My 16 month old has been pulling her own hair for about a month now and I am not sure how to handle it. Sometimes she pulls other people's hair and then pulls her own when we make her stop. Occasionally it's pinching rather than hair pulling. It's usually part of a minor tantrum. I think she does it out of frustration and will stop it when she is able to speak and express her feelings in other ways. Meanwhile, when she does it to other people I feel like I have to intervene. DH and I actually could probably ignore it when it is just us if we were confident that was the right thing to do.
At first, we tried to stop her when she pulled hair or pinched anybody. A couple of days ago DH and I we decided that wasn't working. We decided to continue to stop her hurting other people but ignore the self-harm on the theory that she will probabably stop pulling her own hair and pinching herself because it hurts. We do try to deal with her frustration by talking to her and by distraction, and somethimes we can stop it before it starts.
Any suggestions or comments? Reading this, it sounds like she is really screwed up but she is actually happy most of the time and very affectionate.