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When a child hits, pushes, bites, snatches or otherwise acts aggressively, telling him or her to be gentle and to not hurt is unlikely to be effective. The reason it tends to not result in that behaviour changing is that simply encouraging them to be gentle and to not hurt the other child doesn’t help them learn the necessary skills. Information alone doesn’t help them improve their emotional regulation or impulse control. Yet when clear guidance is offered with emotional support, they can learn and grow.
For them to truly take in our guidance, they need a lot of help in managing the intense frustrations and emotions they can experience in their interactions with other children. For children to learn to understand and respect other people’s boundaries, they need our consistent and patient guidance as they learn.
When one child hurts the other unintentionally
Children play with so much exuberance and energy and can easily hurt each other accidentally. In this situation, we can help them remedy the situation by narrating what we see so that both children feel seen and cared about. Then we can ask the children what might have worked better. Or we can have a little chat about what might work better next time.
When one child hurts the other intentionally
Most of the time, when a child acts aggressively, their actions are driven by frustration. And frustration can really overwhelm a child who’s still slowly developing impulse control. One child hurting the other doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t care about the other getting hurt. They may feel the urge to lash out and they also don’t want to hurt their sibling or friend, but when the frustration is strong, the urge to lash out pushes through.
Children are so emotional and passionate. Simply not getting the toy they set their sights on can result in an instant flare up of frustration, even if they were just laughing a split second ago! The frustration can be caused by something as small as needing to go to the loo but not wanting to leave their play.
If something happens that results in the child losing their sense of connection and safety, like an unfamiliar person entering the house or their parent becoming impatient with them, it’s not unusual for a child to become aggressive towards others. As well as learning that it’s not okay to hurt others, they largely need an answer to the question of: “but what CAN I do with all this frustration?”
Children hurting others is often a cry for help. Aggression is often a call for increased connection, warmth, affection, fun, laughter or perhaps they have some big cries locked inside their body that need an outlet.
Most children tend to hit, push or bite out of frustration
It can be good to make a note of when it happens and identify any patterns. Reducing any contributing factors that cause the child to feel stressed can really help. For instance, many children become very out of balance when they eat certain foods like gluten or dairy, processed sugar or food with artificial colours and dyes. A few days of jotting everything down could potentially save you years of frustration.
Children like adults do better when they’re more relaxed than stressed
Think about what you can do to reduce your child’s stress or minimise situations that may be over-stimulating. If your child becomes aggressive every time you go to the supermarket, then it’s fair to assume that being in that environment is difficult for your child rather than the child being difficult when you’re at the supermarket. This perspective shift can afford us more empathy and patience for our child, which can result in us soothing rather than scolding them when they start to become reactive.
Seeing it as a symptom of stress and frustration
Holding this awareness in mind helps the parent or teacher avoid judging a child to be “naughty” or “being difficult” or “unkind”. Tuning in to the child’s underlying needs to gain relief from their stress and frustrations helps the adult to think creatively and do all they can to increase the child’s sense of connection, safety and security. Are they finding interactions with certain friends or siblings stressful and if so, do they need more of your calm non-judgmental mediation?
Perhaps your child needs for you to slow down the pace and maintain calm respectful communication, especially at vulnerable times like when the child wakes up or is tired or hungry. Quality non-directed time in nature can also do wonders for helping children come back to balance.
What to do and say when things get heated. Perfect for printing out or screenshotting to refer to on the go!
Touching and handling your child gently and sensitively
Touching your child gently in your day to day activities helps them learn to be gentle towards others. Whether we’re dressing them, picking them up, restraining them in situations of danger or lifting them into their car seat, whether we’re sensitive or gruff strongly imprints them. In these situations, children can feel over-powered and result in them over-powering other children, as children naturally re-enact what they experience.
You might also like to read; My Body Belongs to Me, teaching about consented touch.
Giving advance warning teaches informed consent
It also helps to prepare your child by explaining what you intend to do before and during normal activities. For instance; “ok let’s go and change your nappy” giving them a minute to adjust, holding arms out and waiting for your child to accept our hug. This gentler approach empowers them and decreases the fight-flight stress response that can lead to the instinct to react or attack.
Prevent the biting, pushing or hitting;
- You may need to shadow your child if they’re in a phase of being aggressive.
- Prevent harm by physically intervening as swiftly as possible rather than expecting them to respond to verbal instructions. If necessary, physically hold them them as you tell them “I can’t let you hurt, but I’m here to help you both”.
- If they’ve already lashed out, keep the child who did the hurting close and warmly invite them in when caring for and empathising with the child who has been hurt.
