I chatted about this with friends on twitter earlier this week…
How do you help a child who hits?
Usually these discussions relate to younger preschoolers, but we are also dealing with similar issues with an older child lashing out at siblings at the moment. Interestingly, when I sit down to think about how we will deal with it, my ideas for the older child are very similar to the ideas I shared with my friend who has a younger child who is hitting.
The first thing I look at is the reason.
Figuring out why a child is lashing out is key to deciding out how to deal with it.
Ask the child why they feel like hitting others.
Ask them how they are feeling when they want to hit.
Don’t try interrogating the child when they are ‘in the moment’, even adults struggle to have a sane conversation when angry or frustrated. Wait until things have calmed down and then broach the subject, and just ask, don’t accuse. Try to keep your language as neutral and loving as possible. This isn’t about punishment it’s about finding a solution.
Even an older child might not be able to answer these questions, but the resulting conversation might offer some insights and help you have a good guess at the reason behind the behavior.
If not have a good think about when the behavior occurs. Is there any pattern? Do you see any physical changes in your child before they lash out? Are they struggling with any milestones at the moment?
I often find the reason a child lashes out and hits is to do with big, overwhelming feelings of anger and frustration, and the child not knowing what to do about them or how to express them.
Haven’t we all been there as an adult?
Haven’t we all lost our cool and lashed out, perhaps with words, when our anger has gotten the better of us?
Imagine that feeling and then imagine that you don’t know the words to use, imagine you don’t have as much life experience, or self control and your whole body is tense with anger and you just need to hit or grab or mash something… That is how your child is feeling when they lash out.
So, what can we do about that?
I try to get my child to come up with suggestions of other things they can do when they feel angry.
What other physical things can they do to help them get the anger out of their bodies without hurting someone else?
Can they go punch a pillow? Throw a ball at the rebound net? Scrunch up a piece of paper? Run around outside and yell?
What words can they use to explain what they need or how they are feeling without being hurtful?
The idea is to give them a list of strategies to try before they hit.
These strategies are not going to be second nature, and a child is not immediately going to remember them and implement them when they are angry, so the aim of the game is for you to help them. That means when you see or hear them getting to the point of lashing out, you need to step in and help…
Maybe you need to remind them of one of the strategies you’ve come up with;
‘I can see you are feeling angry, do you want to go punch the bed till you feel better?’
Or maybe, especially for younger children, you need to give them the words to use;
‘I can see you want a turn, you can ask Izzy if you can have a turn when she is finished.’
In our house I just need to say ‘do you need to take a break?’ to remind my child of the ideas we’d come up with. Often that simple gives them a chance to stop and think before they hit or say something nasty, and often that is all they need.
Notice that all of these strategies and suggestion involve being pro-active rather than re-active? It is much more effective to deal with the hitting before it happens rather than after, but sometimes that doesn’t happen.
So how do you deal with it after a child has hurt another?
I think that depends on the age of the child.
For our older children the rules are clear – if you hurt someone else you either make it right then and there, or you move away until you can calm down.
Of course these ideas are not the only things you can do to help a child who lashes out. These are just some of the ideas I have used with some success. Every child is different, and every family is different so you might need to take a totally different tack to help your child… but the one thing I feel strongly about is that this is about helping a child learn to deal with these big emotions, not shaming them, or hurting them.
What strategies have you used to help a child who hits?
My daughter will hit a pillow instead. We sing a song about how we don’t hit living creatures. Short songs really help her remember good behavior. I’ve noticed that lots of exercise cuts down on frustration a lot. And depending on the age and maturity of the kid, yoga and meditation can help too.
My 5 year old has started hitting and kicking and lashing out at me. I haven’t changed my parenting. He started 2 weeks ago and he does it when I tell him he needs to clean up his toys or to stop throwing them in the house. What normally happened was he would get upset scream and take the toys to his room. Now he gets in my face hits or kicks me and tells me he’s the boss. I have no idea what to do. He may be 5 but my health condition actually causes his hitting to hurt 20x worse then it should.
My question/problem is my 3yo always hits, kicks, and picks on our dog. my dog has always been very patient with him but now he’s getting annoyed and lightly bites him to show he’s not happy. we try and get my son to play games nicely with him, or do something else, we have tried talking to him and telling him it hurts or he doesn’t like it, and i’ve tried showing him how it feels and showing him the appropriate way to play with or touch the dog. i’m at my wits end and don’t know what else to do.
