Our Little Tornado

Lately, I have felt very uncertain about Ethan's aggressiveness. He is a very physical little boy, and I feel at a loss as to the best way to deal with it. Anytime he is crossed (like when he is told "No" by an adult, a child takes a toy from him, a child touches a toy that he thinks is his, etc), he responds physically by hitting, throwing, pushing, pinching or pulling hair. When Caleb was 16-months-old (and even older), we didn't have problems with this angry aggressiveness. What I usually do with Ethan is anticipate his outbreak and physcially prevent him from doing whatever he intends. But this is only successful about 75% of the time, and the other 25% of the time ends with another child in tears (Ethan is very strong and holds nothing back). I put him in time-out sometimes, but he acts so impulsively with the aggression that I do not think the time-out is doing anything to cause him pause the next time. I feel like I have to be on top of him every second, and I wonder if this is normal. Caleb went through a hitting phase from 32-34 months (right after Ethan started crawling), but other than during that brief time period, Ethan has not been the recipient of any of this physical stuff. This indicates to me that it is more instinctive rather than learned.

I was recently talking to a good guy-friend about my concerns regarding Ethan's behavior, and he said something that really surprised me at the time. He said that he, even as an adult, thinks it would be fun to go around hitting people all the time. He said that he chooses not to do it because it's socially unacceptable and because he doesn't want to hurt people, but that it would be fun if he could. Because I do not relate to this at all as a woman, I just figured he had issues and mentally dismissed his input. (Sorry, Al :) But then I started asking other men (including my husband), and got uniformly similar responses. So now I am accepting that enjoying the act of exerting his own physical force is a natural thing for a little boy. That gives me some relief, but I still need help in teaching Ethan some impulse control, because, right now, he is a play-group terror!