Fighting @ Daycare

[oferrek]

My DS has been disciplined every week for the past three weeks for not listening and/or fightling with the other children. He doesn't always instigate the fight, but he still fights with the other children by pushing, hitting, or kicking when one takes a toy away from him. Sometimes, if the teacher gets onto him for not listening, he transposes his anger onto the other children, even if they have done nothing to him. I am at a loss as to what to do--he is an only child who behaves normally at home. When we do playdates on the weekend, he rarely fights with the other children.

The discipline they have at his daycare is as follows: distraction, redirection, positive reinforcement, and finally timeouts.

Today, when I signed him out of school, I had to fill out an incident report because him and another child fought so badly that they both hurt each other. My DS has a cut under his eye and the other child has a bruise on his cheek...what am I going to do...he's only 28 months old! I was so upset that I started crying and my bully of a son gave me a hug and and said "I sorry. It ok." This is breaking my heart!

[cay8099]

You need to help him find new ways to vent his frustration and anger. He is taking feelings he can't put a name to or understand, and venting by fighting. Teach him words to help him understand what he is feeling. Try getting him a stress ball to keep with him and letting him squeze it as tight as he can when he feels this way.

If you decide to try this you will need to let his day care provider know. You will need her help in keeping other kids from taking his ball, and reminding him to use the ball.

[eniese]

At this age, you can also talk about what to do if someone else takes a toy away, hits, etc. We've taught our son to tell his teacher if someone else is being mean, and we've also talked a lot about how he feels when his friends take his toys, hit/kick him, etc. He's starting to understand that we don't do things to friends that will make them sad. Another thing we discovered is that if dad wrestles with him and plays a little rough at home, he's more likely to play rough with the other kids, so my husband backed off on the wrestling a bit and that helped.