My two year old frequently cries when my wife holds him and holds out his arms to me. He will often say to her "way" which means "away" which means "Get Away!" After a hard day at work, she comes home and will often get rather hostile treatment. He can reduce her to tears very easily. It is awkward for me, and horrible for my wife. He has had a preference for daddy since a baby, perhaps because I have been more of the care giver.

I have tried telling him he hurts mom's feelings, and ignoring him (easier for me to do than my wife). This behavior is getting worse, not better. Any thoughts?

I had good luck with my daughter when she was 2 with discussing her feelings. This seemed to work especially well with tantrums. We would talk about her anger and frustration. I would say things like "You're very angry, aren't you?" - well, you know the routine - the whole "active listening" thing. Those feelings are very personal, and the kid seems to feel a strong proprietary attachment to them. Denying or condemning the feelings can be quite injurious, I would think. The trick is to distinguish between thoughts or feelings on the one hand, and behavior on the other. He's free to think and feel what he likes, as long as he behaves properly. (I only learned that lesson when I was 38!)

Saying "way" doesn't sound like a very serious offense in itself - except for the fact that it's very hurtful to Mom. And asking him not to use that wonderful power-word is taking away a piece of his control over his environment. He does need his own space, after all, and he needs to be able to tell people to back off. Control is a big 2 yo thing too - and maybe that's it: Maybe he gets a kick out of watching everyone react with extreme emotion when he just utters a single syllable!

Or maybe your son is reacting to Mom (a) being away, and (b) being dog-tired when he gets to see her. (I think Penelope Leach has something to say on this topic.) He's feeling rejected in some way. In that case, the only remedy in my opinion is for Mom to make some accommodations so that she can devote more time (preferably when she's fresh) to your son.

Easier said than done, I know. And, given the fact that Mom is so deeply affected by these incidents, I'm sure she feels a tremendous level of guilt about it all too.

Is your son in some sort of daycare situation? If so, make sure that everything is OK there. Is going to daycare contributing to his sense of rejection?

After following the Oedipal Victor discussion, I am rather sensitive to the issue of our duty as parents and partners to make sure that our mariage/partner relationship is healthy. You sound like a caring person, so this is probably something you have considered.

Two is a difficult age - like adolescence without the hormones. Be gentle with yourselves.

I'd love some suggestions about this. We have a delightful 3 1/4 year old girl, single child, who is more and more frequently being "mean" to her dad. It takes the form of speaking in a very, very cross voice to her dad, rejecting all offers of help from him, saying "don't talk to me" "don't look at me", making a growling-whining sound at him when he walks into a room etc...I'm sure you can imagine. Is this a normal 3 yr old stage? There haven't been any new stresses or changes in our lives. We have tried: 1)ignoring her outbursts,2) saying "I don't like the way you are talking right now", 3)telling her that it hurts dad's feelings when she is treating him in this crabby way all the time. We'll try to find some humorous thing to shift the mood....but I'd love other insights. Thanks!!

I'm no expert on toddlers - my oldest child will be three in January. But I've had the same concerns recently, i.e. she's sweet and generally cooperative with me but lately not only uncooperative with her dad, but also physically abusive with slapping and kicking. I believe that a big part of the problem was that she wasn't seeing me treat him nicely. Since realizing this, I've made an effort to be extra demonstative, kind and affectionate with my husband and our daughter's behavior has greatly improved! Actually, we're all happier now...

I don't know how "normal" this behavior is, but I can assure you that my son (3.5 years old) exhibits the same sort of behavior, but it's directed towards *me.* His father has always been the primary caregiver, and we also had a second son in December, so our circumstances are a bit different from yours, and issues of jealousy about his little brother may be contributing to our problem, although our older son is always really sweet and well behaved towards his brother.

In my son's case, the behavior isn't relentless, but it sure happens regularly enough to really hurt my feelings, especially if I'm tired or have had a rough day already. Generally, the more lightly I react to it, though, the less severe it is. It's almost as though it's some sort of test that I flunk if I react strongly to it.

I'll be very interested to hear what other people's experiences have been with this sort of thing.

Response to parent who asked about their 3-1/2 year old daughter hitting her father. My daughter's behaviour towards her father began to change at around 3-1/2, including hitting and name-calling. We spent a lot of time trying to figure why. Here are some of our findings or theories....

At around 3-1/2 her Daddy became a much more important part of her life. It's not uncommon at this age for children to want the opposite sex parent all to themselves, to talk about marrying them or having them fall in love with them. I know that spending time with her father began to become much more important to her (and has increased over time - she's 4-1/2 now). As a result, it hurts and angers her much more than ever before if/when Daddy isn't around, even though he wasn't around less than before. Some of these feelings seem to get expressed in hitting and name-calling. My husband has made more of an effort to interact with her, and for them to have some special time together.

Another big change is that rough-housing has become really important to my daughter, and Daddy is the most fun for her to do that with (and he enjoys it more than I do). She has increasingly enjoyed feeling physically stronger and mastering the world, and rough-housing is really important way for her to experience these feelings.

My daughter has always been on the meek side and she's found it disconcerting and very frightening to have aggressive feelings now that she finds herself the big girl at pre-school instead of the intimidated little girl - she is now what she both wanted to be and was afraid of just a year ago. The way she talked about this was by telling me a "scary" story about a ghost who wanted to kill everyone in the world, but eventually decided not to and everyone like her. Rough-housing has been an important outlet for some of those feelings. We've encouraged this because we don't want her to feel that agressive feelings are bad - I think they are somewhat new to her and sometimes very strong, which has been scary, since she knows it's not right to hit people. The rough-housing lets her know it's ok to have these feelings and express them in the right kinds of situations, and that she shouldn't feel that she is bad for having these feelings. My husband says things about how strong she is getting, or what a good punch she gave him (and she always "wins"). But it's also very important to make sure she's clear about when it is ok to hit, or what it takes to start or stop rough-housing; we let her come up with "code words" to start and stop.

She still sometimes hits my husband when she is mad at him, but he continues to remind her to use words to tell him what she's feeling. The fact that he listens is important and it seems to be a big factor in her expressing feelings to kids, too, for example when another child is doing something that bothers her.

It is of course possible that children who are hitting and name calling can be angry for some reason, at the parent they are hitting or about other things in their life. Of course this is more difficult to figure out. My daughter can sometimes talk about her feelings, but at other times we get more insight into what's bothering her by listening to the stories she makes up.

We figured much of this out by trial and error and by talking with friends with kids of their own. I hope it's helpful.