The Hitting Phase
The good news is that it's just a phase.
One day at a park, there was a little cute girl, sitting down trying to tie her shoes. Her dad is kindly helping her by sitting right next to her. My wife and I were watching this exact scene while our daughter was playing nearby and started coming to them. We were watching so peacefully thinking she'd say hi to them or do some sort of greeting that a toddler might do. It turns out, she starred at this little girl for a good 5 seconds and started swinging her right arm up in the air. Right at that moment, we knew what was going on, but it was too late. She smacked this girl’s head pretty hard with a straight face. The little girl didn’t cry, but looked confused and scared. Her dad was so mad that he told our daughter, “Don’t hit my daughter!“.
We apologized for what just happened to the girl and the dad. This is one of the many scenes we've gone through when our oldest was going through her hitting phase.
Our first time going through the hitting phase
Our oldest daughter started hitting a little after she had turned 1 year old. I’m such a newbie dad who didn’t have to change a diaper growing up for his siblings, I didn’t even know a hitting phase was a thing. One day, my wife came home crying because our daughter keeps hitting another child and the mom basically told my wife to “fix“ our daughter. I think the mom was just trying to help but if someone thinks that having a child going through a hitting phase is NOT a good thing, then I think something is wrong with them (this mom's child seemed too chill for her age). Anyway, that’s when I realized that the struggle of the hitting phase was real.
The hardest part is that you can do everything you can think of as parents to let your child not hit other kids, but it still happens. You can only do so much and just need to be patient and wait for this nightmare-phase to end. So frustrating.
One thing I noticed was that when our daughter was uncomfortable in a situation, she would hit. e.g. when another child stares at her long enough, she’d try to hit that child. So, it looks like there is a reason behind her hitting. Another case might be when she is too excited. Her excitement comes out as a form of hitting a person. It could also be that our reaction when she hits us makes her want to do it again.
All in all, we just hoped our daughter’s hitting phase would end soon but it continued after she turned 2. There have been ups and downs, and sadly now it’s kinda back again even after she turned 3.
Her roughness stayed even after she turned 3
She no longer hits other kids in the face, but she’s been so rough with her little sister, and sometimes with us and other close family members. I guess this isn’t a hitting phase anymore, it’s more like a she-wants-attention problem. Our oldest and youngest are only 2 years apart, which probably made the adjustment harder for our oldest daughter. She’s actually really nice to other kids younger than her though, but not to her little sister.
And because of this, our 2nd child is becoming very tough, for better or worse.
I’m looking forward to a day when our 2nd child hits or pushes our oldest back.
Final words
If you’re going through the hitting phase, just know most people understand it because they’ve gone through the exact same phase. If somebody tells you to fix your child, just tell them to fix themselves!
It’s so interesting though that a child goes through such a phase that only gives the parents a hard time. I wonder how God thought this was a good idea, or maybe he didn’t really think through it in the first place.