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I think you absolutely need to do time outs. Since my 10 month old has started cruising around and pulling himself up, my 2 year old sometimes pushes him too. I immediately put the 2 year old in time out, and then I go soothe his brother. After two minutes I go back in (we do time outs in his room) and I firmly say that we don't push, he hurt his brother, and that if he is ready to come apologize and play nicely, he can come back out. He tells his brother sorry, gives him a hug, and generally that takes care of the problem. Well, for that day at least. The frequency has definitely gone way down though.

I don't really believe in warnings when it comes to him hurting his brother. He knows that it's wrong even before the warning, so I would do a consequence immediately.

@winniebee: I think timeouts work for kids that are securely attached, but they stopped working for us a while ago! I'll wall you with what's been working for us...

@winniebee: We are going through some of these same things even though C is about 9 months older than your kiddo. I talked to our daycare about it to see what their thoughts were. They also brought up the 1:1 time thing. We also struggle as we both work outside the home. But I keep it in mind and am trying to come up with ways that I can get some 1:1 time with C.

Our struggle is that C doesn't do the physical roughness to be mean (most of the time) she does it to be entertaining. It doesn't matter what C does, her little sister will laugh. And C might have a future as a comedian.

Lots of parents warned us of this -that when baby starts moving the fights start. So it's normal, not good, but normal. We've always used her room as a calm down / chill out spot. There's positive discipline sites that can better explain the diff between them and time outs. But between them and talking it out to figure out why she was lashing out and help figure out solutions together those were effective for us at that age.

Have you followed through with your warnings? I agree with pp that the punishment needs to immediate. For physically hurting his baby brother there should be an immediate consequence. Yelling and stern talking does squat with our terrible threenagers. If he pushes him over a toy then take the toy away from
Him. Remove him from the room.
Maybe it's not timeout, but some other kind of punishment, but whatever it is, needs to be immediate.

We also have a zero tolerance policy with hitting. If M does it, I immediately remove her from the room and she goes in timeout. There is a lot of flailing, kicking, screaming. Kicking and punching at her bedroom door. If she doesn't stop that I warn her I will take her stuffed animals away. That is currently her most prized possession. If she keeps kicking and screaming then I follow through and take her stuffed animals away. On bad days I have literally taken every single of her two dozen plus animals away, including the ones in her hammock. We have taken it away all day on really bad days and not given it back till she's been very good.

Do you know what they do at preschool if he's bad and if it works?

@winniebee: I think if you look hard enough, you'll find evidence for and against time outs. So, don't stress yourself out over if you're damaging your kid, ya know?! For us (2.5 year old), they're effective and only used for really bad behavior we want to nip in the bud, and they work really well. If she slaps or tries to hit any of us or throws things at the dinner table, we immediately pick her up and take her to her room without a lecture. When she's had her 2 minutes, i explain (briefly) what the issue is. Sometimes i think the message gets lost in too much talking.

Even my 7 year old nephew gets really *really* upset when one of the babies touches something that is 'his' or gets in his space. This sounds like it could be the case for your older LO. Have you asked him why he pushed/hit/hurt his brother? He's got some kind of feelings going on and he's taking it out on your younger one. Maybe if you can figure out why he's doing it, you can help circumvent the issue. Maybe it's the "effect" he's into...he causes a problem and the after effect is desired

@mrbee: I'm curious too.. threats really work with LO but I know that will end at some point

i don't do time outs either, so the thing i would try first based on your post is not to give a warning to take something away, but to follow through on that immediately (no warning, but immediate consequence for unacceptable behaviour). And i might try to teach him how to behave instead, ask him to give a hug to his brother or something and then positively reinforce the good behaviour.

And most importantly, i would be trying to positively reinforce good behaviour towards his brother at any given time (not just after he has misbehaved) so he is more likely to be nice than mean (maybe you are already doing that, but I was just going on the info in your post). So for example, when you see him talk to or hug or do anything "nice" towards his brother, then point it out and tell him what he is doing good. And aside from the consequence to his action of hitting, i would not give it too much attention, because he may be doing it as a way getting attention.

I agree with PP that dropping the warning is a good idea. If he knows enough to hide the squeezing from you, he knows perfectly well this isn't ok so he doesn't need a warning. Ragey mad would be my feelings too, but have you tried putting less emotion into it? What if your response was a stern, calm "this room is for sharing. If you need space from baby you use your words to ask Mommy for help. Since you can't share the play space you must play by yourself." Then silently and calmly put him in his room and walk out. And do the exact same thing every.single.time. until hopefully he gets tired of his play being interrupted and knocks it off!

Can you set up a space for your oldest child to play where the little one can't get?

@blackbird: I often think kids do stuff like this for the reaction so if you can provide the reaction in some other way, he might cut down on the undesirable behaviour.

we don't really do timeouts either, but i am comfortable using them in this sort of situation. in my head, i frame it more like a "i'm removing you from this area because what you are doing is not safe for your sister", but usually i get pissed off and just make it a real timeout. i've also started giving her favorite doll timeouts in a very visible but unreachable place. even if she wasn't playing with her, it seems to have the intended effect....so far.

For gentle parenting/no time out techniques for dealing with this, I love ahaparenting. She has a bunch of really great stuff on the website that is an immediate reaction and sets a clear boundary but that doesn't involve punishments like time out. Essentially - comfort the injured, set out the rules clearly, talk through the emotions, provide alternate suggestions for dealing with the emotions. The other thing I like about her stuff is that she also always challenges me on my reaction to it - like how mad and monsterous you feel towards your older child when something like that happens and how to just take a minute so that you can deal with it rationally and without anger.

My 2 year old was very violent toward the baby right away, and still has occasional instances but less than with time-outs.

I very much agree with the approach outlined by @Rockies11. Yes, when behavior is violent or intentionally hurtful there needs to be an immediate removal and time out/consequence.

But what I feel helps with long term behavior is talking about the unwanted behavior in a calm and reflective way. Talking about his feelings, talking about what baby does that is frustrating and how babies are little and don't know and how his job as a big brother is to be patient and teach R how to play nicely. And talk through different alternatives about how to react next time. And then to also take time to model and implement what you talked about in a calm setting. Like sit with them when they are playing and talk through what's happening and praise T for his good behavior and what a good big bro he is being. And if R does something that's bugging T, talk it through "oh no, baby R is touching your tower, what should we do? Should we push baby R? No, that is not a good decision. Maybe we can ask for help. Maybe we can give R a different toy. He's just a baby and if it falls we can just build a new tower"

Basically talk through good decisions and acceptable reactions and praise praise praise for not engaging in the negative behavior. And talk about it a lot.

And if time outs don't work find out what he really prizes - promise of a treat, toy being taken away, bedtime stories, etc. For my girl we talk about good and bad decisions and for bad decisions she gets a bedtime story taken away (she starts with 3 and it can go to zero - fortunately she is very motivated to keep all 3 bedtime stories)

I think @sandy: recommendations are amazing, redirecting whenever possible and using praise. using positive reinforcement for good behavior and appropriate response to baby brothers behaviors whenever possible. He may be seeking out (negative) attention for you. I have only experienced this behavior in a preschool setting, which is obviously different than a family, it seems so hard, lots of hugs to you!