What am I doing wrong? So frustrated with toddler and cats

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like he s a budding sociopath. Give the cats away, NOW. They are dumb animals and cannot protect themselves. One day in the very near future one if them may scratch and bite the daylights out if him, which he deserves, but the cats do not deserve to be put down because they are protecting themselves.

Do you have kids or cats? Just curious. This is such a bizarre response. This is not sociopathic behavior. This kid is too young to be described like that. Think twice before you post such over the top statements, PP. This is where a different poster would insert "Frankly, you sound unhinged."

[Anonymous]

Two and half is old enough to learn consequences. Are you waiting until your cat is seriously injured or attacks your boy before you actually do something?

My daughter is 16 months old and we have two cats. We have been training her since she could move how to interact with our cats. If she gets rough I tell her clearly no, usually it's tail pulling. If she continues the behavior I remove her from the cats with another clear no.

Most of the time we don't have issues, but if we do I'll take the cats side. I've known them longer.

We also built shelves and a window ledge for our cats to have an escape route from DD's grabby hands while still being able to stay in the living room with us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Get rid of the animals. What the hell.

+1. Pets are so gross and unnecessary.

[Anonymous]

I would:
1) bring this up at your pets next checkup to see if she/he has any suggestions
2) not allow cats and kids in the same room. Definitely not I the same room unsupervised. Your cats may start real biting. My brother has a scar on his chest from a cat and I would hate for your little guy to carry the mark of a cat for his entire life.

Most important:

3) have a zero tolerance policy for any aggression of any kind in your home. Any hits, bites, etc all get a two minute time out. For me, we ONLY use time out for aggression (I use natural consequence for other behavior problems.). This let my kids know how serious I was that we did not use our hands/legs/etc to hurt others. It has made a big impression and not even my two year old hits.

4). Attend one of Dr Rene's classes on positive discipline. It seems from your posting that you are a FTM and could probably benefit from her classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like he s a budding sociopath.

That escalated quickly.

OP, my oldest, now 6, went through a similar phase and is now a perfectly lovely cat companion, so there's hope! The key for us was calm, consistent consequences. Whatever you do, don't engage with a ton of emotion. It's obviously upsetting to see your kid acting like a jerk to the cat, but giving a high-impact response will only tell him that this is a good way to get your attention.

"We are gentle with our cats." and then a redirect for lesser offenses (pushing the cat off the sofa/out of the way). "We only use gentle hands with our pets. Seems like that's difficult for you right now. Take a time-out for ___ minutes and then we'll talk about it." Imagine your demeanor as being as dull and emotionless as you might be if your boss were telling that same damn fishing story for the twelfth time. "Oh. Really. Hmm. Wow." Separate the cats as needed to keep them safe.

If this is happening multiple times a day, maybe he needs better supervision?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like he s a budding sociopath.

That escalated quickly.

OP, my oldest, now 6, went through a similar phase and is now a perfectly lovely cat companion, so there's hope! The key for us was calm, consistent consequences. Whatever you do, don't engage with a ton of emotion. It's obviously upsetting to see your kid acting like a jerk to the cat, but giving a high-impact response will only tell him that this is a good way to get your attention.

"We are gentle with our cats." and then a redirect for lesser offenses (pushing the cat off the sofa/out of the way). "We only use gentle hands with our pets. Seems like that's difficult for you right now. Take a time-out for ___ minutes and then we'll talk about it." Imagine your demeanor as being as dull and emotionless as you might be if your boss were telling that same damn fishing story for the twelfth time. "Oh. Really. Hmm. Wow." Separate the cats as needed to keep them safe.

If this is happening multiple times a day, maybe he needs better supervision?

Also agree that this really sounds like he needs more supervision.

[Anonymous]

OP, my 2 year old DD had a run with deliberately kicking the cat and it drove me crazy. She was good to all the humans in the house, including a new baby brother. I think the cat got in her space and like others have said, she liked being able to get the cat to run away. We did immediate time outs every single time it happened and gave lots of praise when she was gentle with the cat. She seems to have grown out of it for now, but will still do it from time to time to get a reaction from us. But it's much less now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like he s a budding sociopath. Give the cats away, NOW. They are dumb animals and cannot protect themselves. One day in the very near future one if them may scratch and bite the daylights out if him, which he deserves, but the cats do not deserve to be put down because they are protecting themselves.

Do you have kids or cats? Just curious. This is such a bizarre response. This is not sociopathic behavior. This kid is too young to be described like that. Think twice before you post such over the top statements, PP. This is where a different poster would insert "Frankly, you sound unhinged."

I have kids, cats, and dogs and not once did any of them kick, pull fur, tail, or whiskers. I taught them they had to be gentle.

I guess you think torturing animals is developmentally appropriate. A 2.5 yr old should know not to hurt animals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get rid of the animals. What the hell.

