2 1/2 year old hitting baby

[ZonkedOut]

I have 2 lovely DDs. DD1 is 2 1/2, DD2 is 7 months, and crawling.

DD1 gets a bit jealous of the baby, understandably. I do try to give her personal attention too. She does love her sister and often goes up to her and cuddles and kisses her.

But often, an arm around her for a cuddle will turn into the arm dragging her down. And fairly often, she will just go up to DD2 (sitting up or crawling) and push her over.

It seems no matter how often she goes in time out for this, she won't learn that it needs to stop. And it's a vicious circle too, because it means I have to keep DD2 close to me to protect her, which probably doesn't help the jealousy.

I know it's mostly down to her age, and it will hopefully pass, but I want DD2 to survive into toddlerhood! Any suggestions?

Babies are pretty tough - your dd2 will be giving as good as she gets pretty soon. It won't be long until they're playing together. I have a similar age gap and I think it does get better. We reserve timeout for one thing - violence against DS - and she has got to grips with it now. To the extent that sometimes she'll put herself in timeout if she knows she's done something wrong.

Thanks for the reply. I'm not really so worried about the baby being seriously hurt, as it causing issues between them as they grow up. I've seen that happen with other siblings, where the older one is mean to the younger, who grows up being mean back.

DD1 does understand timeout, and it can work as a deterrent for other things, but I don't warn her for violence against DD2, it's straight into timeout. And this doesn't seem to work as a deterrent, at least, she still does it just as often.

I think they can't really control themselves to that degree that the threat of punishment will stop them doing something. They get an urge to wallop sibling over the head with a stick and bang! there it is. It's not really being mean until they're at an age where more self-control can be expected - also of course your own response to it (eg not letting her get away with it) carries a solid message that that behaviour is unacceptable. I think it can cause problems between siblings when it's just allowed to slide by the parents.

I have exactly the same problem but with biting. Have had a horrible day with DD (2.5) biting DS (5 months) about 5 times having not done it in a week. We've started doing timeout but I'm struggling with getting her to co-operate with this while also calming down DS.

She doesn't seem to be doing it to hurt him particularly, more she gets carried away when hugging and kissing. Feel that i can't leave them in the same room together at all at the moment which is a real pain as our kitchen is small and seperate from the main living space so i have to take DS in the car seat with me to prepare any food which he hates as he just wants to roll everywhere at the moment

will keeping watching for any other tips...