Beaten up by my toddler and so down about it

[Lamazeroo]

I feel like I'm constantly being beaten up by my own baby! Not really, but I would like advice from anyone who's been through similar.
My DS is 17 months and every day he hits, slaps, pinches, bites, scratches me. A lot of the time it's when he's breastfeeding. He'll just casually lean an arm back then slap me full-force in the face or neck. If I tell him no he thinks it's hilarious and repeats it with gusto. Once he hurt me enough to make me cry, which he thought was hysterically amusing and an invitation to pull my hair and hit me harder.

I'm also having a horrible time with him hitting other children at soft play/on play dates etc. No provocation is necessary; he'll just reach out and casually slap the face of a passing child. Again, if I tell him no he finds it funny and is even more keen to go on the offence. I'm so embarrassed, and always apologise to the por child and other parent. Parents tell me it's a phase and it will pass, but my DS seems rather more into this phase than his peers. It's so frustrating as I just don't understand why he does it. Can anyone offer advice?

If it helps you to know: he's an extremely attached baby. Breastfeeds every 2-3 hours day and night, co-sleeps, very clingy to me. I'm a full time mum. He's only ever spent a couple of hours at a time away from me, and only then with my DH or family. He's very distressed if he's not with me. He breastfeeds to sleep and only I can put him to sleep. He had a very traumatic start to life and endured a lot of horrible, painful medical procedures. He's also had some ongoing health issues, and has experienced a lot of pain through these. I don't know if any of this is relevant to the hitting, but it may help to explain why he is so attached to me.
DH and I are very quiet, non-aggressive people. DS has never experienced or witnessed any violence, or even any raised voices at home.
The whole thing - him hitting both me and his contemporaries - is really getting me down and I'd appreciate any advice or words of wisdom.

No I know that, what I was saying is some posters were sort of implying the behaviour was out of the ordinary and that this boy was somehow aggressive, using that word as a label.

I have a daughter who gets very angry and can be very physically aggressive but she's not defined by that. And we are working on it

IME & IMO We, as parents, need to begin to instil the morals and values we have at an early age and the first 3 or 4 years are crucial for beginning to set boundaries for our DC.

I don't think any of the pp's have been harsh or needlessly blunt. I think you've had a lot of sound advice.

It's yours and your DH responsibility as loving parents (and it's obvious from your OP, that you are) to begin to mould your DS into the person he's going to be, now. He needs your guidance and that means being firm in these instances. That's good parenting.

You could continue to do nothing in the hope he grows out of it but you seem really quite upset by this already. Alternatively, you could decide that now is the time to take positive action and show him how to grow out of it.

Ultimately, you'll do what you feel is best and that's ok. I hope whatever you choose sees an end to this behaviour, soon.

Afternoon! I have 3 DSs. The older two (DS3 is only a few weeks old) definitely went through rather 'Physical' phases. DS1 (now 6) was a real shover and used to push other children while DS2 (now 3) used to hit. I say 'used to' because from an early age they were taught that this behaviour was not ok. Like many of the previous posters have suggested, when the pushed or hit other children they were removed from the situation with a very firm no. They are happy, well adjusted boys and although aren't little angels, play well with lots of different children. I believe that children are not born understanding what's acceptable behaviour, it's up to us as parents to teach them. This is just as much a part of their education as learning to read and write. OP - you sound like you've had a tough time over the last 18 months, best of luck with it all and you're definitely not the only one who's had to deal with this situation!

Our DS went through a hitting phase at the same age - it lasted a couple of months and was horrible (especially when other parents think that saying no firmly a few times should sort it!) It's hard to know how much he just grew out of it and how much the things that we did helped.

You have the big advantage at this age that you can physically stop them repeatedly hurting people fairly easily. They take more notice of physical actions than words when they are that young, so absolutely definitely put him down or face him away from you if he hurts you while feeding. The thing for us that made the biggest difference with other toddlers was teaching him what 'gentle' meant, and then rather than telling him 'no', telling him to be gentle. It didn't have a 100% success rate but it prevented repeated hitting more than anything else we tried.

I'd suggest minimising interactions with other toddlers to what you feel you have the emotional resources to cope with and planning in advance what you are going to say/ how you are going to deal with hitting. I found the book Easy to Love, Hard to Discipline by Becky Bailey useful for giving me 'scripts' to use that I felt happy with, that came from a loving rather authoritarian approach.

There's also dealing with the root cause of the problem - he's probably hurting other because he's got big emotions (which may or may not be partially caused by the medical stuff - you'll never know) rather than because he doesn't know that he shouldn't hit. I found the Hand in Hand Parenting site useful for this www.handinhandparenting.org/articles along with Janet Lansbury www.janetlansbury.com/tag/hitting/ . I also found the books Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne and Playful Parenting by Lawrence Cohen were also quite good at dealing with ways to make life less stressful for a toddler and deal with underlying emotions.

Good luck! It's a tough stage to get through, but may well make you a more confident parent in the long run.

I agree with snazzy earlier on - remove him from the situation, stop feeding, say no very firmly and sternly and don't lose the plot or, at the other end of the spectrum, appear too passive. You mentioned that you and your partner are both quiet and non-aggressive. If toddlers are being a bit wild and uncontrollable then that can be ineffective when trying to teach right and wrong behaviour. Whatever age, a toddler needs to be taught what is naughty and wrong. I know he is young and won't fully grasp discipline and certainly explanations will go over his head, but don't underestimate what he can learn at that age. We started using the naughty mat (I expect some would tell me that 'time out spot' would be a better term but hey too late now!) with ds1 at 2 years, and it has worked brilliantly. He has never attempted to get off it (I know that this isn't universal and it doesn't work for some, but I think 2 years was a good age to implement it) and it has deterred bad behaviour as he got older due to the threat of going on it. Just to clarify, he only went on it for the same number of minutes as his age in years, not exactly a long time. But I do think that little ones start to understand boundaries and consequences from a young age.