What I do with Anaya is when she wants to be aggressive we play the high five game. It has almost completely wiped out the hitting, now she just puts her hand up in the air to get a high five. Sometimes kids need to get out some physical aggression, this doesn't have to come from anger, just a need to be physical, so maybe you can find ways for him to be physical. Make a game out of it, if he tries to hit you tell him it is okay to hit a pillow or the floor but not people and then proceed to show him by hitting the floor. Then you can laugh about it and have fun and be showing him what is okay and redirecting his attention from what is not okay without him even noticing. The less attention brought to the behaviour the better.

>>>Do that over and over. I think it's close to what you are doing, but he is too young to understand "Will you be gentle?". He will understand no.

Kids understand much more than we give them credit for. I think they can understand "will you be gentle?" at this age but it is not in their makeup yet, they need to have freedom to express. Maybe sternly saying "no!" over and over again may work for some but it does not work for my daughter, it just scares her, and I prefer to save it for truly dangerous situations. I like knowing that it still has shock factor for when she is about to run out into the road, at that point I am okay with her stopping in her tracks and crying for mama, for things like hitting she just seemed to get more frustrated.

Constituency is key, remember that "this too shall pass" kids grow up (much to mommies dismay!) and behaviour changes.

Thanks guys! I esspecially like the high 5 game idea. I will give it a try!

While I appreciate that this may be your spiritual belief I have to respectfully disagree. I give my child much more credit than to assume he sees the world in such blanket terms as entirely good. I've seen too many children demonstrate far too much intelligence to believe something so simple about them all. Yes, they soak up everything but that doesn't mean they are not processing it and problem solving in their own way. I don't believe they are just empty vessels. And no, saying be gentle doesn't mean much, which is why you have to back it up by showing them how to be gentle. I highly doubt that they perceive themselves as being gentle at all. I think it is more like they often don't know the difference between being gentle or not in the beginning. When my son pulls the cats tail it is often because he wants to play with the cat and he just doesn't realize that cats don't appreciate that sort of contact. Teaching him to be gentle by showing him how the cat does like to be touched helps him to achieve his goal which is to have an interaction with the cat.