[saturdaysaint]

I've done this too, and I have one of "those" hard-headed boys that loves to roughhouse, but I've come to believe there is no escape from "Where attention goes, behavior grows." You might be inflicting a punishment, but you are also granting him zealous attention, which is a drug worth some negative side-effects to their mind.

Withdrawing attention - say, to attend to the kid he's injured in another room - seems to change behavior much more effectively, exactly as the psychological literature predicts. Ignoring violent behavior is extremely difficult, but it can produce surprising results. It's taken a few months of this, but my hardheaded 3 year old has just started expressing sincere apologies.

[xyzzy123]

Thanks for that, I will look at how I can apply this. Makes sense.

What do you do when you need the behaviour to stop e.g. for safety reasons?

[saturdaysaint]

In the most frequent circumstance - my 3 year old hitting his 1 year old sister - my first step is to pick her up, give her sympathetic attention, and whisk her out of the room. So safety is no longer an issue, and the hitter has a moment to cool off, which they typically need. More importantly, he's feeling attention drain out of the room - while undramatic, this is enormously impactful. In the psychological conditioning literature, this is called "extinction" - you're taking away the stimulus that he's been looking for.

I'm sure there are circumstances where there's not much choice but to step in, but think hard and creatively about ways to mitigate the safety issue while removing attention. We're so driven to step in and make a scene that this is often painfully difficult.