How do you discipline when you haven't seen the incident?

[mrspepperpotty]

DS2 (age 2.5) recently went through a hitting / pushing phase. Thankfully he seems to have stopped at toddler groups, music class etc, but at home he still has a tendency to hit out at his older brother or sister when he is cross. I'm finding it hard to discipline him effectively, because when it happened outside the home I nearly always witnessed the incident and could step in immediately, whereas now I am sometimes out of the room and all I hear is 'Ow! Mummy, DS2 hit me!'.

WWYD? Of course I do not want him to get away with this behaviour (I realise discipline needs to be consistent), but on the other hand DD (age 4.5) is a bit of a drama queen who tends to overreact to a fairly minor incident. I don't want to automatically assume DS2 is the bad guy (even though he usually is atm!). I would really like to ask both of them for their side of the story and try to understand what happened before wading in with discipline, but DS2's language isn't at that stage yet.

Any advice?

I would keep out of it unless they are really hurting each other. Let them learn to sort it.

Really? But if I discipline him when I see him hit someone and not when I don't see it, I'm worried that will send the message that it's OK to hit as long as you can get away with it?

I group discipline on a no blame basis. " Wow - I thought you kids could play nicely together - but all I'm hearing is crash-bash-cry. Let's now do something that mummy wants (e.g. Supervised tidy up) and all try to calm down'.

I try to avoid being PC PLum of the house - and prefer to incentivise good behaviour for the group. It usually is 6 of one half a dozen of the other anyhow. E.g. The younger child hits but the older child knew that would happen because they'd just told them they couldn't play. Or the older child shouts, but the younger child had just wilfully wrecked their game.

i know you said your ds2 isn't verbal enough yet, but i have seen a friend of mine say 'what did you do?' to great effect. her dd2 was trying to tell her what dd1 did, but all she was interested in was what dd2 did.

from this she managed to ascertain what dd1 had actually done and was able to apportion blame appropriately.

btw i think i just observed this on a good day, i imagine there are plenty of times when it doesn't work, but i was struck by its efficacy on this day.

i agree with footprints by the way, that often the 'victim' is not entirely blameless and definitely tell my DDs that they need to learn to sort it out themselves if they want to play upstairs together. which luckily they do .

I can remember my two doing this. I was always very wary of disciplining the alleged culprit after I stumbled upon a "I'm going to get you into to trouble" threat being made by the older one to the younger one. Like Footprints says, I would do the whole "It's a shame you can't play nicely together so lets all do ..." thing.

Thanks for all your replies. I agree that I tend to interfere too much - will try to encourage them to sort it out for themselves in future!

I just go into my bedroom and shut the door!

Not interfering is best advice, but sometimes it seems necessary. In this case I ask the offender (often younger one too!) if they did hit etc. If the answer is yes, I tell them that it is very naughty, say sorry and then I talk to the older one and ask why they hit and can they play better together/find something else to do etc etc. Then I might give the younger one a warning that if they do it again x will happen. In fact this happened this morning and I found myself saying "a bit like at school DS you children have to play well without grown ups." DS nodded wisely so he seemed to think this was a reasonable approach .

Watching this with interest. mrspepperpotty, my age gap is simliar to your, but they are a few months older. DC2 has the language skills to tell me what happens, but it doesn't seem to help. DC1 usually says "We banged heads," (yeah, right) and DC2 has worked out she can fib.

Cross interrogating them doesn't get me any further.

Will try group disclipline.

I have a similar age difference (DD 19 months older than DS), and I remember them doing this sort of thing, except usually it was DS saying that DD had hit/pushed/shoved him. I walked in once and witnessed an episode where DS wanted a toy and DD wouldn't give it to him, and DS started crying out that DD hit me even though she had done nothing of the sort!

I did the same as footprints and hellhasnofury - a sort of no blame indirect punishment ('better stop playing with those toys if they make you argue, and help me tidy up instead' sort of thing). It worked over time.

Good luck!