- If the child who did the hurting doesn’t want to stay close, you can tell them “I care about both of you and will come and help you soon”, this can seem counter-intuitive, but I consistently see that aggression fizzles out when children feel understood and helped.
- Show care and empathy for your child’s feelings of anger and frustration that drove their actions; “you got really frustrated, you hit your brother and now he’s hurting” [narrating what happened without judgment], “that was a tricky problem wasn’t it”, “you got upset when Tom rode on your bike didn’t you”. Reflecting without judgement invites your child to share their feelings.
- As soon as your child learns to really trust that their feelings are always important and deserving compassion, they will get better at seeking support before they reach overwhelm. Children who gain support learn to seek support, to release stress through crying or talking when they start to become overwhelmed, rather than lashing out.
- Talking about what might have worked better or what might work better the next time when your child is calm is more effective than reasoning or teaching at times of upset.
Children who hurt others when frustrated often feel insecure
Because the child’s attachment needs are so strong, simply sensing their parent’s annoyance or disapproval can cause them to feel a little insecure. The best remedy to increase their sense of security is generally to give them messages that they are loved and safe.
All peaceful parenting approaches aim to support the parent to maintain the warm connection which helps to maintain the child’s sense of security. Quite often the child who did the hurting receives little care for their feelings. But the child wouldn’t have lashed out if they weren’t feeling insecure, frustrated, threatened or possibly even overwhelmed.
When children hurt another, they need to know that you’re not just trying to make them stop being angry, they can’t do that on demand and trying to not be angry causes a lot of inner conflict and even more frustration. They need to know we understand and care and can help.
Show him that you can remain calm and confident as you help him with his frustration. Your confidence in helping your child will start to ease any feelings of insecurity or overwhelm they may have. Even when a child doesn’t look afraid or frustrated when they lash out, if you look closely you will see that their body is in a very tight, tense stressed state.
Show her what she IS allowed to do when frustration builds up
If at all possible, when you intervene and stop your child, hopefully just before they lash out, show that you’re making yourself available to really listen as they cry or complain and get it all out.
Quite often the parent’s intervention to stop their child, will provide the outlet they need to let the underlying frustrations push to the surface and gain some release through big cries.
You can perhaps suggest that they roar like a lion, stamp their feet, jump up and down, scream into a pillow (which is less overwhelming than screaming into the air), maybe tear some old newspapers, pop bubble wrap. You can take their hand and do some brisk walking or a little run outside which gives them both an outlet and connection at the same time. Also, doing some slow deep breaths with them can help them regulate. A tight hug sometimes works wonders to dissipate tension if they allow that. There are many ways to dissipate frustration.
It’s important to note that any of these actions that provide an outlet are only likely to be well received by your child if you guide them in the context of a warm caring connection with them. If it’s interpreted as a message to “go and sort yourself out”, this will more likely activate or intensify any upset at the lack of your emotional support and understanding. In parenting, how we say something to our child is generally much more important than what we say.
Laughter heals and dissipates tension
Another really effective way of helping them get their frustrations out is to invite them to push against your hands as you kneel in front of them, this will bring frustrations to a head and they’ll either growl or laugh, either way, it’ll be a release. Or put a huge cushion in front of you and invite them to push really hard against the cushion. Or sit with your back against the wall also with a big cushion (for added protection for you both) and invite your child to sit on your knee, and push backwards with their bare feet on the ground. These all help the child release that ball of frustration from their belly or chest. For more ideas read The Power of Play.
Power reversal games
These are any game or activity where the child gets to play out being the one who is faster, stronger, more on to it, more in control, gets to be the boss or the leader. These games help a child release frustrations relating to feeling powerless or controlled. Children tend to love any game where the parent takes on the role of being goofy, silly or the less powerful one. These games can be very therapeutic, which can be measured by the intensity of the laughter that the game elicits!
Games like Simon Says where they get to give the instructions, or they’re the jockey and you’re the horse being given instructions to turn right or left as the child taps your right or left shoulder. It can really help to have a pillow fight with you to give your child an outlet to their need to push and be vigorous or scream into a cushion as you tell her it’s safe to do so and you’re looking after her.
You might also like to read the healing power of therapeutic play
Often a big releasing cry is the remedy that’s needed
Also important to consider is that the frustration that drives a child to lash out is often the result of them not gaining the opportunities they need to have big releasing cries that are supported by their parent. The biggest need is always acceptance and empathy!
You might also like to read Babies and children can heal through their cries.
