Wondering how you all have/are dealing with this…assuming that my boy is not the first child to do this!
When we go to other people’s homes for play dates my two year old is totally fine. He engages with the other adult, acknowledges the other child (mainly still parallel play), responds well to me… BUT should we dare have friends over to OUR house it is an entirely different story. Screaming, begging to be held the entire time, squirming while being held and more screaming. I believe he’s too young for timeouts, but we have left the room to sit quietly in his bedroom to “talk it out”…this works maybe a quarter of the time. We usually remove all of his favourite toys before they arrive so that isn’t the issue. I try not to touch or give the visiting child too much attention. I also try to have a fun snack/craft/science experiment to entertain him with.
This is making me crazy. So far, my girlfriends have been gracious about his behaviour but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating!
Oh I feel ya!! My daughter is very obedient with me when we are home alone. But if someone is over and even when we go over to other peoples houses she is a terror. Mostly at our home though. I guess maybe it could be less attention from you, but maybe he just doesn’t know how to socialize yet. I think that is my daughters problem. I know this will resolve itself soon though when my youngest starts crawling and wanting to play with sister more! Dakota is going to have to learn to share. I don’t have any real advice except to keep being patient and lettin him know his attitude is not appropriate. That’s all I try to do. Stay cool, and tell her what’s what. GL
We visited some friends this morning for brunch and our little angel was a complete angel. He had so much fun playing with his little friend and her parents. He was obedient and engaging. So I ask -Why? Why is he good at friend’s homes but not at our place? Arrrggghh! I’ve got a playdate planned for our home mid-week…praying for a peaceful morning!
My 7 year old and 6 year old kids are well behaved when other people are around, generous, courtious, polite, quiet, but when we are home alone or in the car they are trying constantly to drive each other and myself to the edge of insanity! what should i do about that?
you could try just loading them up in the car and driving around for a little while when they get out of hand. sometimes the motion of the car and feeling securely locked into the seatbelts will help. works for my kids when they are unruly.
Ok, so usually my 2 year old is perfectly behaved when other kids come over to play, but lately he is mean, he won’t share, he actually hit a kid with his toy hammer,…
I don’t think there is much to do about that.
To us adults, a child hitting must be stopped on the spot and we don’t certainly don’t want our child to be a bully.
I believe that children hitting are doing so to interact with the other child, to get his/her attention.
If the parents ‘jumps’ on the children whenever they start interacting, asking them to share, to be nice, not to hit etc., I’m not sure it will have much effect other than stressing them.
At childcare I’ve seen kids (from 1 to 2 roughly) playing in the same room (all with their own things) and sometimes a little kid would walk to another one (not looking angry or anything), hit him on the head and go back to what he was doing. That’s not a kid being mean (IMO), that’s his way of communicating. I don’t think staff should make a big deal about it all (unless it’s really serious obviously), maybe a staff could go to the offending child and start talking to him like : You like your friend Sandra don’t you? should we go over to her and say hi? etc…" More often than not, the kid who was hit will not reject the offender but show great interest.
Also it’s sometimes just a phase. If a child starts hitting too much, (his parents, brothers, peers etc.), instead of repeating ‘don’t hit’ (which won’t do much) I would lead him to his room, give him a special toy (like a doll) and tell him (firmly) : “I can see you want to tell us something, but we don’t understand: why don’t you tell your doll and come back to the room when you calm down”) Maybe the child won’t do anything, maybe he’ll be a bit rough with the doll once he’s on his own…
Hi Kizudo,
Is your boy still doing this? It sounds like he might be scared or else wants your attention. Either way he needs attachment and reassurance. Have you tried asking him what he is feeling? Toddlers are often overwhelmed by their feelings and talking about it can help them understand. I have found a little reasurance helps through the more clingy phases. Another thing you could try, if it is about your attention maybe spend some quality time with him before the play date. You might already have some kind of bonding ritual with him, perhaps try to initiate that. My likes to sit face to face with me while my boy tends to be more physical like climbing on me. Try and make him laugh and really connect; it might be enough to get him through the more difficult times.
As my kids get older, I constantly hear from other parents how wonderfully well-behaved they are, what perfect angels, etc. Of course, I know better, because when they are home they feel comfortable to act out. But when friends’ kids are at our house, they tend to be very well behaved also, and their parents are always so shocked (and proud) when I tell them as much. The good news to me is that this means our kids do know how to behave – they just sometimes choose not to.
BTW - Hypatia, I love your comment above. You clearly have a superior intuitive (and learned, I imagine) handle on toddlers, their interactions and behaviors.
I think Hyptia and Twinergy have hit the nail on the head. I recently did a parenting course called “You make the difference” it is a really lovely course and I highly recommend it.
One of the things they talk about most is
finding the reason behind the behaviour
. Toddlers need us to label everything in their world for them and that includes their feelings. They can get very overwhelmed and when they are thinking emotionally it is impossible (due to connections in the brain having not matured) for them to think logically. Outbursts of violence, becoming clingy, becoming emotional, becoming wild and unruly are all signs that they are thinking with big emotions not logic. You need to deal with the emotions and get them out of the emotional state before you can expect them to think logically.
If your son is becoming overwhelmed with his feelings and is unable to label them or understand them or express them he will use other means to try and let those feelings out.
This isn’t to say that he’s upset when he behaves this way he could actually simply be over excited to a point where he can’t control himself and needs an outlet. He might want so badly to communicate with his peer, but not have the words or the experience, this can lead to frustration and then “bad” behaviour.
Talking to him and acknowledging his feelings, helping him to label them, is the first step in helping him to recognise what he is feeling. Once he starts to recognise his feelings he is on the road to learning to control them (in about five years )
I love the idea of getting him to talk to one of his dolls if he can’t tell you - this means that even if he doesn’t have the words he can express himself because his doll will always understand what he is saying.
I think it is important that children understand that it’s okay to not want to share, who does? I don’t like other people driving my car - it’s my car I worked hard to pay for it and I don’t want to share it. I will share it, but I don’t like it. We shouldn’t judge children for the feelings they have it is completely normal for them to be completely selfish at this age, they are designed to believe the world centers on them at this point for survival reasons.
Making children share can be stressful and confusing and bring out big emotions that they’re not ready to deal with. If they understand that it’s okay to feel that way they can start to deal with the feelings and eventually learn to work around it and give the toy up willingly.
From my experience i can say that sometimes it is difficult to understand or discover the ‘reason’ for a behavior. I think that we have to comunicate a lot with our children. The other day after visiting his cousin my grandson told me that he was not going to visit him ‘with me’ again. I know he enjoy playing with his cousin and in a certain way he was punishig me for something he dislike telling me that i would have to go alone and not with him. He know that i enjoy that visit too. So then we talk about expresing our feelngs and getting the other person (me at that time) to know what it was that upset him.
Teaching about sharing is also a difficult task. Especially finding a balance when you see other kids that abuse of his good will and always take what they want from him.
Difficult task being a parent. But a lot of joy.
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