Your child's preschool number shows up on your caller ID, and your stomach drops before you even answer. Preschool never calls with good news. Your kid hit someone at the sand table, or kicked a friend in line for the bathroom, and now you're standing there wondering if you have to call another parent and apologize, and whether this is the start of your kid becoming the one nobody wants to play with.
The conversation you have that night probably isn't the first one. You remind your child that we keep our hands to ourselves. Maybe there's an early bedtime attached this time, to show them you mean it. Then the same thing happens again the next week, and you start to wonder what you're missing.
In this episode, I walk through what's actually driving hitting, biting, and kicking at preschool, both for kids who are dealing with a classroom that controls almost everything about their body for the first time, and for teachers managing a room of 20 kids with their own competing pressures. I share what happened when a child hit a teacher after being physically moved into circle time, and a moment from my own daughter's classroom where a nap-time standoff got resolved without anyone losing. By the end, you'll have a different question to ask than "how do I get the hitting to stop."
Questions this episode will answer
Is it normal for preschoolers to hit? Hitting, biting, and kicking are common at this age, especially once a child spends most of the day in a classroom where someone else controls when they sit, move, and talk. That loss of control is often what's underneath the hitting for three and four year olds.
How do I stop my 4 year old from hitting at school? Repeating "hitting isn't okay" rarely works, because most kids already know that before the conversation happens. Look instead at what happened right before the hit, and what was building up earlier in the day.
What are some common behavior problems that 4-year-olds experience in school? Hitting, biting, and kicking often show up around transitions, circle time, and group activities, the exact moments where a child has the least say over their own body.
How to deal with challenging behaviors in preschool? Instead of treating the behavior itself as the problem to fix, it helps to look at what a child's body and day were signaling right before it happened, including sensory overwhelm and a loss of autonomy.
How to handle disruptive behavior in the preschool classroom? For teachers managing a full room, a child's need can often be met alongside a teacher's own needs for competence, ease, and keeping kids safe, without one side having to lose.
How to manage behavior in preschool? The better starting question isn't how to get the behavior to stop. It's what's happening in a child's body and day that leads them there, for parents and teachers both.
What you'll learn in this episode
- Why a preschool classroom is often the first place in a child's life where an adult besides a parent controls almost everything about their body, and why that loss of autonomy can come out as hitting or kicking
- The story behind a child who hit a teacher during circle time, and what came out only after the fact about what led to it
- How to tell whether a child's hitting or kicking is coming from a sensory issue, an autonomy issue, or something else, and how that changes what actually helps
- What teachers are usually working to protect when they enforce rules like Circle Time, including their own needs for competence, ease, and children's safety
- How I worked out a nap-time standoff with my own daughter's preschool that met her needs and her teachers' needs at the same time
- A different question to ask instead of "how do I get this behavior to stop"
Behavior is a signal - here's how to work with it
You already have the instinct to look past the hitting or kicking and ask what's underneath it. What the Stop the Behavior Battles Masterclass adds is a repeatable way to find the answer in the moment, when your kid is already mid-meltdown and you don't have time to think it through from scratch.
That's the whole method: four steps you can walk through with your own kid's situation, the same four steps you'll watch a real parent named Clarice apply to her own son's toy pickup standoff. Practice it enough times, and it starts to happen without you needing to stop and think through each step.
When you enroll, you'll also get a 20-minute coaching session with Denise, our community manager and a credentialed coach, to help you narrow down the strategies most likely to work for your specific kid. And you'll get an invitation to a live call with me on September 16, where I'll share one of my own worst parenting moments and coach live on the spot.
Get the Stop the Behavior Battles Masterclass for $27. Click the banner to learn more.
Jump to highlights
01:10 Introduction to the episode's premise: hitting, biting, and kicking at preschool
04:12 The autonomy shift kids face moving into a classroom, and hitting as a way to signal "I need some say"
07:59 Why kindergarten-readiness pressure pushes teachers and parents toward compliance over accommodation
11:03 Applying the "would I want to be treated this way" test to circle time and other classroom moments
13:33 The adult parallel: snapping at a partner after a hard day, and why we don't extend kids the same grace
14:33 How parents can approach a teacher without blame, and requesting accommodations grounded in real needs
16:07 Jen's own example: finding a nap-time compromise for her
