Small Ones Who Smack
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Thursday, May 27, 2010 8:02 AM
Our daughter Camilla was about fourteen months old when she started hitting us. She’d smack us in the face, almost gleefully, then watch carefully to see how we’d respond.
We thought she was too young for real discipline, so we tried training her instead: when she hit, we’d hold her arms by her sides and count down from ten. She quickly learned that this was the consequence of hitting, and she didn’t like it, so she stopped.
It could have been one of those “we’re such awesome parents!” moments, quite bad for our humility. Fortunately, we saw the way that the same techniques were much less effective when my sister and her husband used them on my nephew, who’s Camilla’s age. So we knew that we’d gotten lucky that our daughter is extremely biddable, and refrained from congratulating ourselves too much.
I’m glad about that, because otherwise I’d be feeling rueful right now.
Blaise is sixteen months old. He hits. He also pinches and bites. What’s worse, he seems to enjoy it.
His sister is more than two years older and at least five pounds heavier than he is, but he terrorizes her. It’s common for me to hear her yelling and come into the room to find him chasing her around the coffee table, blithely bopping her with a stuffed animal. He’ll also toddle up to her while she’s sitting peacefully in a chair and pinch her on the leg. Just for fun, apparently. He’s remorseless.
When my sister brings her boys over, I really have to watch Blaise, because if one of his cousins makes him mad in some way, he will bite. Hard. He’s broken Camilla’s skin a couple times, actually.
I’ll admit that we haven’t been quite as vigilant with Blaise as we were with Camilla in our attempts to train him not to be violent. I do try to take time out whenever he hits or pinches or bites, to tell him “no” sternly and hold his arms and count down, the same way we did with her. But honestly, it doesn’t seem to make much difference. He stares me down defiantly or, worse, grins at me while I’m counting.
I’ve recently decided to commit more fully to giving Blaise consequences, in the hope that a consistent negative response from me will help him learn to control his impulses. If it’s not completely successful, at least I know that he’ll eventually be old enough for real discipline. The violence won’t last forever.
In the meantime, I’ve also got the challenge of keeping a straight face when my little guy acts up. It’s a funny truth about babies: even when they’re hitting, they are darn cute.
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