Hitting & Biting

Does your toddler hits and tries to byte you every time you don't agree to his/her opinions or demands?

I honestly don't know if this is a common behavior but I have tried different things to control this with Kyna. I have tried giving her time outs, I have tried blocking her hands or mouth depending on the action of course 😀 and the last thing I tried was quickly holding her and giving her a hug. I will share my experience with each of above reactions to my munchkin's action. 

** Timeouts 

I have tried giving her timeouts but I will admit that I would literally just be able to do it for few seconds. As soon as she starts to cry, my heart would melt and I will do it by clock, timeout for 30 seconds or so. But I used to make sure she agrees that she has done something bad and she will not do it again- I don't think toddlers even understand what next time means 😉 but I used to buy that. I did see little difference on Kyna's actions but then she started to play around with it. She would tell me to give her a timeout- that is when I realized I need to do something else. So comes the second action:

** Blocking hands

After timeouts started to be less effective, I went to another strategy of blocking her from reaching me or the subject(another person) when she gets frustrated. I noticed this was not helping at all as she would very persistently keep on trying and get more irritated and angry. Obviously, I stopped using it and researched for more ways to handle this situation which led me to my next action:

** Hugging 

So far I can tell you from my experience this is the best way to calm her down and I think they get a feeling of being heard so they don't get more frustrated. As soon as I notice some of our decisions are going to make her angry or frustrated I literally leave everything in my hand and just hold her. She would all of sudden just hug and tell you what is upsetting her. This way, she also understands (or pretend to understand) your reasons and gets distracted to other happening things around her. 

Happy toddler Happy parents 😁