Toddler violence

Agression over anything

Two hands reach for a bottle on the table. Kyle is quicker, so he snatches it out of Eric's reach. Eric responds with a left hook to Kyle's right cheek, mashing Kyle's face hard against the wall. Kyle retaliates with a swing of the bottle and grazes Eric's nose.

Two teens in a bar fight? No, two toddlers squabbling over a bottle of juice. If you're surprised, you're not alone. In a recent study conducted by the Centre for Excellence in Early Childhood Development (CEECD) in Montreal, more than 60 per cent of Canadians believe that adolescent boys resort to physical aggression more often than any other age group. But they're wrong. Toddlers are the most frequent aggressors, with an act of aggression every half-hour (on average), compared with less than once a month for adolescents. It's perfectly normal at this age, says Richard Tremblay, a leading aggression researcher, professor at the University of Montreal and director of the CEECD. "Humans evolved as animals that need to eat, walk, run and aggress. Aggression is something children learn not to do."

Reducing risk factors reduces rage
Still, in an estimated five to 10 per cent of Canadian children, aggressive tendencies do not wane as they should, around the time they start kindergarten. New studies reveal that the greater the number of biological and environmental risk factors, the greater the risk that a child will continue to be aggressive beyond the toddler years. And reducing those risk factors may reduce aggression -- and result in safer neighbourhoods -- later.

Talking with their fists
Before they have the language to describe their desires and feelings, toddlers often use their bodies to communicate strong emotions such as frustration, anger and fear. Aggression typically peaks around two years of age, and Tremblay says parents find this stage troubling. "They see that their child uses physical aggression and can't believe that the child that they've given all this nice good care to is doing these things," he says, adding that teaching children alternatives to shoving, grabbing and biting is a regular and necessary part of raising a child.

This can be tougher for some parents than for others because a child's temperament also has a role to play. Some children express themselves, physically and emotionally, more intensely than their peers. Where a "typical" child might need 400 to 500 learning trials to learn a social skill, a temperamentally hardwired (or more intense) child might need 2,000 learning trials before such behaviour is learned. "The kind of kid you have influences your parenting," says Carolyn Webster-Stratton, an internationally renowned clinical psychologist and nurse practitioner at the University of Washington in Seattle who has studied aggressive kids for 25 years. She says that joining a parenting group or class can help provide the support needed to stay consistent and positive. "As parents, we can support one another and understand that some kids are harder to raise than others," says Webster-Stratton.