21 month old hitting newborn - help

[carve123]

i have a 3 week old and a 21 month old son. most of the time the 21m s well behaved but we catch him smacking the baby a couple of times a day (with a bite yesterday). weirdly it is when baby is asleep in a cot or a bouncy chair not when i a m with him. whaat should i do ?

Well it's probably obvious to you that he's jealous of the baby. Have special time for him that's not interrupted by the baby crying - it's easy to drop everything if the baby cries but if you don't then ds will see that he's just as important as the baby.

Also you need to ignore him if he's mean to the baby. Just remove the baby and walk away. Then he's not got any attention, in fact the opposite as you've just left ds on his own. Then he will see that it doesn't pay off.

If you tell him off for hitting/ smacking, try to be more general ie "you don't hit/ smack anyone" rather than "you don't hit/smack the baby". Then he won't think that the issue is you're protecting the baby but that you're trying to focus on HIS behaviour.

Just some tips from my own experience. Good luck! It's pretty normal.

Also show him safe ways of touching the baby, eg "your brother likes it when you tickle his feet". Any moment now the baby will start smiling, and you can really big it up how the baby smiles more for his big brother than for you (which may well be the case, it certainly was for me with my seocnd child). Try also cuddling your ds1 while you are attending to your ds2, while feeding him, for example, or chatting to ds1 about ds1 subjects while changing ds2's nappy, so that ds1 still feels like he is the priority.

Save cooing over the baby, or talking about him, for timeswhen ds1 is asleep or otherwise absent.