October 16, 2025 • 10 mins
This is one of my shorter mini-episodes where I read this weeks Substack article.
We answer here the simple and yet extremely common question "What are we supposed to do when our kid hits us or someone else?"
If you would like to support my work consider subscribing on Substack for $5 per month.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:11):
What do we do about hitting?
Probably the number one questionI get is what am I supposed to
do when my kid hits?
And I get why.
The cornerstone of the parentingadvice that I give, as evidenced
by the title of my book, is thatpunishment is ineffective in
parenting.
For most millennial parents,that's all fine and good when it
(00:32):
comes to things like bedtimestruggles or getting out the
door in the morning.
Where the rubber hits the roadis in those harmful behaviors.
What is the alternative topunishment when our kid does
something that's not justinconvenient, but actually hurts
others?
The answer depends a lot onwhere the behavior is coming
from.
Unsurprisingly, for those whohave read my book or have been
(00:55):
reading my work for any amountof time, we have to begin with
understanding.
Why is it that our kid ishitting?
If we don't start with why, weinevitably end up playing some
version of behavior managementwhack-a-mole.
As I say in chapter two of mybook, in doing this, we become
like doctors who are onlymanaging symptoms without
(01:17):
treating the underlying cause.
The reasons kids hit generallyfall into a few categories.
It'll be up to you to figure outwhich of these reasons fits for
your kid and apply theappropriate corrective action.
Reason one, they literally don'tknow better.
When my just turned one-year-olddaughter slaps me across the
face while we're playing on thefloor and then laughs
(01:39):
hysterically at the shocked lookon my face, I think most of us
know that it's not because shehas some secret motive or
underlying sociopathic tendency.
It's because she literally lacksthe brain development and life
experience to know any better.
Specifically, what's at playhere is something that we call
theory of mind.
(01:59):
Theory of mind, as I talkedabout extensively in my last
podcast episode, is the brain'sability to comprehend that
others have a differentexperience of the world, a
different mind.
My daughter, who turns one nextweek, is too young to have any
measure of theory of mind, andthus has no ability to
comprehend that I am notenjoying being slapped across
(02:20):
the face nearly as much as sheis enjoying slapping me.
What we often forget is thattheory of mind doesn't really
get going for most kids untilthey're over the age of two or
even three for neurotypicalkids, and a lot later for some
neurodivergent kids.
That means that our hittinginterventions for such kids have
to be rooted in redirecting, andto some extent conditioning kids
(02:44):
to practice alternative,appropriate behaviors.
Combine this with the fact thattalking, aka verbal expression
of one's needs and desires,develops much slower than
physical development, akapunching someone in the face to
express one's needs or desires,and suddenly you understand why
most kids between the ages ofone and three go through at
least one, if not multiple,hitting phases.
(03:07):
Thankfully, the solution forthis one is really simple.
Solution one, gentle hands.
When your child goes to hit,what you're going to do is take
their hands and redirect them tosoft touch or gentle hands.
I wish I could show youphysically what I mean here, but
literally it's just aboutholding them, non-aggressively
by the hand and lightly rubbing,petting, or touching wherever
(03:30):
they were about to hit.
Then respond in an extremelypositive manner, clapping,
cheering, and repeating thosewords, soft touch or gentle
hands the whole time.
If you fail to catch it beforethey swing, that's okay.
All you need to do isunder-react.
Be boring and redirect.
(03:51):
That's it.
Repeat 20 to 50 times, and thehitting will go away nine out of
ten times.
Will the hitting come backagain?
It might.
You'll need to keep the sameredirection until your child
eventually develops theory ofmind.
Solution 1.5 Building Theory ofMind.
John, you might be asking, howcan I help my child develop
(04:14):
theory of mind and the empathythat comes with it more
effectively or quickly?
Well, I'm glad that you asked.
You absolutely can, and one ofthe best ways to do that is
through reading to kids.
Again, I talk about this for anentire podcast episode in the
last episode.
Reason number two.
Kids hit to get what they want.
(04:35):
But John, you might be saying,my kid seems to know what
they're doing.
They hit when they get mad aboutnot getting something that they
want.
Yes, it's an unfortunate realitythat for violence for children
often does work.
