4yo keeps hitting newborn

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I have a 4 year old ds and a 3 week old baby. Ds keeps hitting the baby. 90% of the time he’s ok with him but once or twice a day he will just walk up and slap him for no reason. It’s usually when I’m holding him so I know it’s jealousy and that he’s struggling with the adjustment.

I’m trying my best to involve him with the baby and also give him as much one on one attention as I can. Whenever the baby is asleep I play with him and I make sure I still put him to bed every night.

My question is how should I handle things immediately after he hits the baby? I’ve explained to him that the baby is very fragile and easily hurt. I’ve told him he needs to be gentle. When I ask why he hit the baby he says because he wanted to.

Nothing I say or do so far has stopped him from hitting so I thought I’d ask on here for advice on how best to approach the situation.

I don't have a definite magic solution here, but thinking it through this has to be a case of he's doing it for attention and to test boundaries right. He knows that hitting the baby will get your attention, even if that is negative. And he wants to see what you will do as a result. So ideally he will instead be rewarded with lots of positive attention for behaving appropriately towards the baby, and that will head off much of the desire to get told off for hitting (as a better than nothing option).

It's common to get older siblings involved in the baby's care by asking them to fetch/pass you things for nappy changes, you could ask him to choose a toy or a book for the baby to "play with" or you to read to them both. Then heaps and heaps of praise for being an amazing responsible big brother, such a help, you couldn't do it without him. You have to respond when he does the hitting, I'm not sure of how would be best but if it's for attention then as minimally as possible - a firm no we never hit, and either remove the baby or him from the situation quickly to prevent escalation, and give more attention to the baby?

I've also heard it suggested before that you loudly and proactively "tell the baby" they have to wait for something - "no baby name I can't do XYZ for you right now, I'm playing with older child name", "you have to wait five minutes for your milk baby name, I'm reading older child name a story right now". The baby doesn't notice or care, but the older child does and will appreciate that they are being placed first in the priority order at that moment, compared to the urgent times you sometimes need to prioritise the other way.

Oh I had this terribly with my first 2.

Ds1 was only 18months old when his brother came.

I ended up having a safety net over his basinet as DS launched toys at him constantly.

Was hard to explain at 18 months old.

It did eventually stop and they became friends.

I got a book called "you were the first" for my dc1 and it's a bit soppy but she loved it and that helped a lot with the adjustment. As did starting school as it was her special thing that the boring baby couldn't do. So you could focus a lot on getting him ready for September and how exciting it is to be a school boy.

Another good book was "my busy being Bella day" but we changed the names when we read it.

As he's doing this for your attention, I think the best approach is to immediately withdraw your attention. Fuss over the baby and take no notice of him for a few minutes. Toddlers often prefer negative attention to no attention at all.

Don't worry OP - this is really normal and it will pass.

This is really bad advice.

Your just reinforcing his worry that you care more about the new baby