My 2 yo son has been hitting other children at nursery for the past few weeks and the staff are now observing him & filling in a chart to try and find out what his triggers are as the behaviour seems to come out of the blue, ie not when he seems angry, having a tantrum etc.
He occasionally hits at home (normally during tantrums) and we deal with it by using a short time out and sternly saying 'no hitting'. This works quite well and he's usually ready to apologise after sitting in time out for 2 minutes. He has a lot more incidents of hitting at nursery.
However, the nursery have a policy of no time outs and not telling the child off by saying the behaviour is 'naughty' (I gather this is quite common for nurseries). Their way of dealing with him appears to me to almost reward him: they take him away from the other kids and a staff member stays with him - but he probably loves the 121 attention!
I'm prepared to try what they suggest as I obviously really want to fix the issue - so if they advise us to do the same thing we will. Just wondered if other ppl have had the same situation and how it was resolved?