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Behaviour/development

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Child hitting at nursery, but not at home. Help!

1 reply

Aomame83 · 27/11/2019 16:08

My 3 year old (4 in March) has always been a confident and forceful child. He is bright and popular at his nursery with the other children (for now). However they seem to have some behavioural issues with him. He was at times a bit aggressive with other children and didn't always listen when in the toddler room, but they were always quick to say he was kind and caring when others were hurt or upset.

When he moved up to preschool he had a period where he was hurting other children a bit, but after a month or so he stopped.

We had a baby over the summer and his behaviour wasn't any different. He is kind to the new baby at home, he kisses her and sings to her when she is crying.

The past 5/6 weeks his behaviour has deteriorated and he has begun hurting other children most days. Some days he'll hit them with a toy, others he'll kick out. They have been trying to observe and redirect him the last couple of days, making an emphasis on kind hands. Today it has escalated further there were 3 incidents just this morning of hurting children on purpose. They had to move him into a room with a lower child to teacher ratio. They don't think he's doing it for attention and are struggling to work it out.

We don't allow him to watch violent TV shows. We don't have any issues with violence at home. We try to teach him to be kind to the cat. We are busy at home with different things, but he isn't looked after by people other than us most of the time. He is nursery full time...

Sorry for the long story, didn't want to drip feed. Any ideas about the cause?
TIA

OP posts:
Jossina · 27/11/2019 22:06

He's probably having feelings that he can't express about having a new sibling at home. That baby that he was so okay with as a sleeping, pooping lump is now becoming more real and taking more attention and time. It sounds like he was already someone who physically responds to those big feelings and now that he's having big feelings again he's responding how he always has. Hopefully as he becomes more verbal and he gets older he'll grow out of it.

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