How to Get Your Toddler To Stop Scratching You
Young toddlers are just beginning to learn what a wide range of nuanced emotions feel like. When they get overwhelmed or frustrated, sometimes scratching is the only way they know how to communicate what they are feeling.
As a toddler’s brain develops, they begin to learn how emotions feel, and when they get overloaded with emotion, they are likely to express that using their hands, which leads to scratching. They don’t yet have the words to express their emotion, and they might not understand that scratching hurts.
Toddlers usually scratch when they are in an elevated state. Toddlers who are feeling calm, playful, and safe are not likely to scratch. However, if a toddler gets frustrated, upset, angry, or overstimulated they are likely to communicate their feelings by using their hands and scratching (***or by using their mouths and biting***).
The goal here is not to remove any triggers or change the environment to appease them, it is to teach them how to handle themselves appropriately when feelings of upset come.
This is the start of teaching your toddler emotional regulation, a skill that will help them throughout their lives.
What is Making Them Scratch?
There are a few questions to consider when you are trying to get your toddler to stop scratching. If you can understand why your toddler is scratching, you can figure out how to help them.
Why are they scratching you?
What are they trying to communicate?
What are their triggers?
Did something happen to get them to feel like they needed to scratch you?
Common triggers include being tired, hungry, overstimulated, frustrated, angry, or overwhelmed. Your toddler is most likely trying to communicate one of these emotions/needs and doesn’t know another way to communicate.
If you are unable to identify why they are scratching in the moment, take some time while you are feeling calm and relaxed to think about the situation and reflect on what happened. Sometimes an intense moment can leave us feeling elevated and it might be hard to think clearly when that happens. Use some time when you are feeling calm to come up with a plan for how to handle it when it happens again. Keep reading this post for the 4 Steps that will help guide you through the whole process and stop your toddler from scratching you, permanently.
How Else Do You Want Them to Communicate?
Every single person experiences emotions, and toddlers are experiencing these things for the first time. Their emotions are intense and they don’t have words for what is happening yet. Feelings will come and go throughout their lives, and now is a great time to help them learn how to handle the wide range of human emotion.
Telling a toddler to stop scratching doesn’t make sense to them. They are just expressing an emotion, and likely can’t connect their action to the emotion yet. If your child is scratching, the only way to get them to stop is by teaching them what to do instead.
Instead of trying to make them stop scratching, change your focus. You can’t make a child stop doing anything if they are determined to continue doing it. You can, however, offer them an alternative way to communicate.
What do you want to teach them? What are they missing?
Do you want them to tell you when they are tired?
Do you want them to use their gentle hands?
Do you want them to tell you if they are feeling angry?
Once you figure out what you want to teach them in place of scratching, the whole process will be easier and you will be able to navigate the situation with clarity and direction.
Maintain Composure
In order to be effective, you must be calm and composed. Understanding how brain states work, will help you figure out what is happening in the moment, and help you stay calm while your toddler’s nails are digging into your skin.
This ****Color Spectrum of Emotions**** can be useful to help identify ranges of emotions and how it relates to brain states. In summary,
Green is feeling normal. This means that the child is using the higher centers of their brain, they are thinking, learning, and playing.
Yellow is feeling a bit of stress and on edge, this could happen if they are tired or starting to get hungry, or when things aren’t going their way. You could see agitation, irritation, and frustration when a child is in yellow.
Red is when they’ve lost control and are now in survival mode. If a child is scratching you, hitting, screaming, or having a temper tantrum, they are in red. The most primal centers of their brains are active and they have lost the ability to connect with the higher centers of their brains. They are not able to think clearly. This comes from your brainstem and you have little control of what your brain does to keep you safe once you get to this level.
Toddlers don’t know their triggers yet, and they can’t identify if they are yellow. If you notice their actions are telling you they are in yellow, you can use that as a warning sign if a scratch is about to happen.
How to Use the 4 Steps
Identify
In order to give a name to the emotion they are feeling, you must identify what is the likely emotion they are feeling. As their parent, you are likely to know them better than anyone else and you can usually figure out what is causing their upset. It might seem strange at first to explain things so bluntly like this, but once you’ve tried it, you will see that it is quite effective at de-escalating a situation.
“You seem like you’re feeling really mad”
That simple statement will bring them from red down to yellow. They will confirm the feeling, or correct you if you got it wrong. Follow their lead, and give them space to have a voice.
Validate
“You are feeling upset because I took the ball away and you weren’t done playing. You wanted to tell me that you are feeling mad so you decided to scratch my face.”
This validation helps them understand what is happening and why. As soon as they understand the situation, and what their actions were, they can learn how to behave differently. Yes, even a young toddler (under 2) can understand.
Breathe
When a child (or adult) is in yellow or red, they must get oxygen to their brain in order to de-escalate and get back to green. In the moment, while your toddler is elevated and scratching you, be sure that you are taking nice deep breaths so you can stay calm.
After the scratch is over, just breath with them. Be calm, the pain will go away soon. It’s hard to endure the pain of a scratch, especially if it breaks the skin. If you need to take a minute to calm down, step away, keep breathing, and do what you need to get back to green.
Your toddler will see you taking breaths, and because humans have mirror neurons, they will likely start taking deep breaths with you. You will see their body language change as they de-escalate from yellow back to green. It might take a few tries, and they might need to take several **breaths** to come all the way down.
Problem Solve
After you’ve identified their emotion, validated the way they are feeling, and helped them come back down to green, it’s time to teach them a new way to handle their emotions.
Figure out what you want to teach them, and have a plan for how you will teach them the new skill. For example, if you want your child to use gentle hands, then show them what ‘gentle hands’ looks like. Hold their hand or arm and gently rub to show them what gentle hands feel like. Touch their face gently and rub their cheeks. Hold their hand and rub it on your arm and your face. Tell them “gentle hands” while demonstrating. Once you’ve demonstrated how “gentle hands” feels, ask them to show you that they can use their gentle hands on you. Let them know what it feels like to be gentle, so they know what you expect them to do.
Part of problem solving is setting clear boundaries. In this case, it is not okay if they are scratching. They need to know what to do instead when they start feeling upset. This is where reframing comes into place.
“You were mad at me because I took the ball and you didn’t like that. You weren’t done so you got mad and you scratched me. Scratching hurts, see I have a boo-boo. Scratching hurts, you may not scratch my face. Next time you are feeling angry, you can tell me that you are feeling mad. If you want the ball back, you could say ‘please’, but you may not scratch. Use your gentle hands on me, like this.”
The actual words you use don’t matter. What matters is the intention behind your words and your action. If your intention has shifted to teaching your child how to be gentle, and is coming from a place of unconditional love, then your child will understand and you will be successful.
