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Child Behavior (Expert Forum)
3 y/o girl's roughness with 2 1/2 mo. old baby brother
Answered by
Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D. - Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, Family Therapy, Crisis Intervention
Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates
This forum is for questions and support regarding child behavior issues such: Child Discipline (behavior management), Normal Child Development, Parent-Child Communications, Social Development
3 y/o girl's roughness with 2 1/2 mo. old baby brother
by jlpeck, Dec 04, 2002 12:00AM
My just 3 y/o daughter is very rough with her new infant brother (2 1/2 mo.) She hugs, kisses and squeezes him very hard, she taps his body hard, squeezes his arms and hands. Most attempts at play with him are rough. At times, this appears very intentional (attention-getting, jealousy). Usually, though, it seems to be out of her attempt to love and cuddle with him. She says, "He's so cute!" and then squeezes him excessively. My husband and I are continually instructing her and roleplaying how to GENTLY play with him. We try to involve her in his life in different ways as "Mommy's helper". We praise her soft, gentle behavior and discipline her immediately when it is obvious she is being aggressive with him. We've been using the Command 1-2-3 method with an adult-size chair "time out"(with timer)for three minutes (is that an appropriate timeframe?)when she doesn't obey. The behaviors do not seem to be decreasing and I find myself telling her to not touch or get near the baby at all, which saddens both me and her. What are we missing? How can we diminish these behaviors? She is an emotional, dramatic child, prone to yelling and crying tantrums when not getting her way, occasionally slapping my husband or me when not getting her way. These behaviors immediately land her in the three minute timeout chair. On a side note, how do you reinforce disciplining these types of behavior when out in public and your timeout chair and timer are at home?
Doctor's Answer
by Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D., Dec 04, 2002 12:00AM
, Dec 04, 2002 12:00AM
YYou're doing fine; keep on with your efforts. You may have to enforce petty much a no touching approach most of the time, unless you're right with her and you are holding the baby. She's just not old enough to have either much judgment or much impulse control. In prublic, keep using the tactics, and simply employ whatever spaces are available - e.g., park bench, seat in the mall, car, etc. Try not to let the setting dictate your approach.
For example, she has a habit of acting up in restaurants...we haven't quite figured out why, but "time out" takes place in the car with either myself or her father. This has seemed to diminish her outbursts, because at 5, she's starting to learn what embarrassment is and that it occurs when she's removed from somewhere public for behaving badly.
We did try the time out for a while when we got home, but that didn't seem to work since she couldn't even really remember what she'd done wrong when we got home.