16 Month Old Hits Herself in the Head

both of my kids were head bangers, my daughter out grew it by the time she was 20 months, my son still does it- he'll be 3 in July. He doesn't physically hit his head with his hands, he uses the floor. No disabilities or anything like that, it's just what he does. He seems to do it less and less so I'm thinking it'll be soon when he quits. So far, the best thing I've found was to just ignore it. Anything else drew too much attention to the action and it would make it worse, i.e. he would hit his head harder or more often. Good luck to you.

My son, now 8, slaps himself in the face a lot. We have recently started talking with an Occupational Therapist about sensory seeking behavior. We have a number of calming activities we do - as simple as rolling playdough into a long snake, using 2 fingers, placing pennies into the playdough, rolling it into a ball and then finding the pennies. It calms him down considerably.

We did not seek the therapist's council because of the hitting, but aggressive behavior in general. I think the hitting may be a way of him getting the sensory input he needs. Google on sensory seeking behavior and you may get some answers, especially if ignoring the behavior does not help. Our son has always been a hitter - and I wish we had started educating ourselves earlier than 2nd grade. It is a fascinating area to research!

Good luck!

Sometimes when little ones accidentally hit their head, they'll purposely hit their heads over and over in order to understand the sensation of the accidental hit. Take heart, if there are no other issues or developmental disabilities, your daughter may just be trying to figure something out for herself(which is pretty smart!). I agree with the others: just ignore it or maybe redirect her excitement and/or frustration with another response.

Our son did that as well. If you just ignore it & don't give her attention, she will hopefully stop. Brandon does not do it any more. Might be just an attention getter. So, if you see her do it, just keep talking to her & continue what you are doing at the time. It worked for us.

P.

N.,

Hope you weekend is starting great. I just wanted to give you a little piece of mind. I have a daughter who is now almost four and she went through a stage where she would pull her hair and sometime pull her mouth to the point of drawing blood. We never could figure out why she did it, but it was completely devastating to me. We live in a fairly peaceful home, so she wasn't exposed to violence or screaming or any other negative behavior and being a first born she has ALL my attention as a stay at home mom. I found the more I asked her to stop, the more she did it. Finally, after many tears shed by me, I began to ignore her when doing it or I would tell her she is only hurting herself by this behavior. She eventually stopped all together. She has never since intentionally hurt herself. As long as you know there are no developmental problems with you child, I would try you best to ignore the behavior, unless she is causing serious harm to herself. Hope my story helps!

Hi N.
My daughter hits herself in the head also she is almost 6 and has Sensory deffensivness (sp) which may or may not have anything to do with this. The thing that has gotten her to stop is to just ignore her. hope this helps :)T.

Our middle son, who is now 32, had a similar issue. When he was born, we knew his was going to be "bull headed". If he was naughty and you got after him, he would crawl to a wall and start banging his head. We realized that by saying something to him every time he did this, didn't help matters any. We finally just ignored him and didn't make an issue of it and he stopped. We did make sure though, that he wasn't hurting himself. Most of the time it was to get more attention. His son would hit himself in the head also when he was about 2 years old, now he doesn't do it at all. He is now 5 and don't think he did it for long either, when he realized that it either hurt or no one was going to make a deal out of it.

Just make sure she isn't hurting herself and see if not making an issue out of it will help.

N.,
This can be a dietary issue. Perhaps she is low on something (iron? magnesium?) Or something else. I would recommend looking further into the issue from that standpoint. Foods we eat are directly correlated to our behavior (makes sense).
I am connected to a group called GFCF Kids (Gluten Free/Casein Free) and they have TONS of info on this that can be very helpful. (Gluten comes from Wheat, Barley, Rye, and Casein is another milk protien along with lactose and whey).
Feel free to email me privately if this is something you'd like to be directed to.
fyi. . .I've also learned that Dr.'s really have very limited nutritional training. So it's not always best to go by their advice, when it comes to dietary needs. A good nutritionist OR a DAN! Dr. would be a much better resource for you.

Good luck.
J.

N.,
My 2 1/2 year old twin boy does that too. I think that he got it from his father one day during one of those "duh" moments. He even seems to know when to do it. i.e. the He could star in the V8 commercial...Anyway, we try to discourage it two or three times and then just ignore it. Once we ignore it, he stops.
Good luck!

My daughter is 2 and she started doing this a few months ago when being scolded. I didn't know whether or not to bring it up to the doctor at her 2yr check up (I didn't know if they would think she is learning it from us and think she is being abused or something aweful like that) I did however ask the doctor about it and she said it was normal. She explained that because they do not have the full ability to communicate their emotions they react in that way.
My daughter still does it every once in a while but it has decreased in frequency over the past month or so.
Give it time, as she learns to speak better and gets used to having strong feelings of excitment or frustration she will stop the behavior.