Bullying by 22 month old

[sunnydays]

I have a little one in my care who is just over 22 months old and has suddenly started hitting, pushing, pulling hair, kicking, etc. She seemingy does it for fun/attention as she doesn't do it out of anger or retaliation...she is quite calculated about it and just walks across the room and starts hitting another child with a plastic hammer for example. When I tell her to stop, she usually does and mimics teh behaviour she is supposed to do "nice nice" and pets the child on the head nicely, but then she is right back at it a few minutes later. She seems completely unperturbed by time-outs, removing toys, even time-outs in another room as I tried today. Using a sharp, serious tone gets no response, talking to her about how we play nicely does not work either. I am watching her as much as possible to try to prevent it from happening, but every time I turn away, she does it again. Even in the car, she is kicking the child beside her. Is this normal? I have never seen such calm aggression before...no anger, no emotions, just hurting others to see what will happen. Any suggestions?

[abc123]

This sounds like my daughter! lol- She is just 23 months now, and seems to have just outgrown this. She is a wonderful, happy girl, but for about 3-4 months would just randomly 'bully' other little kids. In fact, for a short time, my sons and I had nicknamed her 'The Baby-bully'! She did not scratch or bite, but would take toys, hit, sit on kids and generally just 'bug' them for no reason. I think she was just testing boundaries, as I would see her look around sometimes before doing these things or she would get this look her eyes, like 'look what I'm going to do'- she wanted the attention. I just kept telling her no, removing her from the situation and telling her 'nice' and doing the face petting thing. Just this week, I have been sooo proud of her and how well she is playing with the other daycare kids and being such a big girl. If I were you, I wouldn't worry, but just keep reinforcing that it is not acceptable behaviour. If it was out of anger, etc. I would be more concerned, but she is likely just curious.

[FS2011]

Same thing with one of my dcb, he is closer to 3 however and has the Vocab to know better. He seems to be slowly getting better, I'm hoping the phase will end soon. It's very hard! I had a few weeks I started typing a termination letter! Until another dcb entered the same phase and I thought...ok this is more normal then I realized! Give it some time, it will pass