When a younger sibling is tryingto compete with an older
sibling, or your childdesperately wants to communicate
how disappointed they are withthe boundary that you are
(04:57):
holding, sometimes hitting feelslike the best option.
In these cases, redirecting inthe moment doesn't always work.
Kids also have a tendency to hitto get your attention.
Again, because it usually works.
In this way, a kid is nothitting because they're being
illogical.
Their hitting is, at least inthe short term, logically
motivated.
(05:17):
Our job is to work with them tohelp them understand that
hitting doesn't work in the longterm.
Solution number two,conversations and consequences.
The basic crux of disciplinehere is helping a child
understand and experience thevery real consequences of
hitting.
Usually that happens through anafter-the-fact conversation and
applicable consequence.
(05:38):
Say something like, we don't useour hands to hit because it
hurts others and we don't wantto hurt others.
Or when we hit, it makes otherswant to stop playing with us.
If there's a toy or a turnissue, it might be time to take
a break from that toy with aphrase like, I can see that this
toy is causing you some bigfeelings.
I'm going to help us take abreak from it so no one gets
(06:01):
hurt.
If the child is hitting inretaliation, I understand.
It's not okay that that otherkid hit you.
We use our words to say stopwhen we don't like something
that someone is doing to us.
As you can see, many of theseseem on the surface to be the
same as traditional parenting orpunitive interventions.
(06:23):
The difference lies in, one,when we enact the intervention,
after the fact, not during thefight, and two, how we
communicate it.
It may be time to leave the parkif our five-year-old keeps
scrapping with the other kidover who gets the dump truck,
but screaming threats in themoment of dysregulation serves
only to harm, not help thesituation.
(06:44):
One quick note on the attentionpiece as well.
Kids often hit adults whenthey're needing our attention.
Adults will often argue that theway that you should respond to
this is by not giving them theattention that they're desiring.
My argument, and the argument ofmost experts these days, is that
you should give them theattention before they result or
(07:06):
resort to hitting.
That way they get theirfundamental need, yes, it is a
need, for attention met, withoutfeeling like they have to resort
to violence to make it happen.
If you find yourself not knowingthat your child is looking for
your attention until they hit,consider that maybe it's time to
pay more conscious attention tothe way that your child is
(07:29):
trying to get your attentionbefore the hitting begins.
The same is true for whining.
If you want a kid to stopwhining, the only way to do that
effectively is to give them areason that they don't need to
do it.
Reason three, laggingdevelopment.
There are some kids for whomexplosive violent reactions
(07:50):
persist into later childhood.
Redirection may work in theshort term, but the lagging
skill here is emotionalregulation.
Oftentimes these kids are givena diagnosis of a whole host of
potential neurologicalconditions to explain their
explosive reactions, from ADHDto ODD, or even to rats.
(08:10):
For these kids, there's onesimple mantra from Ross Green's
book, The Explosive Child, mysecond favorite parenting book
of all time, that I often returnto.
If these kids could do better,they would do better.
Kids who have a developmentaldelay around emotional
regulation are not simply givingtheir parents a hard time.
(08:31):
They're literally experiencingthe world without the
development to process iteffectively.
Just like a child with a readingdeficit does not simply need to,
quote, try harder to read, sotoo these kids need empathy and
tools and not hard-nosed oldschool command-demand parenting.
The solution here, solutionthree, is practice, practice,
(08:53):
practice.
For all of these kids, the onlyway through is, well, through.
Usually this looks like learningto identify potential triggers
to their explosive reactions andpreempting them before the child
becomes totally lost in themeltdown.
I don't have time to go into toomuch detail on this, as it could
easily be a post, podcastepisode, or as Ross
(09:15):
demonstrates, an entire book.
But suffice it to say thatlearning anything or building
any skill requires repetitionand patience.
Also, it's important to notethat you don't have to fix all
of the problems at once.
Focus on one thing that'striggering to your child, one
place where they're consistentlymelting down and getting
(09:36):
explosive or violent, and tryand solve one problem at a time.
Those little successes willbuild into larger successes,
building the neural pathways anddevelopment necessary to be able
to regulate emotions and stopthemselves from hitting before
you even have to intervene.
It will take longer with thesekids, but it will still work if
(09:59):
you stick to the plan.
That's the end of this one foryou.