Babies around one year to eighteen months
At this age, children are still largely in the oral stage of development. They have the instinct to explore through putting anything and everything in their mouth, but at the same time experience a lot of restrictions on what they can taste and bite. They can hold a lot of tension in their jaws. We need to support children to gain other outlets for their frustrations.
Children of this age often bite, push, grab or hit out of excitement, experimentation or just because they’re oblivious to the other person’s space. They’re mostly completely unaware that it hurts the person on the receiving end. In telling your child that it hurts, you can be sincere without being critical or directing anger at them. It’s giving them helpful information when you say; “ouch that really hurt!” if they hurt you. Or you can protect their sibling by calmly stating; “I can’t let you hurt your sister”. You may need to pick them up to protect the other person.
Your child is slowly but surely learning through seeing the reaction that the receiver didn’t like it (be it another child or parent). With your patience in protecting them from hurting and being hurt (as best you can) and redirecting them to other sensory rich activities, they gradually learn to better control the impulse. Treat it as a teachable moment without attributing any negative intentions: “oops Jane it looks like you pushed Michelle, let’s ask her if she’s hurt”.
Angry reactions can lead to a negative feedback loop
It can be especially confusing for your children when an adult gets angry at them for hurting another when they’re not yet developmentally capable of putting themselves in other’s shoes. Many parents understandably find it upsetting to see one child hurt another. It’s not unusual for an adult to snap at the child who hurt another with a comment like; “don’t you dare do that!” or “hey stop that you know that’s not nice!”.
Other parents use punishments like time out. These angry or punitive approaches can inadvertently lead to the child feeling confused, afraid and much more frustrated. Punitive approaches feed the negative feedback loop and lead to the child being much more aggressive than they would be otherwise.
Your calm consistent patient guidance and support will pay off
Gaining more language and greater understanding helps children to better communicate what they want or need without becoming physical. The child who can say “stop”, “I don’t like that”, “I’m annoyed” is less likely to physically hurt another child when frustrated. When you respond by enquiring about their feelings – “Zack it looks like you pushed Sam over when he wouldn’t share his toy, are you sad?” – this helps a child start to identify their feelings that led to them reacting.
Be assured that your child’s phase of hitting, biting, snatching or pushing is all part of their learning and is symptomatic of them still developing impulse control and healthier ways of expressing their thoughts and feelings. It’s not indicative of them being an “aggressive child” or a “naughty child”.
All these normal behaviours mostly only become an ongoing problem when a child can’t access the calm, level and warm support and guidance that they need to learn better ways of responding to these challenges.
How else can the need be met?
When a pre-verbal child goes through a phase of biting, it can be helpful to tie a teething ring or another object that they can bite onto a ribbon and safety pin it to their top or put it within reach and encourage them to use that when they have the urge to bite.
To summarise
To keep everyone safe, keep your limits simple, clear and confident. Aim to avoid pleading or being aggressive in saying no. Let him know that you won’t let him lash out, that you’re keeping everyone safe and helping him with those big feelings of frustration. She needs to see that you care about her big feelings, not just her behaviour which is only the outward symptom. A stressed child needs to see that you can care about and empathize with her frustration “I see this is really hard for you, I can help”, “I care about *all* your feelings, I’m going to stay here and care for you until you feel better”, “that’s it, get it all out, have a big growl/cry”.
Avoid isolating, threatening unpleasant consequences or punishing
These approaches sadly give the child the message that their caregiver doesn’t want to interact with them when they’re upset or angry. This can lead to a child suppressing their emotions, can feel shaming and can strain the child’s trust in their parent.
In my work with families, children of all ages often describe to me what they truly feel about themselves and their parents when put in time out, and they are just not the messages that we want any child to embody. It’s not necessary and can lead to long-term feelings of aloneness when they have problems and difficult feelings. If you’ve already used a lot of attention based or other punishments, you can feel confident that learning and practicing peaceful parenting approaches such as these will greatly increase your child’s self-esteem, their trust in themselves and trust in you.
Your child especially needs your loving care and guidance when he’s angry
Anger is a tough and often overwhelming emotion and deserves empathy. The child needs your loving support with their feelings of anger (that are allowed) when they act aggressively (which is not allowed). As difficult as this can be, aim to avoid shaming your child when they lash out. They’re already stressed and struggling with difficult feelings and what they need is help to come back to peace. Kids act well when they feel well. Kids become more caring when they feel more cared for.
You may also like to read the longer and more comprehensive article; Aggression – why children lash out and what to do
I can’t seem to access this article on biting/ hitting/ pushing. Why is that? Is it restricted?
