Thread: Head banger!

So the little mite has come across an interesting way of expressing herself.

When she wants to walk around taking batteries out of remote controls to eat them, but I take them off her (actual example used) she throws herself on the floor and starts to bang her head on it.

My initial reaction is to try to stop her, but I don't want to feed the tantrum, so I try as best as I can to ignore the bad behaviour and praise her when she comes up to say sorry.

Any one else had dealings with the head banging phase? And what did you do to overcome it?

DS was a head banger until about 3 months ago (he's 2 and a half this month). I got really worried about it at first as he seemed to be really hurting himself but when my Mum observed a tantrum she managed to convince me not to worry as she was a bit more objective and could see that he wasn't. He's now stopped and I think it's because he can talk a little bit more so he's not getting quite as frustrated as he was. He still has tantrums but they're a lot less violent.

Interesting about the batteries though - DS was also obsessed with taking them out of things and trying to eat them. According to Mr SPs Dad, Mr SP also used to lick batteries as a child...

Well at least it's good to know that she's not abnormal lol. There are things she does that make me wonder what goes on inside that little brain. But this banging thing has really got me stumped, as I said, I don't tolerate the tantrums, I walk away and don't give her any attention until she's finished and is ready to come up to me. I ask her to say sorry and she nods and gives me a hug.

I suppose I just have to make sure she only tantrums on carpeted areas in the future

That's all I did - just made sure he was safe and couldn't actually hurt himself on anything and then left him to it til he got bored. That was sometimes quite a while but it just seems to have been frustration at not being able to communicate more than anything.

Big Tree was a headbanger of the worst proportions! he used to do it on ANYTHING and it scared the bejesus out of me. health visitor told me to make sure there was nothing he could hurt himself on and leave him to it but seriously he was headbutting walls and concrete floors, how do i go about moving them?? So i bought a travel cot for the living room and he was deposited into there to do as much headbanging as his little heart wanted to.

Toddler tree is also a headbanger but is slightly more reserved about it. He will only do it on carpets and on the odd occassion he's done it on the kitchen floor or other hard surface he hasn't gone back in for a second go at it! When he does hurt himself his scream changes and he stops the tantrum to cry in pain so i can step in there without encouraging the tantrum.