Help my 18 month olds beating me up!

[mojomands]

My 18 month old daughter has just started hitting my face really hard when I move her from something she want's to do or doesn't get her on way. She seems to young for the naughty step as she's off it in a second laughing or crying, the word "NO" encourages her. My Mum says smack her but that seems rediculous and I don't want to go down that road. Am I best ignoring this???

DS did this to me for the first time the other day (when I took him away from playing with the washing machine buttons!).

I took hold of his hand, looked him in the eye and said "We do not hit in this family", then I squatted down, put him between my knees facing the wall and counted to 60, not making eye contact. I repeated that we don't smack in this family after this time, then took him to play with other things, happily.

I think it's important not to make a big deal of it, but very important to get the point across that this behaviour is unacceptable and will result in a very boring period of time for DS. As for the naughty step - I don't like the phrase (will probably use "thinking step") and putting DS at the bottom of the stairs at his age would be a treat and he'd just zoom off up them.

HTH a bit. FWIW, I don't think that smacking is an appropriate way to tell a child that smacking is unacceptable...!

I have similar problems with 18-month ds. I think hunkermunker's way of handling it is the most effective at this age. I tried 'naughty step' last weekend, but by the time I'd got ds to sit down and could talk to him he'd forgotten what it was all about. My problem is that ds finds everything funny. If I try and talk to him firmly he laughs and starts wriggling around. If I say "no" to him he just repeats it back to me, so saying something along the lines of '"we don't hit in this house" removes that opportunity.