Anyone interested in a 'feisty/spirited/livewire child' support thread?

[Reesie]

DD is 2 1/2 and despite dh and I being really mellow people - dd can be a tad wild. I'm being consistant with picking up and reprimanding any antisocial behaviour and reinforcing and congratulating any good behaviour.

She's a lovely little girl but in a busy social situation such as parties or toddler groups - she has no hesitation in getting into scraps with other children - much worse when she is tired.

I have just come home from a birthday party where she pulled a smaller child onto the floor, nearly bit another child when they got into a tug of war battle over a balloon and did a kind of WWF jump onto an older boy .

I have spoken to other mothers who have had similar problems and I know that she will (hopefully) grow out of it.

I'd love to hear how things have turned out for other children - do they become assertive older children? - until then I have to watch her like a hawk and jump in before she has a chance to get into a squabble. She has a younger 3 month old sister who incidently she is extreemly gentle with.

We wnet to soft play the other day and in the ball pool older boys were throwing balls at a younger boy who was cowering in the corning and crying. When they started throwing balls at dd - she angrily walked over to them and pushed the lead boy over and chased the other 2 off . She then went and gave the crying little boy a hug. So in some ways I'm glad she can stand up for herself, but I don't want her to hurt any other children.

When do toddlers grow out of feisty phases???? Or will she ever??? Any tips on handling these situations???? Or if you have a toddler who is feistier than mine - can you let me know so that I can feel better

My now almost 6 year old is a feisty child. At your DDs age, she could be physical, although probably to less of an extent than your DD. To cope, I sent her to gymnastics classes to burn off that extra energy. Turns out she is rather good at it, and soon she'll be doing 6 hours of gymnastics a week. I find it is good to channel her energy.

She is still quite bossy and assertive, but this tends to be more verbal these days and she is easy to reason with.

In fact, she is now starting to be able to listen and compromise and is in fact turning in to a very delightful little girl - but we had a few scrapes to get there along the way!

She will grow out of it, honest!!

hmmm, there's feisty and there's erm not exactly feisty sort of naughty-ish.
perhaps you and dh have been too mellow with her?maybe you need to do 'zero tolerance' for a bit and see how that goes?
My little one is a bleeding nightmare and i'll be honest-if she kicks off we warn and then leave.so,at the party where she did 4 instances of 'bahviour' we'd have warned at the first,and removed at the second. if she's bright she'll soon catch herself on.

We do have a zero tolerance to bad behaviour towards others. We are really strict on making sure that she is nice to others and respects herself - everything else - we are a bit crap .

It's just that she gets a really overexcited and boisterous in play and if there is an argument over a toy - everything goes pear shaped. On the other hand - she will often share toys and loves other children. She will hug friends and gets upset if another child is crying etc. When I pull her up on any bad behaviour she seems gutted and will apologise, however, none of that will stop her dive bombing on other children or giving someone a hefty push out of her way .

Her speech has really come on recently - so I'm hoping that she will understand reasoning better - I've got a fab little book called 'Bootsie Barker bites' about a bully and I ask her if she wants to be Bootsie (the bully) or the nice little girl in the book. When she says 'the nice girl' - I tell her that she musn't bite, push, hit etc or otherwise that means she is Bootsie. She seems a bit shocked at that.

It's all a phase, it's all a phase, it's all a phase.....