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I think it’s a prime age for testing reactions and boundaries. My son is older (4yo) and didn’t test with violent stuff, but if I said no, don’t throw that toy/touch the outlet/etc, there were and still are times he would look dead in my eyes and do what I told him not to. We had to be very clear with consequences. Now, he still does those things on occasion but he gets upset and often explains the emotions behind it and us to him so it seems to be evolving into empathy/guilt. He apologizes and means it now more than he did last year.

Since baby bro was born 4 months ago, we do see some testing of the limits in a more physical way. Like he will jump off something and land close to the baby, play with a toy in a reckless way by baby’s head. Again, there is zero tolerance for this and we explain thoroughly and repetitively why he can’t do that and he needs to say sorry to baby or he goes to his room until he apologizes, loses the toy privilege, etc.

So, I say normal testing of the limits and reactions. What do you do when he does these things? What do other caregivers do? I think you’ll all have to get on the same page if you truly want it to stop and he needs to learn those consequences. Could also be attention seeking behaviour depending on your reaction. When DS gets a time out, I quickly pick him up, take to his room and explain in a monotonous voice why and when he can come out and leave with the door shut. There’s no debate:

I'm in the "it's normal, but sucks" camp. L was like that with EVERYTHING and then things started to shift a couple months after his 3rd birthday. This has also coincided with speech development. Keep doing what you are doing, G will move past this.

The cup incident reminds me of when I went to pick up L from daycare and a little girl said "your mommy is here" and he legit SMACKED her on the face. This was a little past 2.5. I was absolutely horrified. He still has his moments, but he doesn't do that stuff anymore. We have extreme battles of the will now.

@DesertDreams88: that’s tricky. You should get FIL todo whatever you guys do I think. Sounds like MIL would be on board. He probably just doesn’t know quite how to handle it, but then your kid knows exactly what happens when he does something he’s not supposed to.

I feel it can be rough for them to be around a younger sibling all the time, especially when they’re young too, but even if he was solo it would probably still happen to some degree. My kids are 22 months apart and having my older do preschool just a few mornings a week has helped us all a lot I think. It’s nice for them to have similarly aged peers for sure.

What you’re doing sounds appropriate and I’d just keep doing it and hope it will eventually click. I know some may disagree with this or think it’s shaming, but I really try to get my kids to see if they have done some kind of physical or emotional damage to each other or someone else. It seems to be clicking a teensy bit actually with my youngest, but only a small amount. But big hugs go to the injured party and we stop and point out “look how sad your sister is because...”. And I do get my kids to say sorry to each other and give a hug if the injured party wants it.

@DesertDreams88: I was thinking about this today. How does your son react when his sister criea and it’s unrelated to him? If she’s hurt or annoyed or whatever.

I think that’s a pretty good sign and the feeling guilt for an action is just going to take longer for his brain to clock.

So, when DS1 was two I had a new baby and it was such a mess I don't really remember much of it. I think most of the hitting and biting and such was because it was the quickest way to get my attention. I found that the more drawn out the response and the more attention he got (even negative) the more the behavior would repeat. I had to have a firm one line response to DS1 and then I would address DS2 before giving DS1 some unrelated positive attention. This is SUPER hard to do and counter-intuitive but worked really well for us.

We would also say "hey, it looks like you would like some momma or papa time, could you pick out a book?" This helped give a new way to get our attention. It helped a lot.

I was actually talking to DH last night about how DS1 is acting out again because DS2 has been getting lots of attention for potty training and we need to go back to the one line and more on mode of responding even through he's almost 4.

It's super hard to dig out of these loops.....