Has anyone dealt with their child going through a hitting phase? My son has been hitting everyone ....continuously. I'm at wits end trying to figure out how to stop it. He is 6.6 but mentally is only about 3. He hits very hard with sensory issues. Unfortunately there is no punishment (priveledge or item removal) or reward that I can think of. Time outs are not effective since he already like being alone. The school behavior specialist gave me some sheets that were very generic. It was information that I already knew. I'm sure much of it is attention getting since I am a single parent working full time. Anything is appreciated!

Chris
Proud mommy @ 26wks 6/2/2000 to
Mike, Daniel & Eric

We tried everything with this. Finally what worked was putting him in his room and holding the door shut for a few minutes (in the beginning it was about 10 seconds). Now if he raises his arm, we say "do you want to go to your room?" and he puts his hand down and says no and hugs us. Now, don't get me wrong, he still hits his siblings on occasion but at least we are seeing improvements.

Have you tried social stories or books (Hands are not for hitting)?? I've heard that works sometimes.

Ann

BBG born 7/7/03
33 weeks 3 days

HI
Well we do aba with our dd (but use it for all four of the kids). For behavior issues we do this.. We have a list of things that time outs. Some are hitting, pushing, taking away anothers toy etc. If the child hits they are immediately put into time out. We put the child in time out in the same room just a little away from the action. The child can not come put of time out until they are "quiet" for 30 seconds. Quiet means no yelling, loud crying, kicking etc while in timeout. So they are seeing what they are missing out on. We roll played this and wrote a social story about it before starting it. DD and her sisters aren't very physical (hitting one another) but it does happen once in while. It only took a few times in timeout for them to understand it. Her behaviors that put her in timeout dramatically decreased afer 1 week..
A month ago we also started the Absolutely Not precedure. This also changed her (their) behaviors pretty quicky. Brief version of how it works: Example: dd is stuck on something and is asking and saying something over and over: sister wrecked my toy. I tell her I saw what happened and it was an accident. I offer a solution. dd continues to talk about it. I then say Absolutely not. If say talks about it one more time - she goes into a time out (same time out rules as above - quiet for 30 seconds.) These are some of things that we are doing that are working well for us. I have seen such positive changes in dd and the others too since we started aba...
Please let me know if you have nay other questions..
Jen