Oh, the terrible twos have arrived!

I was hoping I would get out of it this time around since Genna is usually such an easy going girl. However, she seems to have developed a rather bad habit. She is hitting Hannah when Hannah tries to make her do something she doesn't want to do. So far it is only Hannah that she is hitting. It started out as barely a hit just to get her to stop and get out of her face after a lot of pestering from Hannah and has quickly progressed to harder hits if Hannah doesn't listen to her first, "No" or "Leave me alone." So we are working on impulse control and using our words more than just the once. So far all the mini lectures and time outs haven't worked, but I am hoping if I really buckle down and am consistent in how I handle it it won't last too much longer. For Hannah, I am just not sure how to get her to stop trying to control everything Genna does. I keep reminding her that she needs to listen to Genna when she says, "No" and let her do things her way. I think these are typical first born and second born traits that I am dealing with now.

I think Hannah did go through a hitting faze with me when she got angry. I got her to stop relatively quickly by punishing the behavior as well as giving her something else to do with her hands to control them instead of hitting. I kept telling her when she got angry to ball her hands into a fist and say, "I am so angry." It worked pretty well. I need to think of something like that to reinforce with Genna that applies to her situation more.