Dot writes: this is one of those sorry-I-haven’t-been-posting posts. I’ve been trying to be much more disciplined about not blogging at work (whoops, I’m blogging at work – I can take a short break, can’t I?), and the precious slot after Hugh goes to bed is fiercely contested between rival activities such as reading the LRB, lying on the floor trying to unkink my back, and cooking up exciting pasta sauces for Hugh’s lunch. (That last one was what I did last night. I am proud of it, but the LRB option is a lot more typical.) Also, I have been feeling very tired and a bit depressed and it’s hard to write much under those circumstances. Hugh is a lot of fun some of the time, but he is also extremely demanding and often appallingly badly behaved. And I’m thirty-one weeks pregnant and feeling tired anyway, and my back hurts and it’s hard to bend, and hauling an angry toddler around makes my bump sore. I’m finding it difficult to concentrate at work but it sometimes feels like a refuge from this beastly little hooligan. On the other hand, on working days I only see him at his worst times, when he’s either not properly awake or getting tired; I always see his good side more when I have a full day with him.
July seems to be my month for moaning. Last year I see I was busy moaning about Hugh’s sleep patterns. Well, they’re not perfect – no 7pm to 7am for us – but it’s a long time since I had to get up in the night, unless you count 5.30 as the night, and though the process of undressing is sometimes contentious we can basically put him awake into his cot and leave him. It’s a very far cry from the hours I used to spend feeding him down and gingerly edging away, only to be immediately summoned back. So I hope that by this time next year we will have got over or at least found a way of containing our current major problem, which is acts of random violence. It was several months ago that Hugh discovered hitting, and it seems to be getting worse rather than better, despite the fact that we’ve always done our best to rebuke him sternly, not treat it as a joke, not let the situation escalate, offer distraction etc. He throws things and kicks and occasionally head-butts as well. One of the very big pluses of our new house is that there are now neighbouring children for him to play with; but the downside of that is constantly dealing with martyred cries of ‘Hugh’s hitting me’. Oh, and the shame of it. Last night he intemperately swung his toy hoover and gave the friendly seven-year-old from the end house a great crack on the forehead. So then I had to deliver her back to her mum with a cringing apology and a purpling bruise. Will she want to come and play again, I wonder? We need her. She’s the reason we get to cook dinner in the evening.
In the hoover incident I felt I was able to react appropriately: fortunately I was there when it happened, so I could immediately tell Hugh what an extremely naughty thing he had done and banish him to his cot for a bit – unambiguous response, immediate consequences, firm but fair (I hope). But what about the times when I’m not watching? There are more and more of them as he gains in independence and plays in a different room or under the supervision of other parents. And do any of our reprimands actually make any impression? Does he feel that whatever he gets out of whacking people weighs more than our disapproval and fairly mild punishments? I really don’t want to start whacking him back, because I doubt he appreciates the fine distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate uses of force (Ken feels this is an over-subtle objection); but what I’m left with does seem rather fangless.
And another thing – where did he get it from in the first place? It’s not like he sees us chucking lego at each other or kicking each other in the legs. It’s tempting to view it as the inevitable welling up of Boyness, the slugs and snails and puppy-dog tails revealing themselves. We saw a friend at the weekend who was sporting a black eye courtesy of her own twenty-month old boy. We both felt better to know it was a shared problem, but fatalism is probably best avoided. It’s not like all boys turn into thugs at one-and-a-half. Something has to be done. Advertise him on freecycle?
Moan, moan, moan. I had some other ideas for posts, by the way. The McCarthy report, for example: proposing to cut PhD funding because PhDs allegedly don’t contribute to the economy while cutting lots of jobs in higher education so people with PhDs have nothing to apply for does make a twisted kind of sense. And the last Harry Potter film, which we saw on Thursday. Quite liked it but in combination with the trailers shown beforehand it made me long desperately for a quiet, grown-up film with nothing being blown up and no explosions and no fake helicopter shots and no CGI whatsoever. I’ve got to that stage of pregnancy where I start guiltily diverting to the midwifery section in the library when I’m supposed to be on my way to Eng. Lit., and there might be a post or two in that as well. Maybe this evening. Or tomorrow. If I can type while lying on the floor with the LRB and a pan of pasta sauce.
Toodle-pip.
Ken and Dot's Allsorts 
RE: McCarthy report
Isn’t the argument really that the domestic market cannot absorb any more PhDs, so they will have to emigrate, so Ireland shouldn’t pay for their education?
