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April 2023 Babies 🇬🇧

Hitting and kicking 😡

I am getting sick and tired of my 3 year old hitting and kicking us.

On the whole his behaviour is good, always has been, at nursery he’s a dream, same when grandparents look after him, and 90% of the time at home he’s happy and well behaved.

But when he doesn’t get his own way, we ask him to do something he doesn’t want to do, etc. he gets aggy and lashes out at us. For example, today he wanted a bath but we were late getting home, late having dinner, so I explained calmly that we didn’t have time so it needed to be a shower tonight. His mood changed in an instant and he FLIPPED, started shouting at me and slapped me on the arm. He went to hit me again, I took hold of his hands and said “No, we don’t hit” and he then started kicking at me instead.

We have tried every response under the sun… staying calm, explaining that hands are not for hitting, walking away or taking something off him i.e. turning TV off or taking away a toy, we’ve tried raising our voices in response yet he KEEPS doing it.

His bad mood escalates so quickly that it comes out of nowhere… he can go from playing beautifully to screaming and hitting me in about 30 seconds.

Has anyone got any suggestions because it’s really starting to bother me and I’m finding myself getting more and more angry about it and it’s hard to keep calm when I’m constantly being hit and kicked 😩😩😩