+1. Pets are so gross and unnecessary.

So are kids

[Anonymous]

I have two small children and a cat. At that age we monitored their interactions with cat at all times. This was because cat was very anxious around them and because we wanted to teach them to respect cat. There was never an opportunity at that age for them to kick him or shove him. We just modeled how to handle an animal and then encouraged cat to move along to keep the interactions short and positive. Now that the kids are older cat loves them and they love him. They've never been mean to him. Pp is wrong your child is not a sociopath obviously but I would perhaps monitor him more and give tons of praise for gentle pets, giving treats, taking care of cat etc. And not leave room for him to engage in the other behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get rid of the animals. What the hell.

+1. Pets are so gross and unnecessary.

So are kids

Oh stop. Sorry you're in love with some disgusting beast but no reason to take it out on human beings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like he s a budding sociopath. Give the cats away, NOW. They are dumb animals and cannot protect themselves. One day in the very near future one if them may scratch and bite the daylights out if him, which he deserves, but the cats do not deserve to be put down because they are protecting themselves.

No, my son is not a budding sociopath. Lol. Also, they have scratched him, yet the thought of putting them down has never even crossed my mind. I have to say I guess I should have expected this, but it's still surprising that people jump to such crazy conclusions. And putting a cat down because she scratched somebody? Who does that? Where would you even get such an idea?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like he s a budding sociopath. Give the cats away, NOW. They are dumb animals and cannot protect themselves. One day in the very near future one if them may scratch and bite the daylights out if him, which he deserves, but the cats do not deserve to be put down because they are protecting themselves.

Do you have kids or cats? Just curious. This is such a bizarre response. This is not sociopathic behavior. This kid is too young to be described like that. Think twice before you post such over the top statements, PP. This is where a different poster would insert "Frankly, you sound unhinged."

I have kids, cats, and dogs and not once did any of them kick, pull fur, tail, or whiskers. I taught them they had to be gentle.

I guess you think torturing animals is developmentally appropriate. A 2.5 yr old should know not to hurt animals.

No, I don't think torturing animals is age appropriate. love your sense of drama BTW. My experience with animals is that they seem to understand the concept of babies and small children. They're adult animals, after all. I'm sure OP's cats don't enjoy what her toddler is doing but I'm pretty sure they understand the difference between being tortured and having their tails pulled by a toddler. I also seriously doubt your statement that none of your kids ever pulled fur, whiskers or tail. Now THAT would not be developmentally appropriate. Life for kids is about learning. It is not a statement of who this kid is that he is learning how to not treat the cats at two and a half. He will learn. If he grows up and never learns, then you can start throwing the word 'sociopath' around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like he s a budding sociopath.

That escalated quickly.

OP, my oldest, now 6, went through a similar phase and is now a perfectly lovely cat companion, so there's hope! The key for us was calm, consistent consequences. Whatever you do, don't engage with a ton of emotion. It's obviously upsetting to see your kid acting like a jerk to the cat, but giving a high-impact response will only tell him that this is a good way to get your attention.

"We are gentle with our cats." and then a redirect for lesser offenses (pushing the cat off the sofa/out of the way). "We only use gentle hands with our pets. Seems like that's difficult for you right now. Take a time-out for ___ minutes and then we'll talk about it." Imagine your demeanor as being as dull and emotionless as you might be if your boss were telling that same damn fishing story for the twelfth time. "Oh. Really. Hmm. Wow." Separate the cats as needed to keep them safe.

If this is happening multiple times a day, maybe he needs better supervision?

OP here. Thank you this is very helpful. Thanks to all the other helpful posts as well. Lately, I'm so irritated by this behavior that I do react rather...largely. I'm going to try to tone down my reactions to see if that helps. He's supervised but also sometimes unpredictable. Because I want to praise him for being good with the cats, I don't intervene every time he goes near them, because usually he treats them well. And I do often give him an I've-got-my-eye-on-you warning, with mixed results.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Two and half is old enough to learn consequences. Are you waiting until your cat is seriously injured or attacks your boy before you actually do something?

My daughter is 16 months old and we have two cats. We have been training her since she could move how to interact with our cats. If she gets rough I tell her clearly no, usually it's tail pulling. If she continues the behavior I remove her from the cats with another clear no.

Most of the time we don't have issues, but if we do I'll take the cats side. I've known them longer.

We also built shelves and a window ledge for our cats to have an escape route from DD's grabby hands while still being able to stay in the living room with us.

OP here. Curious what you mean by "before you do something?" When you tell your daughter "no" and remove her from the cats with another clear "no," would you consider that "doing something" or not? I'm doing lots of somethings (as outlined in my original post...are you under the impression I'm not giving any consequences?), but haven't hit on the right thing. Hence this post to ask for advice.