us so then he did it for reaction. That is mostly done (I can't remember the last time that happened) but he will still occasionally hit her with no prompting. It's mostly when he's over tire and it's nearly 100% attention seeking but I'm just not sure what to do. My dog is an angel and thankfully has never even growled at him but it's not fair to her and obviously I want to curb this behavior. He's definitely going through a major growth spurt and needs like a 3 hour nap on top of the 11ish hours he gets overnight.

I keep hoping that we'll phase out of the violent tendancies / was blaming things on the changing family dynamic but his sister has been around as long as he can remember at this point.

Any tips / tricks / thoughts? I just started keeping a record today to present to his doctor in June if we don't seek action before then. I think the dog aggression is probably happening weekly-ish. Maybe a bit less.