No one wants to be the parent with the hitting toddler. So I was particularly downtrodden when the babe started hitting recently (sometimes pretend, sometimes not) and today even said “Toby hit!” as in, “Today I’ll hit my friend Toby!”

I found an article on Parenting iVillage that helped give me perspective. Basically, toddlers are like astute little experimental psychologists: they collect data by repeating an action over and over (and over again) because: 1) they are fascinated by what they can make happen repeatedly; and 2) they want to see how people react in different situations. Hitting satisfies both of those empirical quests. In addition, toddlers still see the world from their own point of view and thus assume that if the hitting behavior is fun for them, it will be fun for you too.

So now I know that the babe isn’t trying to get us kicked out of play dates on purpose. See the iVillage original post for suggestions on how to handle hitting, and related topics.