Toddler Hitting: Why It Happens And How To Make It Stop - Healthline

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Parenthood

Toddler Hitting: Why It Happens and How To Make It Stop

Medically reviewed by Dannell Roberts, PhD, BCBA-D — Written by Alexandra Frost — Updated on July 7, 2025

Fast tips
Causes
What to do
What not to do
Takeaway

Toddlers may hit others due to their lack of impulse control. Certain responses, such as redirection or prevention, may help.

If you have a toddler who is hitting – you, siblings, their friends, or all of the above – you are not alone. Most toddlers go through a hitting stage, and most parents struggle with how to handle their behavior.

Toddlers haven’t yet developed empathy or a true understanding of right and wrong, so they don’t yet understand that hitting hurts others or what that means. They also lack the understanding and skills to process many of the strong emotions they feel.

Read on to learn more about why toddlers hit and what you can do to help your toddler stop.

Tips for managing toddler hitting

Avoid contributing factors: Is the child teething? Did they get enough sleep, or is nap time approaching? Have they had nutritionally sound meals and snacks at frequent enough intervals today, or could they be hungry when they are hitting? Are they frustrated about something else, which could contribute to them lashing out by hitting?
Give time for physical activity: Allow your child to engage in physical activities like banging on a drum, stomping their feet, running around, jumping, playing on playgrounds, and anything else that will help them move.
Get all caregivers on the same page: Make sure you and other caregivers follow the same rules and use the same language when redirecting the child. This can help avoid confusion.

Why do toddlers hit?

Toddlers hit for many reasons – and sometimes for no reason you see at all. Here are some of the more common reasons why your toddler might hit.

They are testing limits

Like many toddler behaviors (chucking applesauce at your work blouse, screaming in high-pitched tones during rush hour traffic), hitting has a common theme: to test the limits of what is acceptable.

What will happen if I do this? Finding out their brother cries when hit with a stick or that beating on a drum is not the same as hitting their mom is all part of their learning process.

They haven’t developed self-control

If you’re raising a toddler, their impulse control is basically nonexistent. They feel frustrated or happy or bored, and they express that through hitting without hesitation.

Research suggests that it takes a while for children to learn self-control. This skill develops gradually, becoming more solid between grades 4 and 5.

They don’t understand that it is bad

It’s also true that toddlers sometimes use force without being provoked by others, which supports the idea that they just want to see what will happen, and don’t yet have the moral compass or understanding that they can, but shouldn’t, hurt others.

Scientists have studied this phenomenon in 11- to 24-month-old toddlers and have concluded that, in most cases, the children were not in distress at all when hitting others.

They don’t know how to process their feelings

Another reason toddlers resort to hitting, both themselves and others, is that it’s their way of handling their “big” emotions.

They feel frustrated, but unlike an adult who may calmly explain the feelings of frustration to their partner or trusted friend, toddlers often don’t have the language capacity or self-control to stop, examine how they are feeling, and react in a way that’s socially acceptable, appropriate, or helpful.

Toddlers may want something, or feel angry, or feel they’ve been wronged by their friend in some way.

What should you do when your toddler hits?

Hitting is not just a phase your child goes through, and there are concrete steps you can take to prevent, control, and redirect toddlers who are hitting.

While each of the following options may not work for every child, you, as the parent, can judge which will work for you. Don’t be afraid to explore multiple options through trial and error to see which is most beneficial for your child.

Restrain them physically?

Your instinct may be to physically hold your toddler back when they are trying to hit others. If you feel your child is out of control, or that being physically secure helps to calm them down, or that they may be at risk of injury, this might be an option to try. However, there are things to consider, such as:

Are you physically able to gently hold them? If your toddler is strong, this could be physically difficult depending on your own size, strength, and ability.
Can you hold them without harming them? Physically restraining your toddler should not be painful to them in any way, but rather like a calm and firm hug that prevents them from hitting themselves or others.
How do you expect them to respond to being restrained? If your toddler reacts negatively to being restrained, it may be more effective to consider other options instead.
Physical restraint may be emotionally harmful to your child. It also doesn’t model the behavior you want them to learn.

Remove your child from the situation

Calmly removing a child from the situation can be one of the best solutions to a hitting problem. Be prepared that you may have to do it more than once for a child to realize that there will be a clear consequence, involving not being able to play with others for a bit, if they hit.

Where you take them depends on where you are. The car can be effective if you are in public or at another person’s house. If you are in your own house, choose a calm, quiet location away from other activities to help them refocus.

Once you’re away from the situation, you may want to discuss, reevaluate, and calm down. How much time you spend on each of these depends on many factors, including your toddler’s age and ability to understand and your patience at the moment.

It’s okay to take a break and try again, and it’s also okay to decide it’s time to call it a day.

