Help! Need gentle way to stop DD from pushing

[CCmomma]

My DD is almost 3 and is usually very nuturing and sweet to little kids younger (or smaller) then she is. However, we have a neighbor who has a 1 1/2 year old little girl and for some reason Caroline loves to push her down. She loves her and talks about her alot, but almost everytime they play at some point she pushes her down. And of course, it is the child of the parent most likely to yell at my child and flip out about it....So far she hasn't hurt her and at first I thought she was just trying to help her go faster to get to a new toy but last night she did it again.

I could see that it was about to happen and tried to get there, but I'm almost 35 weeks prego and I'm not fast anymore! When I did get there I picked her up and told her that we have gentle hands and no pushing. She immediately hugged the little girl and said sorry (without prompting). It was pretty much time for bath/bed so we went right in and when we were talking about it I reminded her that the other little girl is still a baby and we need to be very gentle. She asked if she could push her when she got bigger!!! What does that even mean?

I just need some ideas on how to get her to be gentle with this little girl! Help!

Jodi

[WingsOfTheMorning]

when we were talking about it I reminded her that the other little girl is still a baby and we need to be very gentle. She asked if she could push her when she got bigger!!! What does that even mean?

Hopefully someone w/ more experience w/ pushing will pipe in, but I wanted to say that my DD is the same age, and she asks me these kinds of questions all the time. For example,

Me: No jumping on my belly. Baby Penny's inside there.
DD: Can I jump on you when Penny comes out?

So many of DD's questions are her trying to figure out exactly what the rules/boundaries are, exactly how life works, and especially how people change as they grow up. She's just beginning to understand that we all start as babies and that's a big concept to grasp.

I know you were trying to emphasize the need for extra gentleness by telling your DD the other girl is still a baby. :heart But it sounds like your DD doesn't really understand that pushing in general isn't acceptable. So to her, the logical question was whether or not she can push kids when they're bigger. I wouldn't read into her question that she wants to hurt the little girl when she gets bigger. :hug2

[Kiara.I]

Does she like to push things? Is she a fairly physical kid? What *can* she push? Can you give her large-motor activities involving pushing?

[Tasmanian Saint]

Seconding WinngsoftheMorning - my DS asks questions like that too, I generally :lol

and :popcorn cause I have this prob b/w DS and DD atm...

[CCmomma]

Hi Ladies! Thanks for the replies! DD isn't what I would think of as physical-except for she loves to hug me about every 10.5 seconds!! Usually she is very gentle with other kids. Lots of head patting and hugging and "Mommy look at the little baby!" kind of stuff.

We do lots of large motor stuff-she loves to run, play catch, skip, chase balls,jump off the furniture, ride her bike/scooter etc... We also do a weekly gymnastics class so she is constantly trying to do stuff she learned there-and her cousins are cheerleaders so they are always trying to teach her cheers.

It is just this one little girl. I think that maybe I get more worried when we play with this family b/c they are kind of over the top about their kids getting bumps or bruises and stuff. To the extent that they say don't play on the sidewalk cuz you might fall down. I guess I just consider some of that part of being a little one and playing outside....

We did play outside with this family again yesterday afternoon and it went okay. I think it helped that Caroline had a nap and wasn't tired when she was playing. I also tried to give her and the older sister of the little girl lots of ideas of things to play that didn't involve being right next to the little one. It went much better! But I am worried about playing outside with them after the baby gets here when I won't always be able to hop up and intervene. Any suggestions?