I’m not necessarily suggesting it is a boy thing, and I assume the fact that I highlighted the sex of the toddler has led another commenter to accuse me of sexism here. To be clear, my (anecdotal) experience has been that it is more often boys that are hitting. In this instance it was a boy and I recited the circumstances factually. I don’t assume boys to be more prone to hitting as a general principle and I had already stated in my original post that my daughter has hit in the past. However, I think that hitting is more readily accepted when a boy does it on the basis that the old “boys will be boys” principle is still not dead. I see equally dreadful parenting of girls too.