Originally Posted by preschoolteacher:
^^^ This. But I'd give it two weeks max, not a month. A month is a long time for you to be giving this amount of one-on-one attention.
The parents need to have a plan of how they are working on things at home.
I have a very verbal 2 year old who was pushing/hitting my toddler son up to 16 times in one day on the worst day. We took the following steps:
--Read books (Hands are not for hitting, Teeth are not for biting)
--Made dolls by taping photos of the children to blocks and role played positive social interactions
--I shadowed the 2 year old whenever he was with my toddler. If I could not be right there, the 2 year old was up in a booster seat coloring or in a large, gated off area of the room with plenty of toys so it wasn't seen as a punishment
--If the 2 year old was about to hit/push, I would say swoop in to gently stop him and say something like: "No hitting. Hitting hurts. Do you need to walk away?" Walk away is the phrase that worked the best and taught him to leave a situation that bothered him instead of hitting/pushing. He rarely hit/pushed over toys, just from the fact that my toddler was getting too close to his personal space.
--Meeting with parents who talked about what they were doing at home. They were doing A LOT!
--It took 1 solid week of the action play to see a change. Now we rarely have any incidents.
awesome strategies!
