Child who hits

[the little ones]

Please let me know your thoughts..

In my daycare I have a recently turned 2 year old who comes to my house 2-3 days a week, a recently turned 1 year old who comes full-time and a 6 month old who comes full-time.

The 2 year old constantly hits, pushes, lays on, etc. and is just plain mean to the 1 year old. This seems to happen for no reasons at times, the 2 year old will just walk up to the 1 year old and hit, push, etc.

I've tried time out, talking to, redirection, ignoring,....., everything I can think of. I feel bad for the 1 year old having to go through this. I trying to teach the 1 year old to not hit the 6 month old during this time also and am worried of mixed signals.

What should I do with this 2 year old? I've told the parents that this can't keep happening, but unsure where to go from here......

[Phil_EH]

That's a tough one. Time outs seems like a reasonable option, but it can be hard to keep up with if it doesn't feel like it is working. Perhaps rewarding good behaviour would work better than punishing the bad. You could have a small "start chart" and every time you catch the 2 year old being good they get a star. You want to give stars pretty freely at first so they get used to the idea. When they fill up the chart, they might even get some small reward - although sometimes just the stars can be enough to make them feel good about themselves.