Michael has been coming up and hitting me for no real reason. What is wrong with him? I will come home from a long day and sit down. The twins will be watching t.v. and I might be folding clothes or doing the dishes. Michael comes up and hits me. Some times he will hit me on the leg (while I'm doing dishes) and tell me NO. Sometimes I will sit and watch t.v. with them while folding clothes and he will come up and hit me in the face. The other day we were cuddling in bed and he hits me in the face. No reason! What is up with this? Sometimes I say in a stern voice, "NO! You do not hit mommy!" I feel like this 2 year old doesn't respect me! Maybe he wants my undivided attention? Mikayla is much more gentle. If I'm not looking at her or paying full attention to her, she turns my chin gently so that I look at her in the face. Bridget
It could be a boy thing. I know one mom in my mommy & me class was having the same issue back in the spring. I think it was recommended to try and reason with the child. Stop the activity immediately, and tell him not to hit, hitting hurts etc... Good luck!
DS Evan has been hitting me too. I've been trying to observe time of day and what was going on at the time. I think for him it is an attention thing. So I have started to put him immediately in a time out and give him no attention for 2.5 minutes. Last night we started "date night" with out kids. I think I'm going for once a month or so. I took DS Evan to a high school girls basketball game and DH to DS Grant to a puppet show (which he was afraid of and left early). Evan was very excited to have alone time and was really good for me during out one on one time. I too have felt very disrespected by the hitting but I realized that it may be my behavior that needs to change hence the "date night" with mommy and daddy. Hopefully when he feels content that he is getting enough attention he will stop the hitting. If he doesn't I will be back to the drawing board.
It's a phase. My son did that when he was two. He would hit me in the face. I would sternly say no hit to him and then put him in time out. I wouldn't give him anymore attention for a little while to let him know that what he did was bad. It worked for us. He caught on very quickly that hitting wasn't the thing to do.
Mine are doing this now too. They started it a bit earlier than yours, but I think that's because they're the youngest in their class at daycare. I sometimes see the older kids doing it when I'm there for dropoff and pickup. I interpret it as just a phase, and learning about cause & effect -- similar to when a baby starts dropping food off the high chair to see if it always lands on the floor! They are testing to see what will happen when they hit people. I say "No, you do NOT hit people." I try to make it a little more emphatic than the usual no, and let them see that I am angry, but don't yell or appear so angry that it freaks them out. Then I plunk them on the couch (our unofficial time-out spot) and ignore them for a minute or two. Sarah hates it when I get angry, so this has more of an effect on her. Amy tends to laugh, but hopefully she is getting the message too. At any rate, don't take it personally -- I don't think it's a question of respecting or not respecting, it's more of a science experiment to them.
I don't know if this is why your ds is doing it, but I notice that my son in general is just more physical than dd. However, when we have a day when dd is being super demanding, or maybe she's sick & needing more of my attention, I notice that he will hit or bite me a lot more than normal. For him, I think it's his only way of communicating that he's feeling left out.
