Children who fight

The most common reason why children hit other children is that they don’t have access to another way of resolving a problem or are unable to express their needs. When children want something or become angry, the situation can easily result in pushing and shoving. Emotions take over for a while, and the child is not yet able to control his or her impulses – it takes time to learn impulse control and how to develop such skills. It may sometimes seem as if children fight without provocation, but there is almost always a reason, be it an attempt to express an emotion or an impulse that has taken over. As adults, we have an important role to play in terms of providing guidance and helping our children with problem resolution so that, over time, they learn other ways to handle their frustration and anger. Emotions must be allowed to exist, and the major challenge lies in teaching children how to handle them.

When a child hurts other children

No child should have to be subjected to repeated violence by another child! As adults, it is our responsibility to ensure that we are there to provide protection and constructive guidance. Similarly, it is also our responsibility as adults to help children who have a tendency to fight and ensure that they don’t end up in situations where violence becomes a way out.

It can be extremely difficult and challenging to have a child who often hits other children! It is easy to feel like a failure and believe that others view you as a bad parent, or perhaps you start to wonder what is wrong with your child if he or she seems to have violent tendencies. Try to shake off such negative thoughts, and take comfort in the fact that violence among young children has absolutely nothing to do with them being mean, nor does it mean that you have raised the child poorly. Instead, it has to do with different types of personalities and the fact that we all have our strengths and weaknesses. In the vast majority of cases, children stop fighting when they become a little older and find other ways of resolving conflicts. Stay the course, and remember that your help and guidance is extremely important and meaningful for your child – even though it might not always feel like it at the time! For anyone attempting to learn a new skill, it is very much a case of practice makes perfect, and when it comes to children learning how to deal with situations in which their impulses take over, they need a lot of practice in order to learn how to cope with such situations in the right manner.

Children who fight at preschool

As a parent, one of the most difficult things we can experience is a situation in which we find out that our child is behaving badly towards other children at preschool. This causes an enormous amount of stress and often makes us worry about the future. But it is important to remember that, as a parent, you can’t resolve the situation at your child’s preschool – because you’re not there! If conflicts and episodes of violence arise in the preschool environment, it is something in that environment which must change in order to get to grips with the problem. Perhaps the child needs more adult support? Or perhaps there is a need to provide the child with more guidance in relation to social interaction? Could it be that the demands being placed on the child are unrealistically high, or that the child does not feel respected?

There are many potential reasons as to why children fight at preschool, and it is therefore usually a good idea to maintain a close dialogue with the teachers so that, together, you can explore the types of support your child needs to stop fighting. Sometimes the advice of a special education needs coordinator can be really helpful in such situations – they are experts in identifying children’s need for help in preschool groups, and they can support the rest of the staff in how best to deal with the situation.

When children hit their parents

When young children hit their parents, they often do so because they are unable to express their needs or wishes, or because they are overcome with strong emotions. However, this is rarely something that occurs in a vacuum – the situation is usually responsible for the actions of the child, so it may be relevant to consider the aspects of the situation that could have caused the child to fight. Were you perhaps in an unusual or difficult situation at the time, or was the child hungry? Perhaps the child was simply in a bad mood or became angry when unable to get his or her own way? Perhaps the child felt unfairly treated or became overwhelmed by emotions and needed more help in how to deal with them? Or perhaps the demands placed on the child were unrealistically high and caused the child to feel bad?

There are many potential reasons as to why things may sometimes boil over for a young child, and there is absolutely nothing unusual in the fact that this may sometimes take expression in the form of hitting or kicking. Try not to take it personally – instead, focus on helping your little one to calm down so that you can resolve the problem that exists in the situation.

How to help a child who often becomes involved in fights

As already mentioned, we, as adults, need to provide children with guidance in terms of how to resolve problems and situations in which emotions are running high. Some children simply have a more explosive mood than others and therefore have a greater tendency to end up in a fight. Children may sometimes get stuck in a pattern of behaviour characterised by fighting, biting or kicking at the slightest sign of resistance or frustration, and it can become a bad habit to turn to fighting when something feels difficult to handle. To break such a habit or pattern, it is often necessary to stop placing so much focus on the fault, in other words the negative behaviour, and instead help the child to adopt other, more constructive forms of behaviour when he or she becomes angry or upset. This is by no means easy, and to begin with it may feel strange to refrain from yelling at a child when he or she behaves badly. But the important thing to remember is that a young child who fights does not do so out of malice but rather due to an impulse that arises and becomes impossible to resist at that particular moment. Yelling and cursing as a response is usually completely ineffective and simply leads to more conflicts while causing the child to feel bad and ashamed – which is not exactly beneficial for the child’s self-esteem. As a parent, the best thing you can do to help your child change his or her behaviour is to instead focus on the positive things your child does and on resolving conflicts in a constructive manner. And of course you should always try to be there so that you can help your child with support and guidance before the hitting starts.

It is, of course, also very important to clearly show the child that violence is wrong, and to protect and comfort the other child who has been hit. But try to do this without starting to yell at the little “troublemaker” – a short and clear reprimand is sufficient to remind the child that this type of behaviour is wrong. Afterwards, it is usually a good idea to focus on the constructive things that the child does, or to provide help with problem resolution.

Tips on how to help children play and get along with each other

There is nothing unusual about a two-year-old who fights – nor a three-year-old or four-year-old either – but young children of all ages have one thing in common: they need help from us adults when it comes to practising interaction with other children. And the younger the child, the more guidance that is usually needed. Below you will find four reliable pieces of advice.

• Young children under the age of three are usually unable to understand rules and will not always be particularly good at cooperating with other children. They often need to be supported in their play with other children, and as an adult you can provide this support by being close at hand and helping them to understand and express what is happening. By saying things like: “Oh dear, now your friend is probably feeling sad because you took that toy. Oops! Perhaps we should give it back and ask if you can borrow it later...” – you can help the learning process. The fact is that children learn a lot when we, as adults, help them find the words to describe what is happening inside. The more children are given the opportunity to practice, the easier it becomes for them to understand other children and learn how to interact with them during play.
• Playing with other children is both positive and important. Children need playmates in order to learn how to play together. Don’t worry about the risk of your child doing something bad – instead, just stay close at hand, and only get involved when you really need to. It is not fun for children to be controlled by their parents while they are playing, although we do need to be close at hand so that we can provide help when necessary. The key is to try to find the right balance.
• Keep an eye on things, and help children resolve a conflict before it turns into a fight. It is not just the youngest children, but sometimes also older children who may have difficulty in finding the right words and may therefore replace them with a physical reaction instead. A good way to help children in such situations is to express the situation from the points of view of both children, for example by saying something like: “I know that you think that what just happened was unfair, but your friend probably also thinks it was unfair that she had to wait so long for her turn. So what do you think is the best way to resolve this situation?”.
• Praise children when they play well and when they share things and cooperate with others, and tell them what was good about their behaviour. The things that we, as parents, highlight and emphasise are the things that our children will want to do more often!

Please note that all information above is based on Swedish recommendations.