dd is 3 and is so rough with other children it's really getting me down and I often feel like I mishandle situations and spend a lot of time dwelling and worrying over how ive dealt with the things she does.
We were at a play group this morning and she was being fairly rough with a 6 mth old but was trying to cuddle and be nice. It wasn't malicious at all. I was telling her to be gentle and trying to distract by giving her dolls and pushchairs etc but she was having none of it so I said to the mum just tell her, I don't mind so the other mum was saying be gentle darling, gentle hands etc.
Then she went up to a little girl who was standing on a platform and grabbed her and pulled her off down to the floor and the little girl really took a tumble. All the mums stopped and gasped and ran over.
I grabbed dd and took her away to tell her off, made her go and apologise, I apologised to the mum then left immediately to teach her a lesson.
She was saying sorry all the way home and said but mummy I was just trying to cuddle her which made me feel so bad. As she probably was just trying to cuddle her but didn't understand the consequence of her roughness.
This isn't the first time something like this has happened. She pushed a boy down the stairs at a play date recently. Total nightmare but the boy was amazingly uninjured. I left in tears with all the what ifs.
I just don't know how to deal and cope with her roughness with other children. I've lost friends over it. People we were seeing who just never contacted me again because I spent the whole time telling my dd not to grab and push their children. I know it's normal for this age but it just feels so intense and scary. I never know what she's going to do to someone next.
I'm having this very same issue with another friend whose son my dd manhandles and makes him cry. I discussed it with her and asked if she wanted to take a break on the meet ups for a while and she said no he needs to learn to be more assertive and tell her when he doesn't like what she's doing.
I'm so down about it. I just don't know what to do to get her to stop touching other children in such a rough and heavy handed way.
More than that, I don't know the best way to discipline it without making a big scene like I did today. Leaving in such an uncivilised way with a screaming tantruming toddler because she didn't want to go. I don't know if I did the right thing 
Talk to others about child development and behaviour stages here. You can find more information on our development calendar.
Behaviour/development
My toddler is so rough
LittlePink · 20/05/2015 11:49
I think the best way is to remain calm and follow her around of you know she's likely to push other kids. Get in there fast when you see she's about to do it and do time out. Just take her to the side if the activity, explain why and if she does it again explain you will have to leave and follow through. Just repeat. It's a phase that will pass. 
It's practise. As you say, she's not meaning to hurt them, she just doesn't have the handle on the right amount of force yet. Yes role playing gentle baby care with a doll is a good idea.
Close supervision when she is around other children and try to step in if you see her getting frustrated to manage the interaction. Keep away from stairs, roads, rivers, etc with other children, unless she is with you and holding hands.
It's okay to take her out and make her apologise and such, and it's good in that other parents tend to want to see a situation being dealt with immediately, but it's not teaching her what you do want, so you need to work on that as a separate thing. Perhaps work on the idea of consent in general, so asking before she hugs/kisses/cuddles another child, to help her understand the idea of people not always being happy about being cuddled.
Often pushing/pulling around at this age is because they don't know another way to get somebody to do what they want, so you could try giving her some direct instructions (Why don't you ask X if she wants to play?) or working the situation into some pretend play with toys. Oh look, teddy wants to play with elephant, but elephant doesn't want to come out of his house. What shall we do? Make elephant react badly to being dragged or pushed, and if she doesn't try another approach (normal at 3 
) then you could give her some pointers. Oh look, elephant feels really sad and cross now. Do you think we could make him feel better first? Oh great! Now he's happier. Now try. Until she hits on the right response (or you suggest to her "What about asking him nicely?" "What about getting something really exciting over here?")
Does she pull and push you around? I don't mean in a horrible way, but often at this age they can be so enthusiastic and adults are often receptive to a toddler taking their hand and leading them somewhere or pushing them, because it's funny and cute. However it's not funny or cute to other children, because she can actually physically shift them and that's probably a bit scary. Some kids make the distinction between adults and children, but others don't so perhaps if she does this, it would be a good idea to try and replace the behaviour by not moving/responding/following until she asks in the way you would like - I would suggest either her holding a hand out and waiting for you to hold it, or using a phrase like "come with me" along with no physical touch at all. So at first you just start using the phrase or gesture with her, and make sure to respond immediately if she repeats it back to you, and then you ask her to use it alongside the normal push/pull, then you ignore the pushing/pulling and wait (while reminding her of what you want) and eventually you just wait and ignore everything except the correct way to ask.
It's a phase - as others say. She'll get there. :)
Oh and - with the incident with the 6 month old. I think that you needed to be a little more proactive in that case. Instead of expecting the other mum to police her behaviour, you could have been closer to her physically preventing her from hurting the baby, reminding her to ask the mum if it's okay. When distraction was not working (which is fair, toys are less exciting than a real baby 
) then you could have engaged with her more directly and shown/modelled her how to react to a baby. If baby's mum seemed uncomfortable at any point or you thought she might accidentally hurt the baby, you could have taken her a little way away for a minute and then explained that babies are little, can easily be hurt, and we have to be very careful and made sure she was calm and not overexcited before you went back. (And again, only if mum seemed happy about you going back.) I think that "gentle" is often lost on toddlers, because they're not very clear about their own strength etc, "careful" can be better. Remember too that unless a new mum has older children, they can be quite freaked out by the normal behaviour of toddlers and not really know how to handle it. Even if they do have older ones, really, they are expecting you to handle it. So IMO you should be totally in control in that kind of situation, not sitting on the sidelines attempting to distract. But it's all a learning curve :)
This reply has been deleted
Message withdrawn at poster's request.
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.