Hi Becky,

We are facing the same challenge. As mentioned my son is almost 4 and the head butting started about 6 months ago. At first Daniel would hit himself in the head or the mouth but then he started getting down on his hands and knees and pounding his head on the floor. When this started, I was very concerned (He had reconstructive skull surgery when he was 6 months old) and then we started to pay more attention to it. Here is what we noticed and what we have tried:

When Daniel would get frustrated, he would bang his head on the ground. The funny thing was that if he was banging it on the carpet he would bounce it pretty good however, if he was banging it on the hardwood, he would be quite a bit more careful.

If we addressed it by telling him to stop, he would keep going. (for 20 to 30 seconds)

If we ignored it he would bang and then look at us and then bang and then stop and go on with whatever he was doing.

Either way, he still banged, but for a little less if we ignored him.

Ignoring him seems to have lessened the frequency of the occurrences.

Now that he has slowed down a bit, my wife has begun another technique. When she sees Daniel bouncing his head, she makes goofy sounds to the beat, like “Boing, Boing, Boing” and what we have seen is that Daniel will stop, smile and then go on.

At first I thought that this was the wrong thing to do because it was making a game out of a negative activity, but it seems like it has lessened the occurrences. I am wondering if what is really happening is that he realizes we are thinking he is being “goofy” instead of responding to his frustration and so he is replacing the activity with something more persuasive. For example: he is coming up to us now and taking our hand and making verbalizations like “uh,uh,uh” and then leading us to things instead of just dropping and head butting.

In addition to this, we have noticed that he is biting his nails more often. When he does this, we say “No Bite” and pull his hands away from his mouth (gently). He is starting to get that now, because within the past week, when we say “no bite” he drops his hands to his waist. I believe that the trick here is to use the same words and actions each time you correct the negative act so that he can figure out what you are telling him and then make sure you tell him every time you see his hands in his mouth. If you are not consistent, you risk losing this battle.

I hope there is something in this e-mail that will help you make some progress with your son.