3 year old is hitting at nursery

[August21yellowbaby]

My little boy has just turned 3 and he's hitting multiple children everyday at nursery

I try talking to him about not doing it, but he just doesn't seem to take it in what im saying yet

He also hits his baby brother, I don't know how to stop this happening, it's been an ongoing problem for a while but nursery are now documenting it every time and I have to sign it at the end of the day (average 8 incidents a day)

Any tips on how to stop this? I've asked for a meeting at nursery

You tell him no firmly. You don’t talk to him about it, it’s a simple no. Why are you allowing him to hit his brother? You need to intervene every single time he comes within striking distance of his sibling. Only one of my children tried to hit a younger sibling once when he was around 3 1/2 and it never happened again, he knew exactly what I meant when told no. Nursery should be documenting it, no-one sends their child to nursery to be hit by others.

Yeah that’s a lot of hitting (not judging) but he needs consequences not talking to

removed from the playtime - remove the toys and nice things

no attention

My hitting brother used to bring it home to me too. My mother used the boys will be boys excuse. I don't have anything to do with him any more. He grew out of it, sure, but not before destroying his relationships with me.

Do whatever you can to stop his violence. It has far-reaching consequences.

Hi OP,

I am wondering what the underliniood luck ng reason is…. Is this a new behaviour? Could it be linked to having a new baby in the house (less attention and feeling jealous?) and new frustrations? Is it a new nursery and he is frustrated or overly tired?

How are his communication skills? He might be hitting because he can’t say - ‘I am playing with this’ when toys are being snatched by other children. This happens a lot in a pre-school/nursery setting when a child finds it hard to communicate in any other way and has a lot of pent-up frustration. This gets better very quickly with communication skills.

It might even just be a reflex response to something he doesn’t like, and he just needs a firm hand to stop it, and to role model the correct way of responding.

If he is looking at you when he does it, it is for attention from adults/children. He needs attention for other good behaviours instead.

It is worth looking at when this behaviour occurs to get a better understanding.

Good luck OP.

DH’s brother was the same and his mother used to say “he doesn’t know his own strength”. DH remembers being 4 and his brother being 6 and smacking him all over the place. They don’t talk now as this behaviour was allowed to continue for years. I find it difficult to understand parents who don’t stamp on this behaviour. Talking with a 3 year old won’t work and allowing them to hit a young sibling is wrong on so many levels.

At our nursery the child who hits is immediately removed from play and sits on a time out space for a couple of minutes. Every single time. It takes time but we are 4 weeks in and the hitters are improving. Some have stopped completely.

Might sound a bit hippy but when my eldest was going through the hitting phase, I bought the book "hands are not for hitting" and read it as his bedtime story for a week. Magically, the hitting behaviour disappeared!

Talking about it is great, but if he hasn't developed the impulse control to stop himself, then it won't always stop it in that moment. You need to look at the circumstances of the hitting in order to stop it. Does he lose his temper and hit out in anger or frustration? Or is it that he enjoys the reaction he gets? I know this sounds odd, but some children find the fuss that follows very entertaining. As a pp mentioned, how are his communication skills? Can he use words to express that something has annoyed him? Is someone hitting him, and it's a learnt behaviour? You mentioned nursery are recording it all. This us great but they need to be recording what was going on just before too in order to identify any triggers. You won't fix this by just dishing out punishment I'm afraid, you need to figure out why he's doing it. Of course none of this means you just sit back and do nothing in the meantime. A firm " no, hitting hurts" and then give all your attention to the other child is the approach i would take. Anything els3 totally depends on the trigger.

"I try talking to him about not doing it, but he just doesn't seem to take it in what im saying yet,"

You really underestimate your own child. He is 3 years old! He understands very well what you are saying; he simply chooses to ignore it because he can.

If the consequences for hitting the baby brother is: "trying to talk," it's not surprising he is doing it with him and other children.
You need to be more firm and he needs to be punished (obviously not physically, but other forms of punishments).

You need to get into understanding what triggers him to do this. It took my son still lashing out at school for us to realise that we needed professional help and he now has an ASD diagnosis. He never hit 8 kids in a single day though.

Is there a trigger?

is he frustrated? Can he communicate verbally what he wants? Can he not share?

find the triggers then work with nursery for a consequence.

at my early years centre we had a child who hit out of frustration as they had little language skills so we worked with mum who at home was saying “hitting , sitting” so if they hit someone then the child was removed from the situation and sat on a chair for 4 or 5 minutes . No eye contact, no communication apart from to say “hitting, sitting” and it did take a few weeks but it seems to have worked.