2 Year old grabbing

[asfish]

My son is 2 years and 5 months, compared with others in our baby group we appear to be getting off lightly with the so called terrible 2’s as he sleeps well and is good with his food.

He does have grabbing issues though, he will go up to other kids and hug them then often push them over as well as grab babies.

He is also really bad with our cat, he will pull her tail and grab and pull her by her fur. It’s now got to the stage where she won’t come in the house.

This behaviour with animals used to be limited to just our cat, he was always nice to other people’s animals, now though he will grab and kick dogs. Yesterday he grabbed a puppy that somebody was kind enough to let him stoke and tried to kick it when we were at a park.

We have tried sanctions such as no screen time and putting toys in a “naughty boy” box on the fridge as well as a reward chart with sticker for when he is good. That did work for a while but now he is grabbing again.

He knows it’s wrong and if I ask him to show me what he has to do with a cat or baby on my hand he will gently stroke it. Yesterday when our cat was on the roof wanting to come into the bedroom I drew his attention to the fact she was there and he was saying her name and nipping my arm at the same time.

Generally he is such a nice kid, he will always cuddly his immediate family when he sees them and doesn’t attack us. My wife stays at home with him but she takes him out to events with other kids every day.

He is good with sharing as well. My only observation is that he is not afraid on anything other than up and over garage doors and I don’t know where this came from!

He is sensible as well if I have a barbecue on and tell him its hot he will stay away and respect it.

We are really worried that we are going to have a kid who can’t be taken to any social events, so any ideas or help would be appreciated.

[winchester1]

Mines a couple of months youmger than yours but had a phase of biting his little sister a few months back. We went with a naughty chair, its in the room with us but means he had to sit still while i calmed his sister down and made sure she was ok. We found that worked quickly. Ours is too young to care about a naughty boy toy box, sticker charts, screen time - rewards and punishments need to be immediate to have an affect.

We were also carefull not to go on about it, he was told off, her calmed and we moved on. Obv once we knew this was a thing we also watched him more carefully to stop it from happening at all, with distraction and teaching him different tactics with his sister such as bringing her a toy when she is annoying him, or going elsewhere himself.