How to stop a toddler from hitting his newborn sister?

[JanB]

I'm hoping some of you might have some insight into this problem. I am to the point of tearing my hair out over this!

Now that the new baby is here, Zeke is very interested by her, and likes going over to her and patting her and stroking her. This is all fine, obviously. He even says "Niiiiiice" when he pats her, because we've talked to him about how we need to touch the baby "nicely, gently" so many times. But then every great once in awhile, he hauls off and smacks her upside the head! Or, he'll grab a hand and yank really hard. The smacking is what really upsets me, because a lot of times when it happens, he'll give us this defiant look like, "Look what I did!" I don't know if he's testing our limits, or genuinely feels aggression towards the baby (jealousy issues?) or what. DH and I are kind of at sea about how to handle this.

For the first couple of weeks we tried what we always did with the cat, which is to take Zeke's hand and stroke it nicely over the baby while saying "Look, this is how we touch nicely! You need to touch the baby gently and nicely. Hitting hurts!" However, that did not seem to curb the behavior. We also experimented with removing him physically from the situation, by lifting him up and taking him elsewhere, and distracting him with his train set or whatever. That worked kind of okay, but led to tears and temper tantrums more often than not. We tried giving him a "time-out" in his booster seat at the kitchen table one time, and one time only. That was not fun for anybody and I don't really want to try it again. We also considered just prohibiting him from going near the baby at all, but neither DH or I are really happy with this solution. We'd like him to be able to interact with the baby on at least a limited and controlled basis, rather than learning that the baby is forbidden and off-limits.

Is there anything else appropriate we should be doing? And if not, does anybody have insight into why he's doing this or how long it should take before he understands that hitting the baby hurts and he shouldn't do it? He's only 25 months old so I know that he's a bit young to expect him to empathize, but I just feel like nothing we're doing is working, and I'd like to have a consistent method of handling this problem. Thoughts, anyone?

[Mellymama]

Oh my gosh, this exact thing has been happening with us. DD is usually very good with our 9 week old ds, but sometimes suddenly lashes out. Our dd is older than your son, she will be 3 next month so I'm not sure if this would work with you.
What we do when she hauls off and wacks him or pulls his arm or hair is say:
"Baby brother loves his big sister and knows she will always protect him! It scares him when she hurts him instead!" This usually works and she immedietly becomes loving. We also remind her that Mama and daddy never hurt her, and she needs to treat her brother the same way.
My brother and sil are expecting baby #2, and they have a 21 month old. I also say to dd "You need to teach Sophie (her 21 month old cousin) how to treat a baby brother so she can learn. Why don't you show me how to treat a baby brother?" Then she's very gentle and sweet.
We're not entirely sure why she does this, but we think sometimes when she is feeling particularly threatened she suddenly lashes out. We also think that she sometimes does it just to get a reaction. We always make sure not to show anger when she does it, but to show her it makes us and her baby brother sad.
When we've shown her that we're angry for some reason it makes her worse, almost as if she's trying to prove that she can be very naughty if she wants to.
I know how frustrating this is! Good luck!
Mel:)

[Mellymama]

PS:
I also wanted to say that we tried removing DD from the situation at first too, and realized that when we did that it made her worse because she felt left out. I think it is important for her to feel like she is a very important and involved member of the family still, which is why when we give her the responsibility of helping to make ds feel safe and secure, it seems to work.

[Ktyyyyyyy]

That's a tough situation. The only thing I can think of is to really try hard to catch him touching her in a nice way, and make a big deal about that. Or when he is being gentle with her, talk to the baby and say something like "Oh doesn't it feel good when your brother pats your head so gently like that? Aren't you lucky to have such a nice big brother?"

I know my DD really likes to do things that she thinks make her baby brother happy. She loves to bring him toys (whether he wants them or not ;) ) and do anything she can to make him laugh.

Good luck. Suddenly going from being an only child to having a younger sibling is a tough transition.

