Help! My little sweet girl is hitting. Hitting me, her dad, herself. What do i do about this phase she is in? I have another girl on the way and i dont want phoenix to take out her jealousy on her little sister this way.
It is a phase like you said and it doesn't mean she will the new baby, for me what works at this age is simply putting there hands down at their sides and saying, in a firm voice, "NO hitting that hurts mommy/daddy" and walking away from her/him for a few seconds and then I sit back down, I just repeat as needed they do get the hint it just takes patience.
Firmly but not hard hold her hand down and in a very stern tone say "no hitting", then set her somewhere away from you, your husband. She is learning to just express her frustrations since she cannot verbalize them probably, but do not allow it. If he see her headed to hitting, grab her hand and put it down by her side and tell her "no hit", "be nice". Set her in time out now if you have to. She may pitch a fit, which is her getting out her frustration too, but that is better then hitting. Before the baby comes, get a nice baby doll and teach her how to hold the baby, love the baby and be gentle with the baby. I would tell my daughter "we have to be nice and gentle with babies". The night before you bring the baby home, have your husband give your daughter a gift from the baby, making it a huge deal she is a big sister now and the baby loves her.
Get her to help with getting diapers and so on and make sure she feels a part of it all, that will help with the jealousy issues.
Good time now to implement time outs or just moving away from her when she starts to act out. Teaching her she will not get your positive attention if she does this.
My daughter when she was about 16 mos used to snuggle and then all of a sudden sometimes she would bite my shoulder! Or grab my hair and pull hard! It hurt! SO I would say "not nice" very sternly and set her down away from me, it took about a week or so but she got it that I was going to accept that from her and it stopped.
Well, you have several months before the baby comes. so I bet she will have outgrown it by then. I am sure it is just her way of showing her frustration. Be very firm and tell her no, and be consistent. She'll get it.
This goes with saying "gentle touches" like someone suggested. For some reason(I have no idea how we came up with the phrase)we started saying,"Oh...no hitting...gentle...like a kitty" and then we would gently rub our daughters face, like we're petting her. Then she was gently touch us back so we knew she got it. Someone later pointed out that kitties scratch but we just always thought of pointing out that you are gentle to kitties and it helped them get the whole concept of being gentle. We have three girls and we started using that phrase with our first and since it worked for us, it just stuck. Kind of a weird thing to say but it did get their attention and gave us the opportunity to demonstrate how to be gentle and gave them the opportunity to use a gentle touch back to us.
My daughter is 16 months and doing the same thing. I was most disturbed by her hitting herself; but am glad to hear that it seems normal:)
Teach her "gentle touches". When she hits take her hand and pet it over whatever part of you that she hit saying "gentle touches" . You can also tell her " hitting hurts please use gentle touches" although shorter phrases seem to work better at that age. My daughte hits also and this seems to work. Just don't hit back because that defeats the purpose. Does she have a baby doll? Because you can practice gentle touches on a baby to show her that babies needed to be handled gently. The daycare my daughter went to actually taught this and my daughter seems to get it. You can also just distance yourself from her when she hits saying that you don't like being hit and that you won't play with her until she palys gently. You might think at this age they won't understand but believe me the understand more than you think. Good luck:)
