Is Your Toddler Hitting, Snatching or Lashing Out? Here’s How to Handle It

Today I'm talking with Katie, mum to two girls and a lively, gorgeous two-year-old boy, Leo. Like many parents of toddlers, Katie and her wife Lara are navigating Leo's big feelings. And it's actually not just toddlers that have these big feelings. Sometimes they're in the form of temper tantrums and actually often in the form of physical aggression towards other children. and sometimes to them as parents and possibly to siblings. I'll find out about that in a minute, Katie. I really personally totally understand how challenging this can be because I've been there myself. I vividly remember the excruciating embarrassment and isolation that I felt when my eldest son was the same age and he would lash out at other kids, particularly in playgroup and social situations. It seemed just because he wanted a toy. It was really overwhelming, and honestly, I just didn't know what to do until I reached out to support from a parenting coach. So in this episode, I'm gonna be giving Katie some insights into why this behaviour happens and also offering practical coaching on how to respond in ways that not only help Leo, but also help things to feel more manageable for Katie. And Lara. So if you've ever felt lost or alone dealing with your children's big emotions, this conversation is for you. But first, as a parent, you know it's important to have clear boundaries, but you also want to be caring and compassionate, right? Well, I'm Camilla McGill, and as a seasoned parenting coach and mom of 4, I'm excited to give you the principles, tools and inspiration you need to raise amazing kids. Welcome to Raising Kids with Love and Boundaries. Okay, Katie, so lovely to have you on the podcast, and thank you so much for agreeing to, uh, to do this session. So tell me about Leo and what kind of experiences that you're having with him.

Well, thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure to talk to you and hopefully get some advice on these issues. So, as you said, Leo is a lovely, lively little boy, and he has always, I think, dealt with being dysregulated through violent outbursts. And it started when he was probably about 1, and he would do a lot of biting.

Yeah.

And we had a lot of reports from the childminder that others in the setting had been hurt by him, and that became quite challenging. He, he has improved significantly, and, um, he is that little bit older, and so he is able to regulate a lot better. But as you said, he's now in the position where when he does have those kind of peak of emotions that he is unable to manage, it typically results with him lashing out in, in some violent form. So the typical places where this will happen are in soft play, Or if we are in a playgroup and there is a toy that he very much wants.

Yeah.

Or he has something like that at home and he feels he has ownership of it. Now we do see it at home as well. Again, it's a lot less. Um, he's got two older sisters and the middle one is typically the recipient of most of his outbursts. She has long blonde hair and it's very easy to grab and yank. So that is where we see it most. It's rarely towards us. It might be if he is really exhausted and he just can't contain himself, but that is very rare. So, so those are the typical places where we're seeing this type of behaviour.

Yeah. Yeah. And tell me, when you either witness it or you got, have had reports from his nursery, by the way, he's 3, isn't he? Did I say?

So he's just turned 3.

Yes.

No, he just had his birthday. No.

Okay. So when, um, you, as I say, when you witness it or when you see, uh, get a report from his nursery, what do you feel?

When I see him do it, it is, there's a slight embarrassment on my part. Um, but I, I try really hard not to pass that on because I do recognize that he You know, he is still, you know, very little and he does not have that impulse control. So it is not as though he has actively decided to go and be violent, understanding the consequences. So, so I'm really aware that this is not something that, you know, requires punishment or anything like that. But equally, there is usually a very small child who's often crying and usually in pain. So I feel an obligation, obviously, to stop it if it's continuing, or if I've intervened before it's happened, but also to address the issue with the other child as well.

Yeah. Yes, yes. And is there a sense that you need to make him say sorry?

That varies. So what I will typically do is I will physically kind of restrain him by means of a cuddle. And I will talk to the other child and I will say, you know, did he hit you? Did he bite you? And I said, that wasn't a kind thing for him to do. He's still learning to use his kind hands. And then depending on the distress of the child, I will, you know, get the parents' attention and make sure they know and kind of explain what's happened. I will then take Leo aside or outside or to a separate space and say, I think you hurt the either the name or the person, can you think of something that might help make them feel better? And if he says no, then, do you know what, I kind of leave it. And sometimes he, like, he understands and he knows enough that it shouldn't have happened. So sometimes he'll go and get a plaster for the child, or he will give them a kiss, which, you know, isn't necessarily what the other child wants, but he will go or demonstrate some level of affection. But, you know, You know, certainly there are other adults in his life who, you know, may see that and say, you need to say sorry now. You can understand, you can see him then kind of slightly recoil, and it just actually makes him worse. He gets very angry when you say that.

