Hi. I'm having a bit of a problem at the moment.

We took on a new mindee 3 weeks ago. He's the son of an existing parent's friend, who I also know fairly well too. The little boy is 22 months old.

The problem is that he keeps hitting, pushing, and jumping on the other children! I know he's too young to be doing it with malicious intent, but the other children are too young to know that too! On Thursday, one of our 3 year olds heard him arrive and said to me, "Oh no, X is here, he hurts me".

He tends to carry toys around with him and use them as weapons to hit other children on the head. We do try to step in before he manages but, to be honest, its quite exhausting having to constantly watch him, as we're not able to let him out of our site! He's also into everything, hammering the patio windows, peeling posters etc off the wall, climbing on the toy kitchens, switching on and off the plug socket switches etc. This on its own wouldn't bother me too much, as he will learn eventually not to do these things, and I know perhaps that after a while of being with us, he will learn that its not acceptable to hit other children. The problem is now. I'm not sure how long it will take for him to realise, and in the meantime the other children aren't happy (noticably the older ones try to avoid him) and hubby and I are jibbering wrecks at the end of the day

Its the end of the settling in period next week so do you think it would be ok to ask mum if we could extend the settling in for another 4 weeks? When I told her about his behaviour yesterday, she jokingly said to her child, "Oh no, they'll be barring you!"

I feel terrible, more so because I know mum fairly well, but I don't like the idea of 'giving up'. All our other children are really settled and enjoy their time with us and they're not happy at the moment, which upsets me. Although this little boy is only here 2 days a week, on the Friday we have 6 children under 5 which is proving to be a bit of a nightmare with him The awful thing is, she has asked for 2 more days after January, to which I've said no. I've told her that we're not full, but we're as full as we want to be.

Sorry for the long post. I haven't experienced a child like this so any advice and previous experience from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks x