Aggression...towards babies
Hi all, my son is 3 and has awful aggression, only to those younger than him. Kids even slightly older than him can take his toys, push him down, whatever, no reaction at all. However, if there is anybody younger than him in his presence, he won't stop pushing, hitting and kicking them until they are no longer in his presence. He will attack repeatedly for hours if given the opportunity. Has anybody dealt with anything like this? We're in danger of getting him removed from his preschool and aren't able to take him to the park or indoor playgrounds or anything like this. We've been working on strategies for about six months between ABA and preschool, and he just isn't making any strides at all. Any help our resources would be sooo awesome. Thanks warriors.
It sounds to me like he is modeling the other children who are bigger than him and doing these thing to him. I think he needs to be around older kids who don't do that, and who model better behavior. Also, if he may unfortunately have learned to enjoy this feeling, so he is probably going to need to be deprogrammed from enjoying that feeling of power over others. The more others pick on him, the more likely he is to internalize this because when others do it to him, he knows how awful the other feeling is, and he wants to enjoy the opposite feeling instead.
It's possible. He got pushed and ran into a little bit by bigger kids, but not much. Luckily, I don't think he enjoys the feeling. He knows it is wrong and feels bad when he does it. It is like an impulse. He gets possessed for a few seconds. Let me chew on that one for a day and see if I can think of a way to test it. Thanks for the input!
Does he have sensory sensitivities? Young children can be really noisy, make unpredictable movements, etc. It's instinctive to lash out at someone who is causing you pain or fear, so I could see aggression towards younger kids being triggered by noise. The same is seen in cats - fearful cats tend to hate small children and lash out if they get too close. Again, it's because of the noise and movement causing distress, so they attack the source of that distress.