Yeah, yeah. Have you ever been in a situation where you've had quite an accusing parent? You know, your child just bit mine.

Yes, I have. We were in a charity shop and it was quite a small space with loads of toys. And it was about a year ago and the child, the other child was about 5, so he was much older. And I think Leo just went up and hit him. Like there wasn't really a scuffle, so he just went up and hit him. And the dad just looked at me and said, your kid just hit my kid. And I went, oh, right. Okay. And he started intervening and trying to discipline Leo. And he's like, stop it, get away from him. And, and, you know, I was cross with the dad actually. I, I just thought, you've obviously not spent a long time with your son if you've never seen this kind of behavior before. And there's another— there was another situation when we were in football, and it wasn't actually Leo being violent towards the child, but, um, they were playing a game where they had to put all the footballs in a hoop, and Leo kept kicking another kid's footballs out of the hoop, and the mum kept telling him like, stop doing it, stop doing it. So there is a level of trying to balance my needs to support Leo in understanding the appropriate behaviour can be, whilst also recognising to the other parent that, um, you know, this behaviour is not in line with what we would like to see being displayed.

The reason I ask is I think that so often as parents, our instinct is— and you sound like you're quite evolved— but often our instinct as parents as parents is to sort of grovel to the parent and do what they think we should do, which is tell our child off. And that if we are not telling off our child and scolding them, we are not addressing it properly. But what I like about how you describe it is that, you know, you've already said he gets emotional overwhelmed. He becomes very quickly dysregulated. He is that kind of child. I know you've got two girls, you probably didn't see that, and, you know, and so it's possible that dad hasn't ever actually seen it, but in the charity shop. Um, and so I think the lovely thing is you— I'm sure you've seen different types of behavior in your girls, just not this one. What I mean about the lovely thing is that having all in one child we've got to accept the child we've got. So this is Leo, who becomes very quickly emotionally dysregulated, and his way of demonstrating that is that he will hit out. Other children will have massive tantrums, they might, or they might withdraw, or they might, you know, whatever it, they just demonstrate it. And some children just become more emotionally dysregulated quicker than others. They have, you know, call them deeply feeling or whatever it is. I think the thing about the sorry, in fact I discussed this in my previous episode, is that we're often trying to get the child to say sorry, and you've kind of already touched on this, when they're just emotionally not able to. And we may get a, you know, a very insincere sorry. Sorry. Which is, you know, really dissatisfying. Well, they just may not be able to process it because what we've got to remember, and it's very easy to read about this, or sometimes we have and sometimes we haven't. And I know certainly when my eldest was almost exactly this age, 2 and a half, 3, I just didn't quite appreciate what was going on in his brain. So it's like this alarm bell is going off. It's this fight, flight, fear response. That goes off very quickly. And you know, if you think of an animal in a fear response, they will lash out. My cat, when I groom her and she doesn't like it, this most placid cat in the world, she will lash out. Yeah. So it, it is his way of expressing some kind of fear, fear that he's not gonna get the treat, fear that he's not gonna listen to you, or, or just sort of get, you know, we've got to also remember that toddlers are egotistical. That's by design so that they get their needs met. So he's egotistical, he sees a toy and wants it, gets frightened that he can't have it, uh, or won't be able to have it, and then his response is to lash out. So just knowing that can be helpful and being reminded.

Yeah. Okay.

