Biting

DD just turned 2 last month. She is incredibly smart. Very verbal. I have an older DS who will soon turn 4. She started biting him when she was around 18 months - but not often. Once in a while. She’d only do it if she felt threatened, ie: fighting over a toy. Now that she’s older – the fighting over things has increased and so has the biting. I know most kids do this because they are frustrated and can’t verbalize – this is not the case here since she talks very well. For her, it’s more of a defense mechanism since she’s smaller and knows this is how she will get her way. Now, she has started biting us (myself and my MIL). If we scold her or try to remove her from a situation she will go ahead and try to bite us, most often succeeding. I’ve tried the stern “NO” and “NO BITE”. I’ve done the time outs. I even tried hot sauce last Saturday b/c she tried to bite me twice in 2 hours – didn’t even phase her.

She’s extremely strong willed and I am getting worried b/c she is starting part-time school in September. She hasn’t bitten another kid but I wouldn’t put it past her. Any ideas? Recommendations?

Biting

Dd2 went through a biting phase. It was very stressful for me. She never did it hard, or broke skin. It was short lived thankfully and like everything with these kids it’s a phase.

We did time outs. The book teeth are not for biting helped.

Re: Biting

Re: Biting

Posted by MrsB612

Posted by ANewDayHasCome

Dd2 went through a biting phase. It was very stressful for me. She never did it hard, or broke skin. It was short lived thankfully and like everything with these kids it’s a phase.

We did time outs. The book teeth are not for biting helped.

She didn't break skin until today My MIL took her to BJ's and she had a tantrum bc she wouldn't open the ice cream then and there. I just feel like it's getting a lot worse and it's freaking me out.

Biting

My son is 17 months and the king of biting, so much so that he breaks his twins skin. We did textured chewys, read age appropriate books on biting, cold teethers, massaging teethers you name it. Nothing worked. We then moved to time out. Didn’t work. I felt like I was failing especially because I’m a behavior analyst in my day to day work and couldn’t get a handle on it. Ive also tried as he was attempting to bite I would move his arm in front of his mouth so he bit himself instead, didn’t work. I’ve ruled out medical reasons etc. (does increase though when he’s getting teeth) he does it for different reasons based on the situation but it is usually out of frustration or he wants something. We continue to read books and have readily available teethers that he knows where to get etc. continued to not work and now we still have them in place and he gets a shot of lemon juice on the tongue now as an aversive since time out didn’t work. So far he got it once and hasn’t bitten since. When we did the lemon juice we told him, teeth are not for biting and did the lemon juice then immediately said if you want to bite, use your chewy and handed him the chewy. We were averaging two to three severe bites breaking the skin on a weekly basis.
Lemon juice is not harmful and will not injure the child. The book we use is: teeth are not for biting. I can also send you the links for the chewys

Message edited 6/20/2018 5:14:49 PM.

Re: Biting

My son was a biter from about 12 months to 24 months old. It was a nightmare - he was kicked out of daycare and another one made me get him professionally evaluated. Bottom line - they just didn't want to deal with him. Some kids go through this phase and then it just ends. There was very little we could do to prevent it by "teaching" him or "punishing" him or because it seemed like it was almost involuntary, he couldn't control it - when he got frustrated or upset he just immediately reacted by biting because he couldn't communicate fast enough with words. It was more about impulse control which is very hard for a 1 year old to learn. Yeah, it sucked. But kids who bite DO grow out of it and they are perfectly normal.

Re: Biting

My DD (who is an absolute sweetheart now at 6) went through this phase. We did repeat “no biting” A LOT.

She broke skin often. I told her bigger bro to stay away from her (he was the instigator but she would chase him with her mouth open!).

We laugh about it often now.

Re: Biting

I'd just keep doing the time outs. If those aren't working, try removing privileges, too.

Re: Biting

Re: Biting

Message edited 6/23/2018 10:47:09 AM.

Re: Biting