Aislinn, yes there’s a glitch happening with my posts that we haven’t got to the bottom of yet, but I have figured out that you can get around it by copying the link into a new tab, or failing that (which should work), a different browser. So sorry, do persevere, it’s a really useful article.
It’s still not working .. Can you email me the link?
Jullian, we still haven’t got to the bottom of this issue of posts not loading, much to my frustration. What we have discovered is that if you put your cursor in the browser after the address and press enter, it should work.
I can’t pull it up using your mobile site but if I go to the desktop site it is there. I’m using Chrome browser on my Android. Just thought I’d let you know of a workaround.
Thanks Brenda, any insights can only help.
Still not showing 🙁
Cara we still haven’t got to the bottom of this issue of posts not loading, much to my frustration. What we have discovered is that if you put your cursor in the browser after the address and press enter, it should work.
Thank you for this Genevieve! It’s a great reminder for me when my 2.5 year old son sometimes hits his older sister. There’s always something else going on for him that I need to address when he exhibits this behaviour. I try to connect as much as possible!
Hi there, just wanted to mention, I loved this
blog post. It was inspiring. Keep on posting!
I would appreciate some practical tools on how to keep a child from hitting without isolation and timeout. My five year old was upset he lost a game and got really andgry and was hitting his three year old sister. What’s your recondition on a method of physically intervening to keep the other child safe and to set a clear boundary? I tried holding him and keeping calm. He didn’t want to be held when I let him go he lashed out at his sister. I value peaceful parenting but sometimes I feel like I’m unsure of how to navigate some tricky situations when my whole is being unresponsive. Any suggestions?
Hi Jen,
Yes it can be a real challenge to help our little ones when they are so upset and angry.
Sometimes I put my body between the two children to keep them safe. If needed I do, as gently as possibly, restrain my kids if they are going to hurt someone else. As mentioned communicating to them, “I won’t let you hit. I’ll help you with all this frustration.”
Another idea is to suggest he pushes against your hands while you are facing each other. This can help him release the frustration.
Ideally as we prevent the hitting while staying really warm and empathetic they will eventually move from angry to sad and the tears will come.
Copying across Samm’s comment as some of the comments got lost when we transferred to the new website …..
My son (2.5yrs) and I went to pick up my brother (8yrs) and my sister (6yrs) from school. I used to squeeze and hold and rough play with both my younger siblings because they were oh so cute as babies. So it’s no surprise that my sister feels the same when she’s around my son. It may just be in my head but *I* strongly feel that my sister thinks of herself as the boss of him and she tells him no’s and yes’ s and stop’ s and go’s. So yesterday as my sister and son were playing something happened and he bit her upper arm and bruised her; he did not break any skin. I turned around looking at his mouth on her arm and quickly pushed his face away as she began crying. I pushed him away and also hit his mouth at the same time. I was so full of rage and I told him to stop crying and when he didn’t I couldn’t be next to him. How could he do this to me I tell him in a calm voice all the time “don’t hit, don’t bite, don’t yell, look she’s crying, go give her a kiss”. But something was different yesterday I was so beside myself I didn’t even want to look at him. I try so hard to be the calm parent who tries to talk him out of doing wrong or bad and somehow I feel like it’s not working or I’m failing. How can I teach him what’s right and what’s wrong at home and when everyone around him dont do what I do or care to learn how I parent/discipline him.
Samm, this sounds so very stressful. Your son is still developing impulse control, and clearly in that moment he lost control and lashed out. Of course this was very upsetting for you and your sister, and it would have also been very very stressful for him. what’s really important is that he doesn’t start to see himself as a naughty or aggressive kid because it can be very difficult for children to do better when they start to feel like this about themselves. Have you thought about how (from the sound of it) you responded from a very primal instinctive place and were aggressive to him. Sometimes a parent can miss seeing the irony of this because we’re trained to believe that being aggressive is warranted when somebody else is violent, yet he’s so very very young and still learning. The message that he shouldn’t lash out (presumably when he becomes frustrated) is undermined when a parent themselves lashes out, so it would be so good to address what happened and express regret and tell him how you wish you’d responded. This is great modelling, showing him how to repair after a conflict.
The steps in the article will really start to help him respond better, it won’t happen immediately but slowly he’ll get it. I’ve just responded to some parents in the Aggression – why children lash out and what to do article comments, reading my responses to them might be equally helpful to you.
