Shug there are kids who you can tell to knock it off. That's a good start. But read the op a couple of times. ALL of it. That kid is not one of them. That kid has been told already.

Here's the root behavior: kid as a new one year old starts getting handsy with Mom...slaps her two handed then one handed over time. He bites her shoulder then moves upward over time to her neck then face. He flails and kicks when she has him go down or away. Every time he does that from one to two she says: stop you are hurting mommy. Every time he hears her words to stop he bursts into crying. By 2 and a half he's escalated it to kicking her and pulling on her. She says over and over... stop you're hurting mommy. When he implodes with crying she HUGS HIM... softens her voice and coddles him. Every time he's in trouble for being physical with her the end game is cuddling and apologies from mommy who has just been whacked.

That goes on until HE can talk. When HE can talk he is bigger and stronger. Now he can put force into his refusals. When he gets physical with her or she has to intercede between him and harms way he cries out YOU HURT ME. The bigger the resistance ... the stronger he refuses her intercession the more she ends up hugging him and trying to settle him.

So by the time he's three he associates “you hurt me" with two things... adult affection and the no that got him with adults hands on him to go away or be blindsided by the topic HE wants the tables to turn to... the adult.

When he gets out into public or to any non parental units he gets even more. The reaction other adults give to him is fear. He doesn't understand it but he learns really quickly that whatever he did or doesn't want to do stops dead cold with those three little words. 3 years old with 3 little words can ruin someone's livlihood and even freedom.

By the time he lays that one on a non parent he gets immediately that the reaction is super intense and immediate. He doesn't know why buthe knows... human baby animals smell fear before they can spell fear.

So my response is to throw him completely off balance. Give him FOREIGN response. Give him something he's never seen before... but most of all get him back to the no that brought us all here in the first place.

That's what I'm after. I don't want to explain it. I don't want to counsel him out of it. I don't want in his gig. I don't want any bit of my energy to go to his three words. I get those words to do with as I see fit. I decide their weight. I can't leave them lying around for him to pick back up and hurl them at my freedom... my ability to raise my kid... my nurses license.

Nope... I own them now.

So I choose to turn them into SOMETHING that I can use each and every time he brings them out to play. In fact, I will bring them out to play... and eventually they will become a.part of us... a part of a layered inside joke that we just get. By the time we are done with it it won't look a bit like it did when he brought it into my house. And in the meantime he will learn that the cycle that taught him to get his way and get him loads of lovins and oh hunnies... doesn't work everywhere.It gets him nothing but what he was getting before he said those words. That's the seat I want him to sit in.

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