15 month old DD constantly smacking, biting...

[thenightwalker]

My DD is 15 months old and is usually really pleasent. Over the last month or so she has started biting, Grabbing and pinching my face, Pulling my hair..

I know this is all normal, but how do i react if i say no and put her down she throws her head back or tries to butt the floor so i try to avoid that.

I tried to pretend to cry and explained that she was hurting mummy and she seemed to think it was some sortof game and laughed. This didnt seem to help as now she will smack me and give me a kiss straight afterwards, i obviously dont want her thinking its okay to smack people aslong as you give them a kiss afterwards.

Is it okay that she doesnt show any remorse in smacking me at this age?

And how do i go about trying to stop her

Thank you

No real advice except to say that my DS has/is doing exactly the same. We tried the crying but as he was too young to associate crying as a negative emotion he did it even more as he thought we were encouraging him. DS is now 20 months and, thankfully, seems to be growing out of it as he's really very strong.

We found the best way to discourage it was to ignore the behaviour completely and turn away from him without speaking (not even saying 'no'). If he smacked us then did something else ie pick up a toy we made an OTT fuss over the toy ie if it was a car we'd say wow look at the car it goes bbbbrrrrruuuummmm and beep beep. It was all said in a very excitable high pitched voice like it was the best car we had ever seen.

As I did this much more than daddy (I did it every time, daddy did it when he remembered) he practically stopped hitting me straightaway, whereas he still occasionally does it now to daddy.

I think it works simply by making them realise that they don't get any attention from this behaviour at all but if they don't do it they get exciting playtime with mummy/daddy etc

Sorry no real solution for you but please be reassured it's just a phase that nearly all little ones go through. Better for them to do it now than when they're older ie 3 or 4!

Good luck. Hope it gets better/stops soon.

Hold her wrists very, very tightly next time she hits you. 'It hurts mummy' means nothing if a child hasn't reached the stage of being able to empathise with pain. Inflict some discomfort by squeezing the wrists... say 'No, that hurts mummy' very firmly and the child will wince and begin to understand what 'hurt' actually means.

I'll get flamed for suggesting this, but it tends to be more effective than other methods.

My 17mth old is doing the same thing, not only to me but to others as well, only this afternoon she hit a little boy on the head with her beaker repeatedly until I got there to pull her away, found it so embrassing with other mums staring! Don't know what the solution is, people say I should know what todo from my first whos now 6 but she never did the hitting/bitting/ smacking thing!!

Hoping the phase will end soon pulling my own hair out!!

My DD did this for 2-3 months and just grew out of it - we ignored her or said 'ow' loudly to give her a bit of a shock (probably not what you're supposed to do)

She's now 21 months and stopped about 8 weeks ago.

Same here Smallbluestar. My DS just grew out of it after we ignored his behaviour. I don't think anything necessarily works, I just think they get fed up of it and grow out of it.