10-Month Old Daughter 'Head Banging'

[First Time Mom and Dad]

Our 10-Month old daughter occasionally will bang her head or face against anything (crib rail, playpen rail, floor, even parents head, face, or chest).  She has been very well behaved and has no signs of any other problems.
We are very concerned that she is going to hurt herself and have tried everything we can think of to make her stop doing this.  We have tried to divert her attention to something else, we have tried to tell her "no," but she still does it.
She does not do this often, and there is no pattern to when she does it.  
Is this a common behavior or something we should be concerned about?  What would be the best approach to making her stop doing this?

-First Time Mom and Dad

[frustrated parents]

I have a 26month old son.  He started banging his head the same as your daughters when he was a little over a year old.  At first we had no idea why he was doing this.  We talked to his pediatrician and he told us to let him do it-ignore it.  How could we ignore this when it was only getting worse.  we went to a child psychiatrist-he was not familiar with his behaviors so he referred us to a neurologist.  It took almost four months to get this appointment.  We went to one neurologist he gave a possible diagnosis of autism and did no tests.  two months later we had another appointment with what we thought was a different neurologist but turned out to be the same one.  he did not listen to anything we said and was about to send us home again with no answers to any of our questions.  he then said he would do an EEG on him.  this doctor had blown us off because he obviously didn't understand or believe what we were saying.  One hour after the appointment he called and said our son was having small seizures throughout the entire day.  he had the medicine called in before we ever made it home from that appointment.  Since the first appointment we have researched autism and other similiar diagnosis.  We are positive our son is autistic, but it is a diagnosis we are learning that is extremely difficult to get.  No one wants to diagnose our son because he is so young but the early intervention is what is going to make the difference in his life.  Please push your doctors to get answers soon.  Research information such as autism and seizures.  At 10 months old we would never had guessed at something like autism or seizures, but we would have saved him a lot of pain and suffering had we had a doctor willing to listen and investigate different possibilities.  

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

Regarding prevention, it goes without saying that you should interrupt the behavior immediately. If she is banging against something hard, remove her from the object. There is really little else you can do. Try to discern when this is occurring. Two forces generally drive this behavior: it can be a response to frustration, or it can be a type of self-soothing. It is usually quite evident when frustration gives rise to the behavior. If the behavior is not frequent, there is likely not anything to worry about. Be sure to check in with the pediatrician about the status of her development, to be sure she's progressing normally.