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Hamlet is a very intense little boy. When he gets hurt, for instance, no one is allowed near him. Ask him if he's okay, and you'll hear, "Nuffing! Never! Go away!"

He's embarrassed, and too young to put it into words. We find the same happens when he's frustrated: when we don't pay him enough attention, for instance. The only problem at that point is that he hits.

Parenting is sort of like disaster management: first comes the immediate response, then the mitigation. What was the underlying cause? What's the best way to respond in the future? How do we prevent future occurrences?

In our house, the immediate response involves a warning: "Hit me again and I take your toy (and/or) put you in time-out." The warning is an invitation to get himself under control. He does that about 3/4 of the time. The other 1/4 of the time, we impose control through time-out. If he's seriously out of control, into his room he goes until he calms down.

Although the hitting started before Boris was born, it's escalated since then. We have no doubt that Hamlet feels a certain degree of jealousy toward his little brother. To that end, we each try to spend alone time with him every day. I might play computer games with him; Rain Dog does the bedtime routine. It works. He acts out much less when he's getting attention.