temper temper...

My girls are SO different, Addie is very sweet and lovable- but can get a little whiny; Katie has a temper on her, if she doesn't get what she wants she starts screaming and lately she's started hitting. She hits me, her sister, the couch, the dog, pretty much anything/one near her. I don't know what to do, I don't know why that is her first reaction. Do I start time outs? How do I do time outs for a 16 month old? It's frustrating. I tried searching on this topic, but says I don't have access to search, so I just decided to post.

Any suggestions?

 

Do you have an area that you can block off or a pack-n-play? I have an area at the bottom of the stairs in the basement that I block off. There are two safety gates that I put up so they can't get into the family room. I put Jake in there for 1 1/2 minutes. During the time out do not talk to them. It's usually Jake in there so I will take Josh and turn my back towards Jake and play.

To be honest, I need to do it more. He is my biter/hitter.

Josh on the other hand is very laid back and he is the one who is always getting beat up. One day he will bite back and then it will be interesting to see how Jake responds.

They are both working on teeth and they say biting is often related to teething.

 

"they" say a minute per age of the child. We have also started time outs.

My kids hit from time to time too. If I am carrying them, I instantly but them down (which they HATE), if we are sitting I move them away and say no no. It seems to work...it can take a few goes that they finally understand that I mean no no.

So ouchie....

 

My DS is the one with the temper, he will scream, hit, or throw stuff when he is unhappy or does not get his away. We do time-outs on our lap with him for two minutes at most.

 

I can usually catch the arm swinging, but if I dont I take them firmy by the hand/arm, crouch down on their level and say very loud and stern " We are NICE to other people" and then tell them to give hugs/kisses. My 2 take turns abusing each other. I think its the age. On the rare occasion we do time outs we put them in their crib for up to 2 minutes. We leave the door open and light on so its clearly not night-night time.

 

I find that timeouts dont really work for mine. So, what I do is say "no hitting that hurts, we use gentle hands", and if they start to use gentle hands I praise them right away, if they keep hitting then I say we don't want to play with someone who hits and I take the other child with me and we go to another area of the room and play (mine hate this, as they always want to be involved). This seems to have worked really well for us to stop most of the hitting, honestly, if I put mine in a time-out (crib, playpen, etc) I think they would just cry and not realize what they did - I am hoping in a few more months that this kind of timeout works for us.

 

I'm having the same problem with Xander hitting. I'm finding that putting him on the opposite side of the room and ignoring him until he comes back nicely is pretty effective. My problem is though, when I sternly tell Xander "We don't hit" Liam thinks I'm talking to him too and starts to cry. I can't blame him - he didn't do anything! But I always look right at Xander and say his name when I say it so I'm not sure what to do. Has anyone else dealt with this? What did you do?