I hope this episode helps youparent a little bit better.
It helps you become the bestversion of yourself as a parent.
Until next time, I'm John.
This has been the whole parentpodcast.
What do we do about hitting?
Probably the number one questionI get is what am I supposed to
do when my kid hits?
And I get why.
The cornerstone of the parentingadvice that I give, as evidenced
by the title of my book, is thatpunishment is ineffective in
parenting.
For most millennial parents,that's all fine and good when it
(00:32):
comes to things like bedtimestruggles or getting out the
door in the morning.
Where the rubber hits the roadis in those harmful behaviors.
What is the alternative topunishment when our kid does
something that's not justinconvenient, but actually hurts
others?
The answer depends a lot onwhere the behavior is coming
from.
Unsurprisingly, for those whohave read my book or have been
(00:55):
reading my work for any amountof time, we have to begin with
understanding.
Why is it that our kid ishitting?
If we don't start with why, weinevitably end up playing some
version of behavior managementwhack-a-mole.
As I say in chapter two of mybook, in doing this, we become
like doctors who are onlymanaging symptoms without
(01:17):
treating the underlying cause.
The reasons kids hit generallyfall into a few categories.
It'll be up to you to figure outwhich of these reasons fits for
your kid and apply theappropriate corrective action.
Reason one, they literally don'tknow better.
When my just turned one-year-olddaughter slaps me across the
face while we're playing on thefloor and then laughs
(01:39):
hysterically at the shocked lookon my face, I think most of us
know that it's not because shehas some secret motive or
underlying sociopathic tendency.
It's because she literally lacksthe brain development and life
experience to know any better.
Specifically, what's at playhere is something that we call
theory of mind.
(01:59):
Theory of mind, as I talkedabout extensively in my last
podcast episode, is the brain'sability to comprehend that
others have a differentexperience of the world, a
different mind.
My daughter, who turns one nextweek, is too young to have any
measure of theory of mind, andthus has no ability to
comprehend that I am notenjoying being slapped across
(02:20):
the face nearly as much as sheis enjoying slapping me.
What we often forget is thattheory of mind doesn't really
get going for most kids untilthey're over the age of two or
even three for neurotypicalkids, and a lot later for some
neurodivergent kids.
That means that our hittinginterventions for such kids have
to be rooted in redirecting, andto some extent conditioning kids
(02:44):
to practice alternative,appropriate behaviors.
Combine this with the fact thattalking, aka verbal expression
of one's needs and desires,develops much slower than
physical development, akapunching someone in the face to
express one's needs or desires,and suddenly you understand why
most kids between the ages ofone and three go through at
least one, if not multiple,hitting phases.
(03:07):
Thankfully, the solution forthis one is really simple.
Solution one, gentle hands.
When your child goes to hit,what you're going to do is take
their hands and redirect them tosoft touch or gentle hands.
I wish I could show youphysically what I mean here, but
literally it's just aboutholding them, non-aggressively
by the hand and lightly rubbing,petting, or touching wherever
(03:30):
they were about to hit.
Then respond in an extremelypositive manner, clapping,
cheering, and repeating thosewords, soft touch or gentle
hands the whole time.
If you fail to catch it beforethey swing, that's okay.
All you need to do isunder-react.
Be boring and redirect.
(03:51):
That's it.
Repeat 20 to 50 times, and thehitting will go away nine out of
ten times.
Will the hitting come backagain?
It might.
You'll need to keep the sameredirection until your child
eventually develops theory ofmind.
Solution 1.5 Building Theory ofMind.
John, you might be asking, howcan I help my child develop
(04:14):
theory of mind and the empathythat comes with it more
effectively or quickly?
Well, I'm glad that you asked.
You absolutely can, and one ofthe best ways to do that is
through reading to kids.
Again, I talk about this for anentire podcast episode in the
last episode.
Reason number two.
Kids hit to get what they want.
(04:35):
But John, you might be saying,my kid seems to know what
they're doing.
They hit when they get mad aboutnot getting something that they
want.
Yes, it's an unfortunate realitythat for violence for children
often does work.
When a younger sibling is tryingto compete with an older
sibling, or your childdesperately wants to communicate
how disappointed they are withthe boundary that you are
(04:57):
holding, sometimes hitting feelslike the best option.
