aggressive one year old

[ch1134]

I'm a bit upset because today I realised my 15 month old is not perfect!
I know this is just life, and it's up to me to parent him properly, but I just wanted to sound this out.
He was pushing a toy pram and his cousin tried to take it off him. His response was to poke her in the eye! Horrible!
I'm sure he's just got an impulsive personality, and I must teach him how to use words/ be kind etc, and not reward negative behaviour. I'm just hoping this doesn't happen too often, as it was pretty scary and embarrassing!

It's not his personality. Pretty much all babies of this age are impulsive. It's because of their level of brain development which means they don't really understand other people have feelings and can be hurt. They also don't have much ability to control their impulses either - if they want something they'll just grab it or do whatever to take it off someone else!

All you can do is to firmly but kindly enforce the boundaries, every time. It will seem a bit futile for a while, and like you're not getting anywhere. But at some point their development will catch up and they will get better at controlling their impulses and at having empathy for others.

Be really careful about labelling with terms like "horrible". He isn't being horrible. He just doesn't understand that what he did would hurt the other child, and what that would feel like.

Change 'aggressive' to frustrated. OP

Thank you. Frustrated and impulsive is better. I just hadn't seen any other children as young as him behave like that. In no way is he horrible. The event was.

OP, my DS is almost 18 months but went through a phase recently of going up to other children and giving them a smack in the face/head for no reason-so embarrassing! I realised that it seemed to be when he got fed up/bored/frustrated and kept reiterating to him that it's not kind and hurts. He now seems to be going through a phase of hugging and kissing. The odd smack is still making an appearance but I think he's getting that he shouldn't do it.

As pp said, if you keep reinforcing the rules, he should start getting the picture