My 13 months son hits/pushes..other kids!

[Ash80]

Does anyone have any advice. When my 13 month old son meets his playmates of similar age, he has to be watched constantly!!! as he tends to hit them, or push them etc. He does not do it in anger though and at times he seems over excited and other times he appears unaware of whats he's doing, or is he?
He also hits me and occasionally bites me,but laughs or babbles when he does so.
I have tried to stop him, but he still does it. I wonder if its something im doing or playful games he has with my dh. Has anyone had similar problem?

.....? bump

Please don't worry, this is really normal!

My dd2 has just startd doing this to her sister (she's 14m)

I think it's just them learning what they are capable of, and the cause=effect response (pushing/hitting always gets a reaction from somewhere... be it sibling whining about it or parent saying "No!") I think it's much the same as them learning that if they knock a lego tower over, for example, they get a round of applause. They are likely to do it again

Not sure if this is a fluke, but - my 1 year old had a habit of roughly grabbing our faces. We'd say "gently" until it occurred to us that she had no idea what we meant! So we took her hand and gently stroked our faces, saying "gently", and then stroked her face, also saying "gently". We let her stroke and pat us as much as she likes when she's gentle, and say "Aah" and cuddle her, and generally make a big fuss of her. It seems to have really clicked - she often strokes and pats us and other people, including children. If she starts to get excitable, we say "gently" and it seems to do the trick - I think maybe we forget that they don't understand what we're saying, so a demonstration to show what the word means can help.

Habbibu - we do this to our dd2 too. It seems to work (most of the time...)

my DD1 used to do this too! And I have to say I did find it a bit embarassing when everybody elses children were being well behaved. I to kind of hover around her ready to intercept! I too used to wonder about DH's pretend playing with her, and we put a stop to him making a game of being hit by her

I used to make a fuss of the child who had been hit/pushed and try and not give too much attention to my DD.

But I think Habbibu's advice is great, I have seen this used my a mum I know (who is also a teacher and toddler group leader) and it seems to work well.

Good luck and don't worry they grow out of it!!

Mine does too - I've just posted about his biting. He gets really excited and I never know if he's going to push them over or stick his thumb in and cuddle up ! Some of his little playmates just aren't so temperamental and I have to watch him all the time. I do worry that I'll end up being one of those "oh we don't have to invite her and her horror child" mums