I think the argument works as far as it goes, but it neglects to consider the amount of cheap teaching PhD students provide. PhD students should teach as part of their degree programme as they will need to be able to teach afterwards. Paying PhD students in the form of fees bursaries and teaching stipends for this teaching labour is a lot cheaper than hiring the extra faculty who would otherwise be necessary.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the violence. He may be testing the boundaries, or simply unaware of the amount of force he is using.
It takes a while to judge distance and pressure, the idea may be just to interact with the other kid and wave his toys around. Before he wouldn’t have been strong enough to lift anything that would hurt much if you hit someone with it…
At least he’s not biting, which is a habbit Amelie has developed. She managed to draw blood a bit back.
Both my kids bit other kids-had to resort to biting them which I hated to do but it worked-they never bite anyone again
I agree with Meri, it’s just normal physical expression and experimentation. Clem is starting to move with more vigor and that means he sometimes smacks us with a toy. He loves throwing things, too.
They don’t know what they’re doing so I think you just have to show them that it hurts and chastise them gently. Eventually they will have the emotional and physical sensitivity to understand the situation and the social awareness to connect your disapprobation with actions before taking them.
I think the terrible twos are plural because they span more than one year and terrible because they all (even girls) become little turds in all sorts of ways including remorselessly smacking you and other children. I would argue that a spanking at Hugh’s age would probably be ineffective and confusing at best, and psychologically damaging at worst. Children need a pretty developed conceptual capacity to understand why a parent would hit them. Your calm and quiet physical dominance is a far more subtle and convincing tool to communicate your control of the situation to him.
I wouldn’t worry about the accidental hitting too much – it isn’t like the boy who twice walked up to Amelia and pushed her over with force once when I took her to the baby weigh-in clinic. The mother was sitting right beside me and weakly bleated ‘Oh don’t do that!’
Also, playpens are fantastic – I don’t have the luxury of anyone to come and distract Amelia so being able to pop her in and turn on some music and give her some toys/books so I can cook is something I couldn’t live without now. I’m all for free ranging but sometimes it gets a bit much.
Some of Hugh’s hitting is accidental, but quite a lot of it isn’t. When he’s angry with us he comes up and hits us. And he should also learn not to wave large heavy toys around – that’s naughty even if he hasn’t consciously decided to bash somebody on the head.
It does seem to be a stage a lot of children go through, but we still need to decide how to deal with it…
Thanks for all the sympathy!
My daughter used to do this a lot – more to me than to strangers. My mother-in-law (a psychologist) was very helpful. She said that smacking is probably not ideal because you run out of punishment levels. She recommended, where possible, ignoring bad behaviour and praising good – specifically we instigated a smiley face calendar and at the end of every day she was good we gave her a smiley face. After five smiley faces (not in a row, too challenging) she got a small treat. It really worked. Hugh may be a little small for it as I think you need to know how long a day is for it to work but something along those lines might be worth a try.
Thanks, Anne, it’s very helpful to get some different suggestions. I agree Hugh is maybe too young for the smiley faces right now, but it would be worth trying when he is a little older, for this problem or another or just for general civilizing purposes. I read Toddler Taming recently and that gives similar advice to your mother-in-law, specifically in that it says you shouldn’t reward bad behaviour with attention (though of course sometimes you do have to react). I also asked our friends Sarah and Dave, who have one boy the same age as Hugh and one two years older, and they suggested some specific ways of managing the attention-seeking aspect: putting the offending child out of the way (in the corridor or the corner) and lavishing fuss on the person who had been thumped. So, given that the person being thumped is very often me, perhaps I should reward myself each time with a lavish bubble-bath and some chocolate 🙂
my niece went through a horrible biting phase, so it’s not only boys! When I saw her last summer she unexpectedly sank her teeth very hard into my arm for no reason – I was so surprised/shocked – it was really very painful – that I absolutely yelled at her. I think she was shocked by it that she never bit me again! I think shouting/smacking only work if done so rarely that it’s a terrible and frightening shock, so you need to think of something else for every day use.
She grew out of the biting so I’m sure Hugh will too, eventually.
one thought – I think she was too young to appreciate different levels of force, what hurts and what doesn’t, and to see that some physical stuff, (hugging, tickling, kissing) is ok, but other stuff (kicking, biting, hitting) is very different – i think biting actually seems a lot kissing to young kids, it’s just a fun thing to do, they don’t mean to hurt, they just don’t know the difference.