In these cases, redirecting inthe moment doesn't always work.
Kids also have a tendency to hitto get your attention.
Again, because it usually works.
In this way, a kid is nothitting because they're being
illogical.
Their hitting is, at least inthe short term, logically
motivated.
(05:17):
Our job is to work with them tohelp them understand that
hitting doesn't work in the longterm.
Solution number two,conversations and consequences.
The basic crux of disciplinehere is helping a child
understand and experience thevery real consequences of
hitting.
Usually that happens through anafter-the-fact conversation and
applicable consequence.
(05:38):
Say something like, we don't useour hands to hit because it
hurts others and we don't wantto hurt others.
Or when we hit, it makes otherswant to stop playing with us.
If there's a toy or a turnissue, it might be time to take
a break from that toy with aphrase like, I can see that this
toy is causing you some bigfeelings.
I'm going to help us take abreak from it so no one gets
(06:01):
hurt.
If the child is hitting inretaliation, I understand.
It's not okay that that otherkid hit you.
We use our words to say stopwhen we don't like something
that someone is doing to us.
As you can see, many of theseseem on the surface to be the
same as traditional parenting orpunitive interventions.
(06:23):
The difference lies in, one,when we enact the intervention,
after the fact, not during thefight, and two, how we
communicate it.
It may be time to leave the parkif our five-year-old keeps
scrapping with the other kidover who gets the dump truck,
but screaming threats in themoment of dysregulation serves
only to harm, not help thesituation.
(06:44):
One quick note on the attentionpiece as well.
Kids often hit adults whenthey're needing our attention.
Adults will often argue that theway that you should respond to
this is by not giving them theattention that they're desiring.
My argument, and the argument ofmost experts these days, is that
you should give them theattention before they result or
(07:06):
resort to hitting.
That way they get theirfundamental need, yes, it is a
need, for attention met, withoutfeeling like they have to resort
to violence to make it happen.
If you find yourself not knowingthat your child is looking for
your attention until they hit,consider that maybe it's time to
pay more conscious attention tothe way that your child is
(07:29):
trying to get your attentionbefore the hitting begins.
The same is true for whining.
If you want a kid to stopwhining, the only way to do that
effectively is to give them areason that they don't need to
do it.
Reason three, laggingdevelopment.
There are some kids for whomexplosive violent reactions
(07:50):
persist into later childhood.
Redirection may work in theshort term, but the lagging
skill here is emotionalregulation.
Oftentimes these kids are givena diagnosis of a whole host of
potential neurologicalconditions to explain their
explosive reactions, from ADHDto ODD, or even to rats.
(08:10):
For these kids, there's onesimple mantra from Ross Green's
book, The Explosive Child, mysecond favorite parenting book
of all time, that I often returnto.
If these kids could do better,they would do better.
Kids who have a developmentaldelay around emotional
regulation are not simply givingtheir parents a hard time.
(08:31):
They're literally experiencingthe world without the
development to process iteffectively.
Just like a child with a readingdeficit does not simply need to,
quote, try harder to read, sotoo these kids need empathy and
tools and not hard-nosed oldschool command-demand parenting.
The solution here, solutionthree, is practice, practice,
(08:53):
practice.
For all of these kids, the onlyway through is, well, through.
Usually this looks like learningto identify potential triggers
to their explosive reactions andpreempting them before the child
becomes totally lost in themeltdown.
I don't have time to go into toomuch detail on this, as it could
easily be a post, podcastepisode, or as Ross
(09:15):
demonstrates, an entire book.
But suffice it to say thatlearning anything or building
any skill requires repetitionand patience.
Also, it's important to notethat you don't have to fix all
of the problems at once.
Focus on one thing that'striggering to your child, one
place where they're consistentlymelting down and getting
(09:36):
explosive or violent, and tryand solve one problem at a time.
Those little successes willbuild into larger successes,
building the neural pathways anddevelopment necessary to be able
to regulate emotions and stopthemselves from hitting before
you even have to intervene.
It will take longer with thesekids, but it will still work if
(09:59):
you stick to the plan.
That's the end of this one foryou.
I hope this episode helps youparent a little bit better.
It helps you become the bestversion of yourself as a parent.
Until next time, I'm John.
This has been the whole parentpodcast.
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