When babies hurt
Jun. 14th, 2011 08:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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plan_surviveMy 17mo son is hurting us a lot. Suggestions on how to get him to stop?
I've seen various advice on how to stop toddlers hitting and biting and hair pulling, but a lot of it weirdly seems to assume that they don't do it enough to hurt yet. He hurts us a lot; it is excruciating. Enough that it's really hard to get it together to be very calm and controlled and gentle. I can't get out "we don't pull people's hair darling because it hurts them and we don't like to hurt people" while he's got a good clump of my hair and is pulling a substantial fraction of his weight against it, or he's just slapped my husband's face hard enough to make him yell in surprise.
So, what do we do?
Some more details: this is associated with silly attention getting moods. He shows some signs of being sad when we're sad, but not in this mood. He also doesn't show any sign of being distressed by yelling when in this mood, and in any case we'd obviously like to keep yelling to a minimum rather than escalating into the Yell A Lot House.
He has some behaviour that seems sensory-seeking but harmless in these moods: shaking his head fast and waggling his body and making jerky "aaa aaa aaa aaa" chants and so on. I haven't done any reading on sensory-seeking stuff yet, so elementary tips on that would be useful. (Nothing that involves sand or things he can tip on the carpet yet though, no impulse control in that area.)
It's a really record rainy winter here and we live in an apartment in a building with no safe common areas (all slippery tiles and ornamental gardens opening unfenced onto a busy road), so, that isn't helping. I try and give him 1 hour of playground time every day but he still seems pretty stir-crazy.
I've seen various advice on how to stop toddlers hitting and biting and hair pulling, but a lot of it weirdly seems to assume that they don't do it enough to hurt yet. He hurts us a lot; it is excruciating. Enough that it's really hard to get it together to be very calm and controlled and gentle. I can't get out "we don't pull people's hair darling because it hurts them and we don't like to hurt people" while he's got a good clump of my hair and is pulling a substantial fraction of his weight against it, or he's just slapped my husband's face hard enough to make him yell in surprise.
So, what do we do?
Some more details: this is associated with silly attention getting moods. He shows some signs of being sad when we're sad, but not in this mood. He also doesn't show any sign of being distressed by yelling when in this mood, and in any case we'd obviously like to keep yelling to a minimum rather than escalating into the Yell A Lot House.
He has some behaviour that seems sensory-seeking but harmless in these moods: shaking his head fast and waggling his body and making jerky "aaa aaa aaa aaa" chants and so on. I haven't done any reading on sensory-seeking stuff yet, so elementary tips on that would be useful. (Nothing that involves sand or things he can tip on the carpet yet though, no impulse control in that area.)
It's a really record rainy winter here and we live in an apartment in a building with no safe common areas (all slippery tiles and ornamental gardens opening unfenced onto a busy road), so, that isn't helping. I try and give him 1 hour of playground time every day but he still seems pretty stir-crazy.
