How do I get my 3 year old to stop hitting and kicking?

[Dancergirl]

Dd3 was 3 in February. She's the youngest of 3 girls so of course needs to make a bit of a mark for herself! But her behaviour is getting me down. She hits, pushes, pulls hair and sometimes kicks myself, dh and her sisters. Particularly if she doesn't like the sound of something or is just in bad mood.

Dh and I both say a firm 'no', sometimes removing her. Dh is a keen advocate of the naughty step, I'm not so keen.

So...what other techniques are there to stop her doing it if you don't smack and don't use the naughty step?

BTW, she's not like this all the time - she can be an extremely loving affectionate child.

Sounds like it's anger management skills you're after, I think my DC3 needs similar (I will watch this thread to see if someone else can suggest something useful).

I heard you can ask them to go beat up a pillow in another room, but that's too considered and deliberate to work for DS2. (and I'd soon have no reasonable quality pillows left if we tried it!)

How come you're not keen on the time out option?

My experience of 'time out' is that DS screams and wails and whines the whole time (grates my nerves badly), or tries to trash his immediate environment; he has to be physically held down or confined to actually serve his 'time out' -- so I have to serve the time out time with him, effectively.

But I dunno if that's how it is for OP.

I found with DD2, at that age that she got so frustrated with not being able to talk to her very garralous older sister, or us, to express herself she would kick, but more frequently bite.

I tried to get her to shout NO when something wasn't going her way, so that she at least got our attention and we could get to her before she lashed out.

It seemed to work, but it could also be that she just grew out of it around that time