Pushing

[Crybabybo]

Nursery have let me know previously that DS can be a bit aggressive with other kids (hitting, biting etc) but they haven't mentioned this for a little while.

We went to collect him today and saw him push a little girls head quite hard. It was actually a bit shocking to see and I told him that we mustn't do that and to say sorry.

We talked about it a bit after but he's still so little, he didn't really understand. He'll be 3 in 3 week and while I understand this is normal to some extent, how do I clarify that this behaviour is not acceptable?

Adding to this, I'm a bit miffed as I thought me and DP were on the same page about it until he said 'and you especially don't hit girls' 🙄 I quickly said 'you don't hit ANYone'

The first thing to understand is that nearly three is not 'still so little' that they can't understand that the behaviour is wrong.

It's true that they don't have control over their emotions and don't really understand the impact of their behaviour, but they do (or should) understand where the lines are, so don't be afraid to give him a short, sharp NO, and move him away. Everytime. He needs to know that physically hurting other people is a red line.

Outside of this do lots of chatting about feelings and emotions and what you can do with big feelings. Give him strategies to cope with frustration/anger/jealousy etc. You can talk about these and role play them too. Also don't be afraid to express these emotions appropriately yourself, so for example, you can say 'I'm really frustrated that I can't get this right, I'm going to take a break and do something else' or 'It makes me really cross when Daddy does xyz, I'm going to take some deep breaths outside and then ask him to put it right'.