Please tell me this too will pass.

[Curlylockscurlylocks]

DD is 8.5 months and very active and chatty and smiley and sociable. She has been crawling for a while and never sits still; she's always on the go. Although I think it's important for her to meet other children, baby groups are becoming increasingly difficult. She has started crawling over to other babies and patting them sometimes quite hard on the head/face, sticking her fingers up their noses/ in their eyes etc and occasionally pulling their hair or grabbig their t- shirts. I appreciate that some of the other babies her age (e.g. from our NCT group) do something similar but not to the same extent or with the same frequency. I think she is simply curious rather than hostile- she is smiling at them and trying to "chat" to them as she's doing it, but obviously that isn't going to be a great comfort to the baby on the receiving end. Of course, I remove her and tell her no and demonstrate the importance of stroking/playing gently with gentle arm stroking, but I would be really grateful if anyone could let me know when this might start to have any effect. Is it just a phase? Any other suggestions as to how we stop this behaviour would be much appreciated. I have just come fron a baby group where the other mums seemed to think she was sone kind of bully, at 8.5 months old and I'm feeling pretty sad.

[TheresLotsOfFarmyardAnimals]

Yep, this is just a phase. She doesn't really know her own strength at all and as you say, she is just being curious.

Just carry on with what you're doing, not telling her off but encouraging her to be gentle. She's not being malicious!