1 year old pinching and pulling hair of older sister

[Jimmyjakes]

Hi,

This is my first post on mumsnet, so hope I'm following the right formula!

I am a father of 2 girls - a 14 month and 10 year old. The 14 month old has got into the habit of pinching and/or pulling her older sister's hair.

Up until recently they had a very sweet relationship. My 10 year old has been very patient with her younger sister, and genuinely likes spending time with her. There has been a little jealousy, but my wife and I try to counteract that by spending time with the 2 girls apart quite regularly. Now the pinching and hair pulling has started, it is putting a real strain on their relationship.

My wife and I react with a firm "no" but often she will shout "no" back, and pinch again straight away. When this happens we take her away from our older daughter, and put her at the other end of the room. None of this is having any effect. Often when one of us is holding the 14 month old in our arms, and her older sister walks past, she will reach out to pull her hair. Our 10 year old's reaction is often to scream. Often our 10 year old will be sitting reading, and her younger sister will walk up and pinch her on the leg. She genuinely seems to enjoy it!

The 14 month old is very good with other babies and children, and gets on very well with them, but gets very jealous if my wife picks up another baby - not sure if this has anything to do with it, but find it a little worrying as we are planning on trying for another child!

Any advice would be much appreciated!

I'm sorry we had this phase with our 13/14 month old. Fingers crossed at 18 months things are much better, only difference is dd1 is 3 but dd2 would hair pull, bite you name it. I think she just grew out of it but we were consistent removed dd2, told her no and showed her how to be nice each time.

Hope you find a solution soon I was tearing my hair out as I couldn't see what more I could do.

Hi,
Many thanks for letting me know. I guess we'll just have to stay consistent, and hope she grows out of it. 4 more months isn't so long in the grand scheme of things!

You must remember that your dd1 did this too. They all do. It's completely normal and it will pass

Same problem. To the extent that we've cut DS1's hair short so it's harder to grab.

DS2 just finds the yelping funny. I'm just removing him whenever he does it (which he also enjoys unfortunately) and waiting for him to grow out of it.

My dd went through a stage of doing this. If we told her no she'd just do it more and more. Eventually we started ignoring her, removing her hands but not acknowledging what she'd done and not making eye contact, and she would usually stop right away. Occasionally we would need to distract her with something (a 'look at that' type of thing, not a toy etc).

On the one hand it worked, but we were really concerned that by ignoring her behaviour we were condoning it, but having spoken to my hv about it we agreed that at that age children don't have a firm grasp on punishments and what they mean. She said usually about age three they get it, but my dd is starting to now at 2.6 (not about scratching, as she doesn't tend to do that anymore).

It is hard to patience with it, especially when it hurts.

I didn't experience this with my children, but perhaps the reason why 14 month keeps doing it is because of the screaming reaction she gets from her sister, she perhaps finds it amusing? have you tried instead of you or your wife saying No! to her, tell older sister to say 'No!' firmly to her and see her reaction, if she stretches out her hand to repeat the action, older sister should take hold of her hand firmly and repeat "No!" again.

You must remember that your dd1 did this too. They all do

No they don't. Some do, some don't.

I've not had to deal with this personally, but I recently read something about dealing with young toddlers hurting others, by paying them no attention at all when they do it, remove their hands and turn them to face away from everyone, saying that pulling hair isn't nice and we don't talk to people that pull hair - then give loads of attention to the person they've hurt. Not sure whether it'd work with the ages your DC are, but I guess once you've picked a way of dealing with it consistency will help in the end.

Having this with DC4, 14 months. Don't recall it with others. We say "no" and remove his hand firmly, but also try and keep the others' hair/noses out of the way. No solutions yet ...

Well I have never held a baby /toddler that hasn't grabbed at hair / nose / glasses.

I'll admit pinching isn't something I've come across often but it's certainly not uncommon

Same here - 14 month old DS is frequently pulling hair / pinching of our 2 year old and when we say 'don't pull hair' he pulls his own as if to say he understands.....but keeps doing it. He is pretty aggressive and we've not found a method that works yet as he simply doesn't care, be it telling off, moving him, showing 'gentle hands'. He is gentle with our dogs though, and for that I'm grateful. I'm telling myself it's a phase. DD did it and still does sometimes towards her older cousins, but she now knows to say sorry and not repeat the behaviour.