Head banging - help

DS is 13 months and has been doing the occassional headbanging, but in the last week it has got a lot worse. He does it when he's frustrated, angry or tired, and sometimes I think he does it just for the hell of it. Trouble is he's hitting his head so hard that he's now got bruises on his forehead. What can I do to get him to stop?

Spencer didn't head bang (although one of his little friends did) he use to, and still does sometimes, throw himself backwards with no regard for what's behind him which resulted in him smacking his head into the tiles, the wall the coffee table or anything else in the way. Basically if he hurt himself and got upset i would console him but if he didn't hurt himself I would ignore/walk away from him. They soon learn not to actually hurt themselves, like he quickly learnt not to do it on the tiles or he would do a slow mo one...lol..so as not to hurt himself. His friend use to head butt the floor, he only ever headed butted there wooden floor properly once though!

It's just a frustration and/or attention thing, once their language develops some tantrums can be avoided. Like now when Spencer can't do something he will bring the object to me and say "mummy do" rather than throwing a complete fit and me having no idea what it is about. Of course the tantrums don't end they just become about something else and of course they can then include words into them like "no way" and "go away"

Wouldn't hurt to look into the food thing as well if he's eating lots of processed stuff or sometimes other foods can set them off. Spencer definitely has an energy burst when he has banana so now I share bananas with him rather than letting him eat a whole one and then bounce off the walls.

Yeah we have had a head banger here as well. Ben does it when he is angry about something ( like his block of bricks falls down..!) or if his sister steals his toys

We just tell him its naughty and he stops hopefully as he gets older he'll be able to express his emotions in a less voilent way! Sure your son will be the same

Ethan does it too..i asked and got told like what cuppatea said..it was normal..he did it for about 3-4 months a lot and now does it sometimes on the window or door.. i also got told sometimes it's to do with teething (can't remember what exactly and got that confirmed to) it's weird but they get past it.

Kaelen went through a stage of doing that. It started at around 16 months i think. He did it whenever he was angry or frustrated. He would bang his head on the floor, cupboards, ME, whatever what close. Thank god he seems to have grown out of it now. He made himself cry sometimes. I just ignored it most of the time.

Update - sorry it's taken so long but life has been pretty hectic. Turns out the main reason for Keiran's headbanging was that he had an ear infection, so once he went on antibiotics the headbanging mostly stopped. Just the occassional one now when he's tired and over emotional. The interesting thing was that he hadn't really been showing the usual signs of an ear infection, but it turns out his ears were worse than his previous ear infections.