Has anyone experienced this repetitive behaviour?

[Max1140]

Hi all

I just wanted to ask if people have experienced this thing that seems odd to me. My toddler, a 16 month old boy, will apparently get bored of any toy within a few minutes. He will then climb onto the sofa, sit properly on it, and start bouncing his head off the back cushion, rocking back and forth.

You can easily distract him from this, with a toy, a snack, or just by talking to him. But when you stop, or he’s bored of the toy, it’s back to bouncing. He loves to go for walks, but as soon as we get back, it’s straight onto the sofa, bounce, bounce, bounce...

Sometimes he’ll stop bouncing after a few minutes and go do something else. Other times he’ll keep on bouncing for ages - 20 minutes or more. I keep thinking he’ll damage his little head or neck somehow so I’ll intervene to distract him, but I can’t always be there to do that.

Is this normal?

You can read him a book and he’ll pay attention. He’ll pay attention to the TV if it’s on, but we limit his exposure to it, to about 30 minutes a day, tops. He’s a good sleeper - 11 hours at night and one or two good daytime naps.

Thanks in advance! :)

Hi @Max1140, we're just giving your thread a bump to get it into Active Conversations. Hopefully some Mumsnetters will be along soon.

Thanks! I found some information about this, and it turns out it’s actually called “head banging”. Usually nothing to worry about, but I’m still curious about how common it is!

It is quite common and only concerning if there are other concerns, on its own it's rarely anything to worry about.

Thanks for your reply! Yeah, I don’t think it’s a concern. If anything it might be because of his teeth - I’ve noticed since posting this that he does it for longer when he has teeth coming through.