Hitting and Pushing

My boys are 2 1/2. They hit and push a lot. I am at my wit's end with this as it's happening at daycare. At home, I intervene and say "no hit", "nice touches". Both are not very verbal. Yesterday, they had a really bad day at daycare and I could sense the teacher was frustrated. I keep hoping this is a phase, but what if it doesn't improve. I was in tears yesterday after I picked them as I just don't know what to do to help this stop.

 

Hitting, pushing & biting are automatic time outs in our house. I just say "We don't hit!", put them in time out (1 minute per year of age) & once the time out is done we go on with our day.

If you can see what's triggering the physical behavior (ex wants a toy sibling has) you can try intervening before it gets there - "Do you want the truck? We have to wait till X is finished then you can have a turn. I'll set the timer. When it beeps you can have the truck" Then offer something else in the mean time.

 

I really think it's expecting too much for you to be able to help with behavior that occurs at daycare in kids that young. What are you supposed to do? Lecture them? The daycare teacher MUST be used to dealing with this type of behavior in other kids. It's possible the frustration you saw on her face was not even related to your kids. At home I would just keep on plugging along with consisten and immediate time outs for hitting, and working on asking for turns etc. Believe me, we have the same issues.

 

My kids are having a similar issue and they are about the same age. It's driving us nuts.

Constant hitting, pushing, even hair pulling now. It's not usually about one wanting not to share or wanting a particular item. Instead it's usually about one boy wants to do something the other boy doesn't! They can't seem to compromise.
Neither talks very much at all unfortunately. Not even when they really want something or very angry. We've done testing with Parents As Teachers and they apparently are fine. I hope this issue stops once they get more verbal. There's days I want to cry! Time outs so far are not helping matters at all. Anyone else have any ideas?

 

We had that problem with Jonathan. It turned out that he has/had a SEVERE expressive speech delay. Because he couldn't communicate what he wanted/felt, he would bite, hit or push. Since it was linked to a speech issue, time outs really didn't resolve the problem, since the next time he couldn't express himself, that was his only alternative. Not that I am saying that yours have a delay, but you mentioned that they were not very verbal. It may be worth having an evaluation. Most insurance companies will cover the evaluation too.

 

My kids are very verbal (talking in sentences at 27.5 months), and we still struggle with this. They will even say "no hitting" and turn around and take a whack at each other. Some days it drives me batty! :gah: Like the others have said, I just try to be consistent. We do time outs, but honestly, I'm not sure they help that much with my guys. They seem to get the point more when I make them separate and the offender has to sit alone on the sofa for 2 minutes. That seems to get better results for us.