When Kids Hit Other Kids: How Should Parents React?

This whole area is a bit of a minefield really, isn't it? The thing is, if someone's kid that you know hits your own child, you are caught between wanting to protect your child and not falling out with the parents. If the parents are sound and they deal with it accordingly, i.e telling their own child off and apologising to you, then everyone usually gets out unscathed (apart, perhaps, from whomever got hit). But if the parents are oblivious and don't address it, or if it happens at a playground or somewhere that you don't know the kid, then what? When my son Jacob was a small baby, we visited a friend with an older boy, maybe two years' old. He picked up a small metal car and whacked Jacob on the head with it. My friend mother smiled at her son, said 'Oops' and.. well, that was it. My baby was crying and nothing was said about it. For me, it was up to her as his mum to tell her little boy, 'No, that's not right, we don't hit people'. But she didn't, and so I simply never visited with my son again. As he grew up, Jacob also became a hitter. He broke my heart (and almost my nose, once) with the amount of hitting and kicking he used to do. For the most part, my partner and I bore the brunt of it as opposed to his hitting other kids, but we had a plan in place to try to teach him how wrong hitting was. At the time, we employed the Naughty Step and Time Out methods until he stopped doing it. I distinctly remember visiting a friend's house once, and that child was put on time out at least seven times while we were there. I meant business. Because seriously, who wants to be the parent of the kid that goes around terrorising other kids? At four, he's completely grown out of it now and I look back and think that part of his problem was frustration. He was late to begin to talk and I think his inability to communicate used to drive him crazy. You worry as your kid grows up that they won't be able to defend themselves if some older kid hits them. You don't want them to be bullied, but you don't want them to BE the bully either. At the playground yesterday, I watched as an older kid grabbed Jacob's ankle and tried to pull him from the climbing frame. I was about to make a move to intervene when I saw Jacob kick him off and shout 'No!' at him in a most assertive way. And then I smiled. Because sometimes, the kids just sort it out between themselves. How do YOU react if another kid hits yours? Let us know in the comments on Facebook.