Help !! Aggressive 3yr old girl !

[FourLittleDucks]

About to pop with a babe. DD3 (just turned three) has taken a turn for the worse w.r.t hitting - hitting us, hitting her sister, hitting 'weaker' toddlers (ie she's fine at nursery where she's one of the younger ones!)

ANY TIPS APPRECIATED !!!!

She's a lovely little girl, a late talker, which I"m sure is adding to the frustration - would just like to be consistent with how we deal with the hitting. Especially when tiredness/stress levels are about to increase a million fold with the arrival of DD4 any day now....!!!

Please help !!

Give her a little toy or somthing to put in her pocket. Tell her the toy is a magic fairy or whatever it takes to get her to believe. Every time she wants to hit someone she is to take the toy out and whisper "magic fairy make my hits go away, then a reward will come my way" or some such. Tell her the fairy will count how many hits she saves and then reward her with whatever for each time. You need to practise that with her to get the impulse to hit replaced with the impulse to take the toy out and whisper her magic rhyme, and it might take a few days to work, but hopefully the combination of magic, rewards and a secret should snap her out of it. Make sure the reward is something that will motivaate her. Sounds a little naff but has worked.

Arrh, sounds interesting - and a positive way to pre-emptively deal with it - has it worked for you with this age ?

It can be quite scary for them when a new baby is coming along. My daughter was very affected until DS was about 6 months. She would push and swore at nursery...eeeks. Even started loosing some friends.

As things have settled down, and now I have equal time for both of them, she is very happy and likes having a brother and she was chasing him around the kitchen tonight giggling - he was crawling but got the swing of it!

She may even improve after the baby is born. Mine didn't want the baby, and didn't like the idea of it. When I came home from hospital she was in awe of him, gave him a kiss and cuddled up for a photo, so that was an immediate improvement.

Hope it works out for you.