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

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[quote=Anonymous]My son is two and a half. He deliberately pulls our cats' fur, shoves them off the couch, pulls their tails. Today he full on kicked a cat. Hours later, when I felt like I was finally over it, he deliberately stepped on our cat's tail. These incidents happen every day recently, anywhere from once to four times a day. We had a nice period of at least 6 months or so when these incidents were very very rare. But he's been doing it again the past two months or so. I don't even know what to think anymore. It makes me so angry and I just want to cry because like I tell my husband, if a family were to visit our home, and one of their kids kicked our cats, I'd think "what the F is WRONG with these people? There's some serious neglect going on if your child is kicking cats." But here we are. WTF??? I'm just at a loss and so upset. DH tells me today that ds is just too young to understand the consequences and how it makes us and the cats feel. But I don't know...I've known plenty of 2 year olds who DON'T hurt cats. DS does like to sit and just gently pet the cats. He will stop to pet a cat on the head as he's walking by. He generally treats them like any child treats a family pet...nicely. He's perfectly kind to our dog, and doesn't try to hurt him. When he sees cats he says "awww, look at that cute kitty!" He's not an angry child. He doesn't have any behavioral problems.

We've been teaching him gentle pets, he shows me how to pet gently, he gets lots of praise for gentle petting. I catch him being kind and comment and praise him. We model proper behavior. We do time-outs, we do time-ins (where I take him to another room and sit with him), we have short little chats, we have long-winded over-his-head chats. I've taken away toys. I just don't understand this.

I'd love to hear from people who've had the same problem and please reassure me this is solvable.
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