Samm, it would be really interesting to reflect on what you thought and felt in that moment. Often parents become very triggered at times when their child is aggressive and it can evoke strong feelings at a subconscious level from when we were young. How would you have been responded to as a child if you did the same? Were there times when one of your parents were aggressive (physically or verbally) and you felt powerless? Might there be some of those feelings still being carried inside of you. The first track of my stress relief for parents cd guides a parent through the process of exploring their triggers, another track explains the concept of triggers and how they play out, another is a body relaxation allowing parent’s to release some of the built up frustrations and stresses that can lead to overwhelm. And the 4th one is for those moments when a parent has become overwhelmed and needs help regulating themselves back to a calm and patient state again.
Also, if you’re on the village membership, I would recommend going to the audio section and listening to “why we explode and how to prevent it” which has lots of tips for parents on developing practices that bring them back to calm and patience when stress is high. Also “Parenting when overwhelmed” and in the video section, there are a few relevant articles but maybe start with Meeting Aggression with Connection.
https://www.peacefulparent.com/aggression/https://www.peacefulparent.com/aggression/
Thanks for explaining why it’s best to physically intervene instead of just telling them to stop. My sister’s two-year-old daughter has started biting when she becomes angry. I want to get her a book about how to stop children from biting, but your tips will be really helpful in the meantime!
Eileen, I’m so glad you’ve come across my article, sounds like exactly what your sister needs at the moment. It really is so hard for parents to know what to do. Mostly adults had the modelling of the authoritarian approach and so it can be hard to know how to intervene in a way that’s actually overall caring and supportive to both the child who was bit and the child who did the biting! And yes when a child is in a phase of biting, they ideally really need to be shadowed to avoid it happening. They’re still largely in the oral stage of development and can hold a lot of tension in their jaws, working with the little one to give them other outlets for their frustraton that’s real and tangible for them really helps and definitely recommend getting her a teething ring that she can bite in to. But also power reversal games and any and all games that are feelings games, that allow the little one to get their frustrations out of their body. The power of play article here on my website also has some good ideas.
[…] easy to see the irony of reacting angrily towards a child whose unable to manage their urge to be aggressive towards their brother or sister, it's also incredibly understandable to act from that reactive fight flight response when one’s […]
[…] You might also like to read; Helping children when they hit, push and bite. […]
[…] between five and seven years. Or a bit later for the more intense child. Being able to hold that they want to hit or hurt as an outlet to their frustration, but also holding that this would hurt the other person affords […]
My 11yr old AUDHD son is explosive. When he is very frustrated he becomes violent (hitting/biting). I have had some success in reducing this behaviour over the years through peaceful parenting and non violent resistance approaches. There are times when he is extremely upset and he will run to the kitchen and grab a knife to threaten others or threaten hurting himself. He will use other “weapons of opportunity” as well and I cannot hide every single item that could be a weapon. However, through staying calm etc I can diffuse the situation by staying calm and without physical interference. He has never used a knife against anyone else or himself. He does not self harm. The problem is that twice this happened with male relatives in the house and they both in each separate instance felt the need to physically overwhelm my son and take the knife away. I feel this is more dangerous and does escalate the situation. I am trying to find resources to share with them about this specific scenario, to demonstrate why they should not try to take the knife away but rather let him come to the conclusion himself to put it down (as he has done many times with my non violent approach). Of course if he does approach with the intention of stabbing then that is a different situation but these males use advice for those types of scenarios to juatify their violent actions to me. My son is clearly using it as a threat only to try to persuade the other side to do what he wants which is an unreasonable request. (I don’t give him what he wants in these cases either, I just defuse and he does put the knife down after a while). What articles can I share or what advice do you have in this situation? Thank you.
Dear Jen I’m so sorry I missed your comment, I found it in my spam folder. You’ve worked so hard to learn and implement peaceful parenting, this is so impressive. And oh boy what huge challenges you’re facing with your 11 year old. I imagine you have had conversations with your son at calm connected times about him threatening violence? It would be great if you could share this article with your male relatives. Also, please read and share “Aggression, why children lash out and what to do” Aggression – Why children lash out and what to do
Have you let him know how you feel at those times? If you can show him that you’re committed to helping him through these situations that are so overwhelming and scary for him, yet you also need to feel safe and at those times, you are very concerned for everyone’s safety, including his of course. Have you talked through with him a plan for these times? As long as you can maintain the warm connection with him, express your clear boundaries that you need to maintain, then even though these conversations might evoke some stress, these conversations could be very constructive.
Have you worked through any of my eCourses? Are you on my mailing list? I unfortunately don’t take on clients these days, but check out our certified peaceful parenting coaches (under services) and our courses (under shop on main menu). You deserve all the support you can get. Stay connected!