Last night I came to the realization that my two and a half year old son was going to go bonkers if I didn’t let him blow off some steam. The weather had been cold and rainy in the Seattle area lately and it’s forced us to stay inside… resulting in a little pent up energy for my poor little guy.
So I decided to take him to one of his favorite places, Charlie Safari.
Charlie Safari is great because no matter what the weather is outside, they have plenty of tunnels, slides and bouncy houses to wear the snot out of my little guy and bring his energy level back down to tolerable 
Now I don’t know about you, but when my son wants to let off some steam, he LOOOOVVVVEEEESSSS to roughhouse… and when Daddy’s around that means we play “play fight”.
And therein lies the problem…
My son thinks everyone wants to “play fight”, including random kids who he passes by at Charlie Safari.
So there I am watching my happy little guy bouncing around in the bounce house with a bunch of other kids and, WHAM! He smokes some little kid in the gut. (and of course the other kid’s mom saw it, so I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing). So I climbed into the bounce house quickly to resolve the situation with a technique for disciplining hitting that works like a charm.
Instead of saying, “NO hitting!” I quickly run over to my son (or bounce in this case), and grab the other kid who he just hit. But instead of giving him a toung lashing, I simply say to my son, “Jimmy, sometimes other kids don’t want to play “hit” like you do. Let’s ask this little boy if he wants to play hit, OK?”
Then I turn to the other kid and just straight up ask him, “Do you want to play “Hit” with my son?” And 9 times out of 10 the other kid says, “NO”… and my son stops hitting him. It literally works every time and I never actually have to tell him to stop hitting.
Here’s why this is such a great technique for stopping a toddler from hitting…
This is so much more effective then disciplining your toddler for hitting, because it’s an emotion coaching style of parenting that realizes that getting a child to behave is not so much about disciplining bad behavior so it won’t happen again, but instead helping the child understand WHY their behavior is not OK.
In this case, I happen to know, (or have brainwashed myself into believing) that my son does not hit people while happily playing on a bouncy house because he’s trying to be mean. He’s a boy and he likes to “play fight”, so he just thinks that other children will like to play fight as much as he does. He’s actually trying to befriend them by sharing his favorite form of play… but his brain hasn’t developed to the point where being empathetic, or understanding other child’s perspectives comes intuitively.
So when my son hears the other kid say he does NOT want to be hit… my son always get’s the message that he should play with that kid in some other way, and stops hitting. I don’t ever have to remind him again, and I never had to yell. He just needed to hear it from the other kids mouth, NOT mine.
Plus my son feels respected. I didn’t barge in and tell him he was bad while he was having fun, and embarrass him, I just helped him understand the other child’s perspective.
And research has proven that using discipline styles like this not just on toddlers, but on children at all ages, plays a BIG role in the kind of person your child will grow up to become, because it imprints into their brains a way of looking at the world that done repeatedly becomes habitual, so you don’t end up with your little toddler turning into the kind of child who needs a program like The Total Transformation Program for severe disobedience issues when they become teenagers.
And if you’re interested about learning other imprinting strategies for toddlers that help them grow up to be better people, you should check out my free report, Unlocking Your Child’s Full Potential, for 6 other imprinting strategies for giving your toddler a head start in life.
