The Zimmer Zoo

Funny movie. Not great to deal with in real life.

Burke has been having some trouble lately…he’s been lashing out when he gets angry – and poor Maggie has been the one to take the ‘beating’ from him.

Over the past week, the following things have happened:

• Maggie beat Burke up the stairs, so he bit her back as hard as he could (major bruises). I’m not sure Maggie even knew they were competing.
• Maggie was hording the balls, so Burke hit her in the head with a (plastic) baseball bat. He lost fireworks privileges that night. (Our town has two nights of them and he saw the first night, so he knew what he was missing.)
• Maggie was holding the hose to fill up the kiddie pool and wouldn’t share with Burke (after 10 seconds!)…so he hooked his finger into her mouth and brought her to the ground.

On the flip side, he’s also gone in to soothe Logan on multiple mornings. And the nanny tells me that he had a paper towel tube that he wanted Maggie to look through at him and she wouldn’t. He was using his words and saying “please, Please, PLEASE, Maggie??” And she still wouldn’t. So he said “I’m very angry!” but didn’t take any action. (This was in between the biting incident and the baseball bat incident.)

There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to when he does or doesn’t take action (sometimes he’s tired, sometimes he’s not. Sometimes he’s had too much sugar, other times he hasn’t). All of these situations have produced varying results.

I try to let him know that the anger he is feeling is absolutely okay, but that the action he is taking is not.

Any ideas out there?

Filed under: behavior, Burke | Tagged: anger, biting, good vs. bad, hitting | 3 Comments »