I have a strong willed 22 month old DD, who for the most part is absolutely wonderful but a few months ago she started hurting herself when she got frustrated. (E.g she wanted to do something and we said no/she had tried to do something a few times and it hadn’t worked etc) This involved hitting herself on the head/pulling her hair.
We found the best way to calm her down was by removing her from whatever situation was causing the frustration and sitting her down somewhere quiet for a few minutes.
However now she’s started hitting me and DH when frustrated. We’ve tried everything, a firm no, that’s not nice/use gentle hands, demonstrating gentle hands, putting her down if we were holding her but it hasn’t really improved. Do we just need to stick it out?
She isn’t showing any other signs of ADD/Autism so I haven’t pursued that at this point and figured it was just a toddler phase but I have a niece and nephew and neither of them went through this, so feel like we’re failing somewhere. Aside from these outbursts she’s a really clever, funny and lovely little girl.