Just wanted to go into what I always describe when I'm working with parents and coaching them is there's this in-the-moment dealing with it that we want. What do we do when? And there's also the sort of building the muscle, building the ability for him to quickly regulate when he's in these kind of situations and he naturally egotistically want something. So let's just look at that in the moment. The first thing I would say to him, and it's possible you do this or it's possible that you forget because there's always this thing, you know, I gotta make him say sorry. But the first thing I would say would be, for you to snatch that toy, bite whoever, hit whoever, shows me that you are really upset about something. You were really upset because you wanted that truck and you didn't know how else to get it other than hitting out. So it's the very first thing we do is validate and acknowledge the emotion that caused it. We can say, I know you don't mean to hurt other children. I know you mean to be kind. And don't say, but, but just say, and you didn't know how to do that just now. You just felt so cross. And I like the idea of taking him away because the other thing I'll tell parents is kind of remove them from the scene of the crime where eyes are on them and eyes are on you if you possibly can. So, so that would be my, you know, my first recommendation. If he calms down enough, We're looking at making amends because yes, clearly it helps the other child because we don't want them to feel hurt. But also it's about sort of doing something active to let go of the guilt that he will feel. We assume they don't, but they do. And because you've told him many, many, many times, don't hurt others. So he knows that's not the right thing to do. And he's a lovely little boy and he doesn't want to hurt others, but he just In the same way as parents, when we have got the stress building up, the stress building up, yeah, yeah, shout. We love our kids, but we don't mean to shout, but we just do because we can't help ourselves. So that would be my, my thing around that. The other thing is the away from the moment, and that is this idea that we're going to help him build the muscle up. So it might be we do some kind of role play, you know, just imagine I've got the toy and you really want it, or, or get him, or, or say, imagine I'm you and you've, you've got the toy and I really want it. Um, I'm gonna stomp my feet. I'm going to bang on a cushion, or I'm gonna come to, to, to mummy and, and just, you know, grab her. Something that gives him a few tools. That he can use. And the other thing, do you see the slight sort of glint in the eye? You, so, so at that point, if you are fairly sure that he's going to go over and whack that child, I would hold him and kind of whisper, do you remember what you can do? I see that he's got that truck that you really wanted. What could we do? So you've just caught him ahead. And it's hard because you don't want to do it in an aggressive way. So you're trying to sort of contain them before it's actually happened. When I work with parents, we're always looking at building these tools over time. This is a snapshot. So, you know, the idea is that you take a couple of things away, but there is definitely more to it than this. And actually, just to say, if anybody's listening and they wanted to have a free discovery call with me, just go to my myparentingsolutions.com, and, or see the show notes below if you're looking on, on YouTube or, or, um, a podcast platform, and you'll see a link to that. Does that make sense? Does that help?

Yeah, I think, I think it does. Thank you. And that's really helpful in the moment. And actually, that, that idea of teaching him an alternative way to behave, I think that's really important because it's, it's not something I think we've done. Um, and I, and, and I can understand if he, if he doesn't know how else to behave, he's always going to continue to do the same thing. So I think that, that really makes sense. Um, and the fact that I guess it has improved over time sort of gives us hope that he, that one, you know, he won't still be doing this when he's at school and just going in and walloping people. But it is a challenge. And as, and as you said, having girls first, um, this was, this was a shock because this was not behavior that we'd seen displayed previously.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember thinking, uh, when my son was like that, uh, well, he's just going to wind up in prison, you know, GBH. I mean, it is really hard. And I think that people will often say, oh, they'll grow out of it. There is that, you know, yes. But this is why I'm so passionate about my work. And because, you know, it helped me so much, um, that actually some things aren't obvious. Um, and, you know, this idea that we can do some role play, we can help them to build those muscles away from those moments, that just doesn't always occur to us. And obviously there are, you know, when I'm working with parents, there are often, there are nuances and there are different, slightly different, uh, tools for different types of children and with different temperaments. But I'm thrilled that hopefully today has given you some support and some ideas, because it's very isolating being a parent, and we feel at a loss. And, you know, you have situations like that dad saying in the shop, yeah, we start to doubt ourselves. You know, should I be punishing this? Am I doing the right thing? Yeah, even if in our heart of hearts we know we are, um, there's just always that question.

Yeah, it's really challenging when other parents get involved, and, um, and like you said, you question yourself, and it's very hard to put your child's, the child's needs almost before, like, this other parent's needs. Um, but it is, I think, comforting to know, to hear that you're doing the right thing, and, and, um, that this is a very normal thing for, for sort of toddlers to do. Hopefully I can, I guess, provide that support for him to be able to behave in other ways when he's, when he's, you know, at these kind of, um, acute emotional moments.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, and, and you said it at the beginning as well, just that knowing he's a beautiful, lovely, uh, lively little loving boy, um, and he just has some difficulty regulating his emotions. And for him, his way of displaying it is to hit out, and others it may be something different. So yeah, I hope to— that today there been a reassurance, um, which is again, you know, that's a lot of my work is helping parents give the confidence to keep doing more of what they actually already do. Yes. And that knowledge that other parents might judge us on it, but our child is the most important.

Yeah. Yes. That's a tough lesson as well. So I do appreciate your support and your reassurance that that's the right approach. Thank you.

Brilliant. So if you would like to talk to me, please go to my website, myparentingsolutions.com. And book a free discovery call. You can also get a great guide to handling tantrums and challenging behavior, and that's myparentingsolutions.com/tantrums. So Katie, thank you so much for your willingness to, to come on and share your story. And thank you to all the listeners. Please subscribe and follow this podcast. Please tell your friends. Uh, if you can figure out how to give me a review, that would be great. And thank you so much for listening to Raising Kids with Love and Boundaries with me, Camilla McGill.