why do small children slap/bite etc?

[Divastrop]

i can remember wrongly assuming that any child who slapped/hit other children must be being smacked by his/her parents back in the days when ds1 was an innocent little baby.

now,10 years on i really want to know why my 2.7 year old dd2 has started slapping other children,and biting her older brothers,and why dd3(16 months)has also taken to slapping me+her siblings and laughing.

i dont smack any of my children,and i put a stop to any physical violence among them straight away.

so if slapping isnt learned,why do they do it?

yes,that would also explain why i have to fight the urge to slap my 9yo dd when she comes out with one of her hormone-fuelled bitchy comments about the size of my bottom

They slap things as well, have you noticed? But they don't get a reaction out of things, so that behavior fades.

Humans and animals, however, react most gratifyingly, and so that behavior is reinforced again and again.

This is why smacking and other pain inflicting happens more from subsequent children - it's not that they have learned the behavior from the first, they have had a really interesting response from the eldest the first time they hit the eldest.

The more children in the family, the more people there are to hit.

Ds1 never hit. Ds2 hits quite a lot - yet my parenting is far better for ds2 and

It can be sensory as well. DS1 bites himself a lot at the moment. Sensory; for some reason he needs to and his knees are covered in bruises. He sits in the bath biting his knees and pulling back so the skin is al stretched out. He hits his head. Sometimes with frustration, sometimes sensory. I have no idea what need that fulfils. He bashes windows and leaps really hard off things and down flights of stairs. He hits and bites me too- but again mostly sensory (80% sensory, 20% cross).
Sensory stuff is harder to stop because the actual act is reinforcing in itself.

It's not that uncommon for young children to have a whole bunch of sensory issues that resolve as they enter school age and move through primary school.