How to punish this????

[futureherder]

I am a gentle parent and try with everything I have to teach my DD in a gentle manner however something has come up that needs to stop and DP and I are not sure how to go about it.

DD is praying on our cats :no: she is pulling tails, harassing them, standing on them :confused:

She isn't after them all the time and she pats them gently and cuddles them and we model this behaviour and show her she is doing the 'right' thing

But we are not sure what to do to stop her from hurting them and I dont want to have her hurting the cats just so we can stay gentle with her but we hate yelling at her and telling her off...it doesn't work anyway...

Any suggestions to get rid of this :devil: side of DD? She is 13 months old.

[MrsBeee]

I have no idea, sorry, just wanted to send you some good luck! :goodvibes:

[SuperGranny]

hi, I would just put the cat outside away from her . She can play nicely with the cat or the cat is outside. Atleast give the cat the chance to get away from her, surely the cat wont just sit there and let its tail be pulled. Marie.

[Mrs Nietzsche]

I think it is inevitable to an extent, but what I did was say 'no, be soft' and show him how to pat gently. Then heaps of praise for patting softly. Do this every single time.

[futureherder]

Our cats are inside cats but they can get away...the younger one does but the older one will sit there and then swipe at her :no: Also she stands on them while they are sleeping :no::no:

We will continue to praise her but I dont know what else to do...does she just have to grow out of it???

What else should we do when she does do the wrong thing?

[SuperGranny]

hi future herder, either she grows out of it, or the cat gives her a good scratch and she might stop. I think either the cat wins or she wins, and if I was the cat , I would be going outside. I dont think there is any gentle way to stop her from 'bullying' the cat. sorry, Marie.

[missie_mack]

Perhaps it is time to consider getting a cat run so the cats can be put into another area

[MsMummy]

I think the best option is to ensure the cat has some child-free space.

We also have a strictly indoors cat, and a 22mo.

When we first got our cat a couple of months ago, we would gate off half the house to give her respite.

She now has under the house, but spends most of her time upstairs.

My son lies on her, chases her round the house while shrieking, occasionally pulls her fur and throws toys at her.

We just always say "be gentle", and show him how the cat has gone to the other room now because he was rough.

I just don't think really young kids can help themselves. He will sit there stroking her fur, and then he will just get overexcited and suddenly pull it with delight.

I have no qualms in letting the cat get stuck into him, but she's so placid. She's only ever given him one little scratch on the hand, and she sometimes "playfully" swats him in his sleep.

[EquineMum]

The best suggestion I can offer is to carefully supervise any interaction between them and if she goes too far, lift the cat and put it elsewhere until she is distracted with something else. She must learn if she can't play nicely, then cat goes bye-bye - even at that age, she will understand that if she does the right thing, she will be rewarded :yes:

[futureherder]

Thanks guys. I talked with DP about it last night and we are a bit worried about letting the cat attack back, only because we are worried about her eyes and also we dont want to give her the impression that you can annoy something until it attacks back...with her personality this could cause a few issues :yes:

So we are just closely supervising and taking the cat away from her if she gets too rough. She was very good last night and was doing lots of little gentle pats it was lovely...hope it continues.

I was thinking about getting her a cruelty free t-shirt LOL

Thanks guys.

[twotrunks]

Reagrdless of your parenting philosophies, 13 months is way too young to punish. She is behaving completely normally, exploring consequences, having fun.. You need to keep the cat away or supervise as you said you have been doing. IMO a baby shouldn't be left unattended with any animal, and a cat can do a lot of damage if it wants to. Discipline for toddlers is about prevention IMO, so it is up to you to keep them apart unless you are right there next to them.

[futureherder]

I picked the word punish for a reason :) was not planning on punishing her.

I am not sure though I have seen 13 month old 'punish' as in told off and it seems to work fine for those parents...but that is there parenting and maybe behind closed doors it is different ;)

Yup that is my instinct also but just wanted to check to see if I was cheating my DD and cats out of some magic cure.

It is hard to keep our cats apart from our baby unless we lock the cats up which is something I dont want to do. I will just keep an eye on them during their active times and make sure they are safely away when sleeping.

[Mrs Nietzsche]

At the end of the day I feel it is pretty easy for a cat to get away from a toddler. A safety gate somewhere would ensure that.

I remeber trying to teach DS to be soft when he was 13 mths.... the pressure was on as I was having a baby in a month's time that I didn't want to be his next target.

He could learn to be soft and pat softly, but at any time it could suddenly turn into whacks.

I think he is only now at nearly 2 beginning to really get the whole thing and have good control and intention behind his actions.

[futureherder]

Thanks for that, we need to put some gates up but at the moment the gates we have are for her safety but we havn't put any up to stop her from getting to the cats...nest thing on the list :yes:

Does anyone know where to get extra wide gates from?

[MsMummy]

How wide do you need it?

We have a safety first gate (one of those ones that you can adjust by about 0.5 of a metre (maybe more) that is portable as you push it in place.

It's quite sturdy as well.

[futureherder]

Thanks for that :D I think my mum has one she is looking in to it for me.

[MsMummy]

http://www.safety1st.com/usa/eng/Products/Home-Safety/Gates/Details/2451-42066-Wide-Doorways-Fabric-Gate

That one looks really wide as well.

[NonnyMouse]

I'd also say let the cats sort it out as long as they have a safe place to escape to. They will teach the lesson far better than you can as merely a bystander.

DS tries to torture my cat (i.e. rough patting, tail pulling, ear pulling, climbing over etc), and my cat is not shy about scratching when it's peeved but I've found that the cat actually pulls his punches when swiping at DS unless he's getting REALLY annoyed.

This came as a complete shock to me because he's prone to randomly attacking when he's in a feral mood and I always end up second best even if I was just sitting there doing nothing.

I can only assume that puss knows DS is just a baby/child and swipes with his claws in as a warning first. DS does still get scratched, but even then it's only barely breaking the skin, and frightens DS more than hurts him. It's certainly taught him though... now he seems to pull back from the cat as soon as puss displays the "I'm going to get angry now" body language.

[3'llhavetodo]

I think most kids go through this stage, well all of my 3 did anyway.

I found the best thing to do is try to re-enforce the correct treatment and tell her to be gentle with the cat, you don't want to hurt him/her, he/she won't want to be your friend if you hurt it.

Cats are pretty good at escaping though if they want out, they'll find somewhere out of the way if they need space.

[Just Add Water]

I think you' have your answer but we have indoor cats as well so they don't go outside. When DS (who's now 16 months) started pulling at them we would make sure we took his hand and showed him how to pat them gently and we would say "gentle". He does still forget from time to time and will push instead of pat but for the most part he will be gentle, or he puts his hand about 3 cm from them and waits for someone to help him if he's unsure.

We're staying with my mum at the moment and she has 2 cats and 3 dogs (2 labroadors), I'm really quite surprised at how easily DS has transferred the same behaviour to the dogs once he felt comfortable with them.

He has been swiped by our cat a couple of times - but no claws, for some reason it's like our cats know he's not doing it on purpose but they want to let him know anyway.

On the odd time he has pushed the point we have simply picked the cats up and moved them to another room and shut the door and said "it's time to leave the cat alone, that wasn't gentle".

Good luck with it :)