Hitting, Kicking, and Lucky Stars

Lately Logan has had a real problem with hitting and kicking, and we've been struggling to teach him that it's not okay. I've also been losing a battle with him to climb the four flights of stairs up to our apartment. He thinks it's funny to sit at the bottom until I finally carry him AND Annie up. No amount of time-out phases him. He sits there patiently, and does it again the next time he has an opportunity. We've tried everything we can think of. Which isn't much because there aren't many consequences he understands and natural consequences don't work so well with these behaviors; Annie isn't exactly going to hit him back (not that I'd want her to) and I am NOT leaving my two-year old at the bottom of the stairs while I go up myself...we'd have bigger problems then.

So, a couple of days ago we came up with the idea to try a behavior chart. Logan has the opportunity every day to earn ten stars through good behavior, and he can lose them if he does something naughty. If he has ten stars at the end of the day, he gets to choose a special activity from the "reward bag". I've got things like bubbles, chalk, photo albums, and special books in there...basically everything he really likes that I normally keep up high. So far it's worked well. He likes earning stars, so he's been really helpful this week, and he REALLY does not like to lose them. We haven't had any problems on the stairs, and he's only hit a couple of times (vs. 20 times a day). He's earned his reward every day so far, but today he hasn't been very keen on doing things to earn his stars, so this may be the first time he doesn't get the reward. I think that'll be good, though, so he fully understands the process.