[Wonkymom]

We went through this too with Alex (who was 19 months when Aidan was born) Firstly I want to say that it has gotten easier...I NEVER THOUGH I WOULD SAY THAT! But we still have moments where Alex is being more rough then he should be. Basically to me (even if Alex felt left out a bit) my main concern was keeping the baby safe..and with a Toddler they have no "perception" of what's safe and what's not yet" so it was up to me to just set limits. It was hard at first because yes I did feel like I was not including ALex, but I always redirect Alex to something else during an episode.
I still never leave them together without me watching, not even for a second because like I said Toddlers just don't understand things that can hurt a baby or themselves. Once I did leave Aidan in his swing which is near the couch and ALex was watching TV on the couch ...I thought it was "safe" for me to run to the bathroom for a quick second....NOPE......thankfully nothing happened, but I returned (no more then a minute I swear) and I found Alex piling up his toys (lego's, stuffed animals etc) on his brother's lap while in the swing...YIKES...I'm sure Alex was being nice "offering" his brother his toys..but once again totally unaware of the safety concerns! LOL...
ALso another time I was changing Aidan and ALex almost sat down on his head (he wanted to be changed too!) SO I just must stress CONSTANT SUPERVISION! :) Don't feel bad if you do need to exclude the toddler from the baby at times..just have him help you in other ways..ALex now enjoys helping me get Aidan things like a towel for drooling, or his baby brush ..etc..those small things make a toddler feel included even if you are excluding them alot from physically touching or helping with the baby.
I too constantly say "gentle" if Alex wants to touch AIdan..or if he does get rough I say "no baby will get an Owie" (that he understands somewhat) But I will say once again with me constant about things with Alex and with constant supervision between them, it has gotten much much better and now Aidan is 12 weeks old..so hold on...soon your DS will just get in the groove with how things are supposed to be...
Good luck and know you are not alone! it can be really rough...(this is why I swear that if we do have another one I will NEVER have them this close in age...Too much constant supervision!!) all my others were spaced out a bit more so I didn't have to worry as much about if they were going to accidentally hurt the baby or not etc...it is ALOT of work..I'm hoping it gets even easier in the next few months!

[hedra]

This is one of those situations where I say 'read your own reaction to see how he feels'. Kids, especially toddlers, are geniuses at making you feel how they feel. So if you feel powerless, scared, angry, and frustrated when he hits the baby, well, I'd bet you 50 bucks that's exactly how he's feeling when he does it. We're hard-wired to dump our feelings on others when we can't handle them ourselves (check the mental health link in my sig for how it works). As kids, especially, when all emotions are so powerful and mixed emotions are overwhelming, we turn to our parents to help us express them. If your reaction isn't in tune with his/hers, they don't learn how to express the feeling properly, so it stays scary and dangerous, and they keep expressing it 'on you' instead of expressing it effectively.

Now, toddlers don't have much capability for expressing most emotions effectively, but you can manage them in such a way that they don't have to express them that way as often (while they learn to trust their feelings and not deny them, but express them appropriately). When Brendan acts out on the cats, I try (and yes, I sometimes forget) to look for how he's making me feel, and handle that. Much of the time, he's feeling angry or frustrated or powerless, sometimes he's feeling sad or lonely or hurt or ignored (how I react tells me which he's feeling - it really works very well). If he's feeling ignored and powerless, he doesn't listen to me when I try to get him to behave better toward the cat. If he's feeling angry, he's really mean to the cat. So I take what he feels, and redirect it to an outlet that RESOLVES what he feels. So if he's feeling lonely and powerless, I ask him to pick an activity for us to play together. I try to verbalize it, too - when we feel lonely, we do things together, we don't run away from mommy and hit the cat.

With sibling issues, I also lean heavily on the idea that it is okay to have mixed feelings, it just isn't okay to hit or hurt. Imagine this scenario. You are over at your parents' house, and they have invited a new friend over. You've heard about this person, and are excited to meet them - they sound really interesting and cool. When you get there, all they talk about is the new friend. Your life and conversation is dumped regularly as the topic goes back to the friend. You go into the dining room, and discover that you picture has been moved aside and the friend's picture is in a more prominant position. You get hungry, and are told to get a snack, because the friend likes to eat late - dinner will be an hour later than it has always been all your life. Starting to resent the new friend yet? Just wait. Once they arrive, they are indeed as cool as your parents said. The friend even likes you, and smiles at you a lot. But the conversation is still all about the friend, what they're doing, what they like. When you look at your parents, 9 times out of 10, they are gazing at the friend with adoring smiles. You mention something you just accomplished that you are really proud of, and they make enthusiastic reactions - for about 2 seconds, before gushing about an accomplishment of the friend's, which is something you did years ago. The friend just sits there and beams. Wanna wipe the smirk of their face yet? But at the same time, they really are pretty cool...

