I have a 3 year old daughter and 1 year old son. Recently, my daughter has started strangling my son. She puts both hands around his throat and squeezes hard. The first time she did it his face was changing colour by the time I grabbed her hands. She's tried to it another 2 times since.
She is NOT a violent child normally. As far as I know she's never even seen someone choke someone else, pretend or otherwise. I asked her childcare if any of the kids there have strangled each other in front of her, and they said no.
I ask her why and she says "just because..." and trails off. She's very calm when she does it too. It's really concerning me. I know siblings hurt each other (my sister and I pulled hair, scratched, punched) but never strangled. It doesn't feel like this is normal! Has anyone else's children done this?
7 Replies
This is just a guess but it could be pure fascination of cause amd effect. She can cause this to him ( at 3 theres probably not many people she can affect) she wouls have no understanding of the full ramifications of what could happen. I wouldnt take my eyes off the baby.
Agree, 100% supervision until this phase passes
I would talk to your GP, speak to your maternal health nurse and I would call the RCH (royal children's) for some help regarding early childhood mental health.
My 3 year old has just started hurting his 1 year old brother too.
Pushing him down.
Hitting him. Etc.
maybe it's a phase, as he's never done it before. He's also just started trying to hurt us.
And now that I think about it, he's strangled me once or twice.
This is likely to be because he's unhappy about no longer being the only child/baby & now feel overlooked as all attention is given to the "the baby" down to when people visit, they will ask about the "baby" with huge enthusiasm but not auch with him. He need so big reasurance he's just as important and if anything has a new big boy job, as big brother.
Wow thats really scary. I have a 3 year old and a 1 year old. I think if my 3 year old did that it would be sent straight to his room and lose his favorite toy for the day. Id be so horrified and he'd be in so much trouble!!! But the fact she keeps doing it is really scary. Hugs mumma!
Don't leave them unsupervised together. Maybe discipline her the same way any time she does it or tries to do it (fingers crossed she never does it again though!). And talk to the maternal child health nurse
My eldest strangled his brother at the same age. He was 3 and his brother was 1. The look on my 1 years face was horrendous. Normally I agree with following gentle parent teaching and consquences, however on this occassion I decided to respond old school. This was not a behaviour I wanted repeated (despite being in an environment where there is lots of individual attention, love and supervision). So I put him over my knee and gave him three hard smacks on each bum cheek. I made it absoloutely clear, that it was NEVER EVER going to happen again and it was very dangerous. It scared him and he never did it again.
Like you, he never saw that particular behaviour to copy it. They do have their little scraps with shoving and hitting etc. But I recognised the triggers (needing play space separate from each other, needing one on one time with parents, lots of attention for positive behaviours, learning to share and take turns etc). However despite these, he still strangled. Honestly, I think it's because at that age, they don't fully understand how dangerous it is. Constricting the neck can very quickly turn into a injury or death. For me, it was not a behaviour I wanted repeated (not that we want any aggressive behaviour repeated, but due to jealousy and frustration, it is not a fully avoidable expression of emotion at that age) , it was too dangerous and was not going to be repeated. It worked for us.