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What To D arent You Are The hPild’. of ‘That C By Dr Alison McClymont
When my eldest daughter was 2 years old, she used to go to a little baby ballet class. It began at 9 and ended at 10 and, every week at 9:45 on the dot, she would take the star she had been holding whilst pretending to be the sugar plum fairy or whatever, and would hit another kid over the head with it. Sometimes she would simply smack them in the face, but one week she grabbed a whole fistful of another child’s cheek. The worst part was she often chose the same child, who was a very sweet and gentle little girl. It got to the point where I would start getting up to leave at 9:40 and would be internally dancing with joy if we got to 9:46 and she hadn’t hit anyone. She fooled me once by lasting until 9:59 - but she ended that ballet class by smacking two children at once whilst running to get her sticker. One time a mother of a child she had hit came up to me and suggested that “maybe it wasn’t normal and maybe I should consult a professional”. I mumbled embarrassedly that I was a “professional”. Follow us for daily updates!
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Looking back now, I wish I had said something more assertive, but the reality is that it’s embarrassing to be the mum of the child “that hits others kids”. So what did I do? At 9:43am I would take her outside and give her a snack. We would sit and have a minute together and I’d ask her if she wanted to go back in or was she done with dancing for today? This might sound like a basic and even non-sensical strategy to deal with hitting by offering a cut up apple and a biscuit but it worked. Children who hit, particularly those who are under 5, are often hitting because they don’t have the ability to articulate how they feel. They might be hungry, tired, frustrated or something else. What matters is the way we react to the hitting. If we’re too punitive, then we run the risk of overstimulating the child’s central nervous system though fear, which can cause them to no longer absorb information. But too lenient and the July - Sept 2022 Toddle About West Northants 21
