Aggression

I have a question for my friend’s daughter Tina. She goes to the same day care with my daughter and both of them are three and half year old. My friend went through a rough divorce when Tina was one year old. Tina has shown more aggression than other kids in the past couple years. Tina has witnessed her dad hit her mom and his current girlfriend couple times.

We baby sitter Tina quite a bit and see her aggressiveness from time to time, which includes pulling other kids’ lips and twist, pulling other kids’ hair and pin them down on the floor, pinching other kdis’ cheek really hard, scratching people’s face. Sometimes she just does it out of the blue, while she is playing with other kids. A wrestling mood can change to an attacking mood without any sign. Couple times we put her on time out. She started to take on herself – pulling her owe hair and scratching her owe arm. It is scary.

When Tina is in good mood, she is a cute little girl. But her aggression kind of scares off other parents including me. Tina’s mother just laughs it off when other parents mention Tina’s aggression to her. She believes Tina will out grown the aggression some day. But I don’t want my daughter to play with Tina any more since she might seriously hurt my daughter. I can’t take my eyes off Tina when she is playing with my daughter.

So do you think Tina might need to see a child behavior specialist? My friend doesn’t seem to take it serious at all. I hesitate to tell her so since I am not a child specialist. Or you will have better help source for Tina?

Thanks,