Discuss alternatives

It may not have even occurred to your child that there are other ways to deal with frustration, jealousy, anger, and other emotions unless you have explicitly taught and modeled these reactions.

When a friend grabs a toy they want, what other possible reactions could they have instead of hitting? Make sure you’re modeling behaviors like speaking up, walking away, or telling an adult about problems.

Your toddler needs you to teach them their options, but this takes time to learn and time to reach a developmental stage where this will be effective.

Redirect

Redirecting a toddler to a more appropriate behavior can help them forget about the urge to hit something, especially with younger toddlers. For example, with 1—to 2-year-olds, you can hold the hand that they were using to hit and show them a gentle touch.

If they persist, distracting them from the negative behavior with another activity may work. However, it’s important to ensure that hitting does not get more attention than not hitting.

If every time they hit you’re suddenly willing to play, it may inadvertently increase hitting. Make sure you’re providing positive reinforcement when they are not engaging in hitting.

Provide emotional support

If hitting seems to be the result of mismanaging emotion, you can try teaching more options for emotional expressions, such as what various feeling words mean, in an age-appropriate way.

How you explain frustration to a 5-year-old may be much different than to a 2-year-old, but both can learn dialogue to express anger, frustration, stress, and other related emotions.

Others literally just need a hug and some emotional support for the big feelings they have.

Prevent hitting before it begins

Observe your child’s behaviors that typically happen in the moments leading up to hitting. What are the typical triggers that cause them to hit themselves or others?

Some children make frustrated noises, for example, almost like a dog growling, while others start whining about the problem. You may see your toddler approaching another child by running toward them, giving you a hint that the hitting is about to be an issue.

By identifying these triggers and behaviors, you’re more likely to be able to stop them before they happen, either by talking them through other options or physically stopping them from the action.

What NOT to do when your toddler hits

Hit or spank

While spanking remains a controversial topic in parenting circles worldwide, research is pretty clear that it can cause more harm than good.

A 2017 study, for example, shows the correlation between spanking and behavioral issues. The authors found that children who had been spanked by their parents at age 5 were reported by teachers to have significantly higher increases in behavior problems — such as arguing, fighting, showing anger, acting impulsively, and disturbing ongoing activities — by age 6 than children who had never been spanked.

In addition, if you’re trying to model positive behavior to help your child avoid hitting, it may be confusing to them if you, yourself, are hitting. Avoid power struggles that involve the use of force.

It’s one thing to walk or carry your toddler to their time-out spot, and another to forcefully punish them in time-out. If your child is attempting to leave the time-out you have established, avoid being rough with them and instead calmly place them back in their time-out spot, explaining what needs to happen, when they can get up, and other details.

Yell or react with anger

Toddlers do well with calm, firm reactions, rather than screaming, yelling, and acting out in anger.

Even though the situation can be truly frustrating, taking a second to control your own emotions before teaching your toddler will help them see you as an authority figure who’s in control of their body, voice, words, and expressions.

Base your reaction on other parents

There’s a constant feeling of mom guilt, mom shaming, and peer pressure in circles of parents when it comes to behavioral choices. Don’t allow these feelings to dictate which choices you make to help your child with their hitting behaviors.

When you find yourself changing your reaction based on your environment or peers, step back to re-evaluate your parenting values through self-reflection or conversation with your partner.

Takeaway

It’s okay and typical to feel frustrated and out of control when your toddler hits themselves or others.

Sometimes, children are just experimenting with others’ reactions to their behaviors, and sometimes they are frustrated, tired, or unwilling to share their toys. Approach your toddler’s behavior with a calm demeanor, and make a plan with all caregivers on which course of action you should take.

Rest assured that over time, and with your intentional guidance, this too will pass.

Parenthood
Toddler

How we reviewed this article:

SourcesHistoryHealthline has strict sourcing guidelines and relies on peer-reviewed studies, academic research institutions, and medical journals and associations. We only use quality, credible sources to ensure content accuracy and integrity. You can learn more about how we ensure our content is accurate and current by reading our editorial policy.

Gershoff ET, et al. (2017). Strengthening causal estimates for links between spanking and children’s externalizing behavior problems.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617729816
Managing disruptive or aggressive behaviors: Tips for families. (2021).https://downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/Family_DisruptiveBehavior.pdf
Sisterhen LL, et al. (2023). Temper tantrums. Article resourceshttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK544286/
Gershoff ET, et al. (2017). Strengthening causal estimates for links between spanking and children’s externalizing behavior problems.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617729816
Sisterhen LL, et al. (2023). Temper tantrums.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK544286/
Van den akker A, et al. (2022). Temper tantrums in toddlers and preschoolers: Longitudinal associations with adjustment problems.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9462137/

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Medically reviewed by Dannell Roberts, PhD, BCBA-D — Written by Alexandra Frost — Updated on July 7, 2025

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