3 Year Old Hitting Other Kids at Preschool? Here’s What We Learned
The first time I heard about it was at pickup. My son Leo’s teacher, Ms. Rivera, leaned in close and said, “We had a rough afternoon. Leo hit another boy during free play.” I felt my stomach drop. I smiled stiffly, thanked her, and waited until we were in the car before I let myself react. Leo was babbling happily in his car seat, and I was already imagining the emails from other parents, the side-eye at birthday parties, the label of “that kid.”
The weird part was that Leo had never been a hitter at home. He had tantrums, sure—what three-year-old doesn’t?—but he was usually quick to move on. Watching him at the park, he would shove past kids sometimes, but without real intent. I told myself it was just the preschool adjustment. But after three weeks of incident reports, I started to worry that we were doing something wrong.
What helped me understand was staying for a few extra minutes one morning instead of rushing off. I saw Leo gravitate toward the wooden truck bin. A girl reached for the same truck. Leo didn’t tap her shoulder or say “mine.” He just swung his arm and hit her shoulder. The girl cried. Leo looked confused—like he hadn’t expected his arm to cause all that noise. Ms. Rivera knelt down, took Leo’s hand gently, and said, “I see you were frustrated. You wanted the truck. You can use your words. Say, ‘My turn’ or ‘I’m using that.'” Then she turned to the girl and said, “Are you okay? Leo is still learning.” She didn’t yell. She didn’t say “bad boy.” She just named the feeling and gave him a script.
That was the first practical insight: the hitting wasn’t malice. It was a language delay in real time. Leo’s verbal skills are decent, but under stress, his brain defaults to his body. When another child wants the same toy, his impulse control isn’t developed enough to pause and negotiate. Hitting is what it looks like when a toddler runs out of words.
We started doing the same thing at home. Instead of saying “Don’t hit,” which research and our own exhausted brains told us wasn’t working, we said, “I won’t let you hit. I see you’re mad because your sister took your spoon. You can say, ‘Stop, that’s mine.'” It sounds simple, and it is, but it took me weeks to remember to actually do it. The first few times, I was too busy yelling “No hitting!” like a malfunctioning robot. Once I backed off the punishment tone and focused on teaching the line, something clicked for him. He started repeating “Stop, that’s mine” before he ever tried to hit, though not always in time.
The teacher also made an environmental change that I hadn’t considered. For a week, Leo was in the smaller play group with fewer toys. She explained that when there are two of the same type of truck or enough blocks to go around, there are fewer moments of scarcity. She also stationed herself near him during transitions, because that’s when the hitting happened most—when he had to trade a toy he loved for snack time or clean-up. Just having her body nearby and her hand resting on his shoulder helped him remember she was there to help, not to punish.
At home, we started using a timer for turn-taking. I would set it for three minutes with a Duplo set, and when it went off, Leo would pass it to his little cousin who was visiting. The visual of the timer helped him understand that turns have a beginning and an end. It also took the emotional weight off me. I wasn’t making a judgment call; the timer was. He stopped crying as much about sharing because it was a rule, not a personal attack.
We also read “Hands Are Not for Hitting” at bedtime, but not in a heavy-handed way. We made it a routine part of the book stack. I noticed that when we read it during calm moments, it worked better than whenever he had just hit. He would point at the picture and say, “Hands are for clapping.” I would nod and add, “And for helping, and for giving high-fives.” We never said, “Remember this when you’re at school.” That would have made it a lecture. But I knew the words were sinking in.
One afternoon, I saw him hit his stuffed bunny during a tantrum about taking a bath. I didn’t stop it immediately—I just let it happen for a second. Then I said, “The bunny doesn’t like being hit. What could you do instead?” He looked at me, then picked up his pillow and put it on the floor and jumped on it. That was his own solution. I hadn’t taught him that, but he figured it out by watching me when I get frustrated. Which is another thing: I’ll catch myself hitting the steering wheel when someone cuts me off, and he’ll see that. So I’ve started narrating my own feelings more. “I’m frustrated that I dropped the eggs. I’m going to take a deep breath.” It feels silly, but it gives him a model that adults also get mad and they don’t hit.
About a month into preschool, we thought things were improving. The incident reports went from three a week to one. Then, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, he bit a classmate on the arm. I got the call at work and sat in my car for ten minutes, staring at the dashboard. The teacher, when I finally spoke with her, was reassuring in a way I didn’t expect from our earlier conversations. She said, “Biting is actually a different phase. He’s not really an aggressive kid—he’s overwhelmed. The biting usually happens when he’s more upset than hitting. So that’s actually a sign he’s learning to have bigger feelings, but he doesn’t know what to do with them yet.”
That reframing helped. I stopped thinking of every incident as a regression and started seeing it as him cycling through strategies. Hitting wasn’t working because teachers were consistently redirecting him. So he tried something else. That doesn’t excuse the biting, but it made me less panicked.
What’s working right now is a combination of things: a consistent morning routine so he doesn’t arrive at preschool already deregulated, a small laminated photo card in his cubby that shows his mommy and me and the dog, and a “calm-down corner” at home that he sometimes chooses on his own when he’s overtired. It’s not magic. Some days he still hits his foot against my leg when we’re waiting in line, and I see the impulse. But it’s less frequent, and it’s less intense.
I don’t have a neat ending for this. Leo stills hits sometimes, maybe once every few weeks. I know my husband and I are still figuring out how to respond in the moment without either being too harsh or too permissive. We’ve learned to focus less on the act of hitting itself and more on the feelings underneath, which sounds good on paper but is hard to remember when your child just smacked a friend’s face. Some days I’m patient. Other days I’m not.
But I’ve also come to see that this is just what three-year-olds do. It’s not a reflection of our parenting or her future social life. He’s stuck between wanting to play with other kids and not having the language or impulse control to navigate that. The hitting is his way of saying something he can’t say yet. He’ll get there, though I can’t tell you exactly when. And until then, we’re all just helping him build words for all those big feelings.
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