Natalie has always been very aggressive with her head. From a young age if she wasn't happy or didn't get what she wanted she would either purposely knock heads with you or throw her head back. It didn't really bother me, except that I would have to make sure she wasn't in a place where she could seriously hurt herself, I figured it was just her way of communicating and she would grow out of it, however, in the past month it has become worse.
Now when Natalie gets mad (all you have to do to achieve this is tell her "no") she finds the nearest hard object and proceeds to bang her head against it. Not really repeatedly, unless it doesn't get your attention, but generally one good bang of the head. Usually it is on the floor, but if we're in the living room she has many options because after all she wants to find something hard that will make an impact, so she chooses from the fireplace, the wall, the table or my personal favorite is when she runs into the kitchen and throws herself on the ground so she can use the hard tile floor.
Now, she's never actually hit herself hard enough to cause a bruise and the crying that follows the thud seems to be more about being upset than pain, but because the frequency of this head banging activity has been increasing and we had a follow up doctor appointment for her ears I figured I'd ask the doctor about it. Turns out, it is - as I expected - nothing to worry about. Apparently head banging is very common for her age. The doctor said that as long as there is no other developmental problems it is just a way they choose to communicate and we should ignore it because she's wanting to divert our attention away from telling her "no" into having sympathy for her. And like the doctor told me, if it really hurt she wouldn't continue to do it.
Are our kids smart or what? They come up with some creative ways to get what they want, except I think she'd find a better way to divert my attention away from scolding her because she's got to have one massive head ache!
2 comments:
Oh my, that's got to hurt at least a little bit! Ben's method is to throw things when he gets told "no". Whatever is closest to him, you know is taking a flying trip across the room. At least Natalie is smart enough to play the sympathy card, even if she's not going to get any!
This is so funny! Kids are just too smart for their own good. Sometimes I refer to my kids as cavemen, because they act that way sometimes. It's that funny little behavior quirks that just leave you guessing.
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