🧶 “Help! My Kid Is Hitting Another Kid!”

I'm totally stuck — what are my best options as a parent?

Hey there!

It’s time for another Advice Thread where readers can write in to ask this community for advice. Today’s question comes from a parent whose four-year-old started hitting other kids on the playground.

If you’ve had a hitter, a biter, or a kid with intense emotions, help this parent out and share your experiences. What did you do? What worked? What didn’t work?

As always, the rules: be kind, speak from your experience, be supportive—don’t be judgmental—and allow for multiple points of view.

Here’s the question:

Help! My kid started hitting another kid. Not just one kid, but I’ve gotten two calls now from the camp counselor that he punched another kid on the playground. (One kid yesterday, one kid today.) From what I can tell, the other kids are being mean to him and excluding him from their games. “They don’t let me play,” is all I’ve been able to get him to tell me. The counselor said that the other kids told him they couldn’t play with him. My heart breaks for him! But also hitting is not okay!

He’s four and a half years old, and he’s big for his age, so I am generally worried about him being a bigger kid and having a size advantage over people that are smaller than him. But also, he’s younger than he looks, and since he was a baby, he has always had these really big feelings and intense emotions. He’s always been quick to get angry and to cry.

We have spent a lot of time working on feelings and being there with him, and we have feelings and emotions books that we read to him at night. We also got him a special pillow that has 16 different feeling faces and emotions on it, and he carries the pillow around with him to snuggle everywhere.

But hitting other people isn’t okay! How do I stop the hitting? What are my options as a parent? Part of me thinks I need to teach him how to make friends better? Or maybe he’s getting overstimulated? Have you dealt with this before? Help—I have no idea what I’m doing and I don’t want my kid to hit other kids! I would like any and all parenting help I can get—give me all of your ideas!

If you’ve successfully parented through this type of behavior, if you know how to deal with hitting, or if you’re going through it — leave your thoughts below.