Hi! This article has been enlightening. However, my GRANDAUGHTER is barely 13 mos old, very active, ahead of her milestones, walked at seven mos, already off bottle, starting to tell us when diaper is wet or soiled, and super intelligent! I may be biased bc my first and only, for the moment, grand baby.
My son, his fiancé, and my sweet gbaby live in an apt attached to our home. MY QUESTION IS; since she was little she has hit or tried to hit, she has started now to throw tantrums when corrected or disciplined whichever include: kicking, screaming, hitting, throwing self backwards, yelling when she walks away. Since she’s not very verbal yet, she can’t @talkback” intgw traditional way-so she walks off or when one if us walk off, she’ll like at you, scrunch her face and scream angrily at you. We are not the typical “time out” type, we do believe in spanking; but I also believe she’s too young for that. I made alotif mistakes with spanking by REACTING TO kids’ behavior. I don’t want to spank her. Her mom “pops her” mouth when she screams-not violently-but it still just bothers me!! This child literally started behavior on her first birthday. It’s like terrible twos came a year early!??
Pls help!! I take care of her about a good 89% of the time. How do you do time out? What stuff can I do to help baby use words instead
My 4 year old boy hits all the time. When he’s mad, happy, sad. It’s his go to move. He will run up and just hit people. Started at 3 years old. My husband thinks there’s something wrong with him. Going to take him to a doctor.
Thank you so much for this article. I struggle with a very aggressive three year old girl. She is incredibly smart and very loving, but her anger often scares me and worries her grandma, who is her primary caregiver when I work. It frustrates my mom SO much and she often blames me for her bad behavior. I am a “part time” single mom (separated, but working on it with my husband), and my mom thinks its because she’s often confused about whats going on with her father and I. Admittedly, I also do not deal well with my frustrations, but I know a lot of her behavior is the age and testing limits (in addition to my own parenting mistakes…) I have been working with her on using her words instead of yelling, hitting, temper tantrums etc. My mother went as far as to say my little one already needed to be in therapy because of the mistakes I have made and her aggression, which was very hurtful (because I of course love my little one and do the very best I can in ALL areas when it comes to her). This article made me feel like there was hope to correct the mistakes I have already made…because some days the damage feels irreversible. I also appreciate all the mommys who commented on this post regarding their own struggles with aggressive little ones. It’s wonderful to feel not alone and that we all don’t have it “all together” all the time. Thank you for your honesty ladies, motherhood can be lonely some days and it’s nice to know I am not the only one struggling with this issues. I feel if we were all a little more honest about the struggles (AND JOYS!) that motherhood often brings we would all feel a little less crazy and defeated. Hugs to you all. I needed to read this today.
thanks for the post, I often come to site and read diff articles on parenting it has helped me a lot and I have changed some of my ways in dealing with my kids and have had positive results :)
thank you so much
i have two boys, a 3 yr old and a 4 1/2 year old…they have a love, fight, love relationship which I’m sure it the norm for most siblings. Recently the 3 yr old began hitting his brother or bawling up his fist and has even raise his arm to me, he knows better than to actually strike me I think lol…I’ve tried to keep him to take a deep breathe or give himself a time out so he can calm down and come back expressing his frustrations appropriately. Today he hit his brother so I asked him to go sit against a wall in the same area as us and calm down…he kept saying I’m angry and hitting the wall…I realized having him sit there wasn’t working….I took him to another room and sat him on my lap…I asked him what was wrong and why he hit his brother – he said I’m angry – I said ok why are you angry – he said I don’t know I’m just angry – you could tell he didn’t know how to articulate why he was so upset.i hugged him and told him I was sorry he was feeling angry and that while it’s ok to be angry it’s not ok to hit his brother. He said ok but I’m still angry – I said ok why don’t we throw that anger away as far away as we can and maybe that will help you feel happy again….so he acted like he was throwing something away really far away….after he did that I said how do you feel..he said I’m still angry…I said ok let’s grab some sunshine and kindness and place it in our heart – so he reached high in the air and scooped the air and put his hand to his heart – I said how do you feel now? He said I feel happy mommy and was smiling and giggling. I said ok why don’t you go share that happiness and kindness with your brother and tell him you’re sorry for hitting him. He went and hugged his brother and said I’m sorry and put his hand from his heart to his brother and said here’s some sunshine and kindness. My heart melted!!
Sounds like you are doing a great job of helping your kids deal with big feelings!! :)
This is very helpful! Thanks :)