2.8 yr old - aggression, language or what?

[annabanana169]

Hi,

My ds is 2.8 and goes to nursery 4 days a week and he loves it. He was 8 weeks prem and hit milestones at the end of every 'normal' range just as I was starting to worry. Nursery recently started telling me he had taken a shine to a little girl and would go up to her, hug and kiss her and then go too far and then bite her, squeeze her too hard or pull her hair. He
doesn't seem to get she doesn't like it.

He also shows lots of aggressive behaviour at home, biting and hitting when he doesn't get what he wants. I think this is related to his frustration from language development which seems slower than his peers. He can understand a lot, but although he knows lots and lots of nouns, he's not saying intelligible sentences of longer than 2 words. And he seems to have spurts of language improvement - and I'm not sure whether it's going right or whether we should just chill!

I've agreed with nursery to see if he needs additional support and starting with GP next week. I just don't know whether to worry or not - whether this sounds normal or what.

Any thoughts or ideas for next steps, would be massively appreciated.
Thanks, Anna

Bottom line is that he has to be pulled up sharp and left in no doubt at all that biting, hitting etc. is wrong, unacceptable and won't be tolerated. Many children that age exhibit aggressive behaviour so in that sense it's 'normal'... but that's a long way from saying it's acceptable.

There may be reasons why he behaves as he does but you can't afford to delay acting or for those to turn into excuses. Match additional support with some zero tolerance discipline both at home and at nursery and you'll get the best of both worlds.

I think that's what we've been doing re the discipline and nursery and us have been working together to make we're doing the same things -time outs, explaining alternative touch - hugs, stroking, kisses etc. I guess the concern is that we've been doing this for months - from when he first started doing it and it's not getting better.

So I suppose I'm also asking whether it can take months for them to 'get it' or whether this does indicate additional support? We're going to GP anyway but I just wondered if it sounded familiar to anyone?

Thanks

Sounds fairly normal in many ways to me. My DD aged 2.10 is going through a spurt of being horrid to other children but more to her brother. She prefers to "push" and saves the kicking for her brother Lots of time outs/ taking favourite toys away etc at the moment.

I had a good friend whose son went through a stage of biting, it got to the stage where she couldn't take him out anywhere, thankfully it passed with consistent discipline and now at age 5 he is so lovely.

I agree not being able to communicate can be frustrating but keep being consistent and I'm sure it will pass x