Now, after the friend goes home, you lose your temper a bit and kind of yell that moving dinner left you hungry, and you thought she was being kind of rude at times. If your parents reacted with "be nice, she likes you, never EVER say anything bad about her again! Don't YELL.", would you feel heard? Or would you feel like MAN, they don't even care what I think, or how I feel! ?

When a kid has mixed feelings come out (usually in an inappropriate way) about their sibling, and you say 'be nice', that doesn't solve the problem. It doesn't answer what they are trying to tell you. They don't feel heard, loved, or cared about. If in the above scenario, your parents said, 'sorry, I know it wasn't announced, but she really gets physically ill if she eats early, and it kind of messed up our schedule, too; we'll try to make sure you are warned as much as possible, but we'll all have to adjust some together. How about you let us know if you need dinner sooner, so we can make some adjustments and maybe have a snack prepared for you so you don't starve', you'd probably have a much more favorable reaction. Same for a sibling - it is easier to hear 'we don't hit, but I understand that sometimes you feel lonely and left out - you can ask for my attention in nice ways...' than to hear 'your anger and frustration are not permitted' (what 'be nice' felt like to me when I was angry as a kid).

The book Siblings Without Rivalry has a lot of good ideas - many of them are aimed older, but all the ways to use words, and the definite approval and permission to HAVE bad feelings about a sibling, apply to all ages. It is the ACTIONS that are denied, not the feelings. Gabe was vastly easier to manage around Brendan once he knew that it was okay to FEEL angry and put-out by the changes, even if he couldn't throw things just because he felt that way. He also felt much better when I told him that the changes weren't always fun for me, either, that I missed our time together, too, and that I was as stuck with the situation as he was - but I didn't get to yell or throw things, either. Knowing it was okay, REALLY okay, to be annoyed and frustrated by the negatives of the new situation also really opened up how much he was thrilled with the positives of the situation. The first time he really said he loved Brendan (when there was no audience that he knew of) was after he got real validation that babies can be pretty annoying.

Good luck! You'll have to continue to manage the negative feelings along with the positive until somewhere between 18 months and 2.5 years, when they develop the skills to manage their mixed feelings on their own. But the more you help guide that, the easier it will be for them to develop those skills, too.

[CarolynC]

What a timely thread for me... I'm still three months away from my EDD but I'm getting nervous about handling DS's aggression towards the baby. Yeah, I know we're not actually there yet but I've never heard yet of a toddler that hasn't behaved aggressively towards a new sibling!

Thank you Hedra for the info. This is very helpful1

[CarolynC]

What a timely thread for me... I'm still three months away from my EDD but I'm getting nervous about handling DS's aggression towards the baby. Yeah, I know we're not actually there yet but I've never heard yet of a toddler that hasn't behaved aggressively towards a new sibling!

Thank you all for the info. This is very helpful!

[JanB]

Thanks for the advice so far, everybody. I'm going to read the suggested books and a few other I've found on the topic of gentle discipline. And cross my fingers that this passes within the next few months or so. :)

[mtwarog]

I really have to second hedra's recomendation of Siblings Without Rivalry. I bought it before DD was born and it has really helped us a lot. Although most of the ideas are geared towards older kids a lot of it can be adapted for the younger ones.

At the risk of jinxing myself, DS actually has not once been aggressive towards the baby. He is occasionally a little too enthusiastic around her and she has been bumped a few times but nothing serious. And while he does tend to put her toys in her face when he gives them to her, I haven't seen any anger or resentment.

We did have a rash of tantrums just after she was born and again just after I went back to work (half time) but those we expected and they have decreased to a more "normal" amount.

Honestly, I thought for sure he would be angry and resentful and be taking it out on her a lot. And I know for a fact I'm not nearly as good at voicing his feelings for him or redirecting those feelings to more appropriate behavior as I should be.

[hedra]

Amazingly, a little understanding goes a looooong way - I know that I'm not really all that great at remembering to look for how my boys are feeling FIRST. But I do so on a reliable basis (even if not anything like perfect, I can be counted on to remember regularly). That I do it again and again helps them handle it on the times that I don't manage it.

I'd still like to be better at it, but I'm still learning. Maybe by the time they're 18 or so, I'll have it mostly down.

Nah.