When your baby or toddler first bites you, a family member, or another child, the way you respond to that behavior has a huge impact on whether it continues or not. Surprisingly, some things we naturally do when our child bites actually causes them to continue to do it, rather than stopping it.
It’s normal for young children to bite at some stage in their lives. Generally they bite because it’s an effective way to get interaction or attention from a peer or adult. It’s actually a very effective way to do that.
Once we understand why they bite, the good news is there are some simple strategies you can use in response to biting that will indicate to your child that it’s not ok. It’s also important to note that these aren’t harsh, and don’t involve yelling or physical forms of discipline. But they are highly effective at stopping toddler biting (and babies – any age really).
At some stage, there is a good chance that your little one is going to bite someone. It might be you, a sibling or a friend. But the way you respond when that bite happens can make a huge difference on whether or not it continues, or whether you can bring the biting to an abrupt end.
You can actually stop biting in its tracks if you respond early and in the right way. And unfortunately the right way isn’t a natural response that we as parents have.
In fact, our natural response actually encourages more biting. So on this topic, I’m going to share with you what you should do to reduce that bite.
Why Do Toddlers Bite?
If you have a toddler who bites, it doesn’t mean that you are a bad parent or your child is bad because they want to hurt others.
In fact, biting is completely normal behavior for toddlers, and really it shouldn’t be that surprising, when we think about the skills that our toddlers have.
In general, toddlers find it:
- Difficult to manage their emotions.
- They are extremely impulsive, they’re not yet thinking about how their actions hurt others.
- They also have a limited number of words that they can use to communicate.
And as a result, they often communicate by using actions. And unfortunately, a really effective action that they can use is biting.
When a toddler bites, they get an immediate response and attention from an adult or peer and they can instantly change their environment so they can get what they want or avoid doing what they don’t want to do.
What Are Wrong Responses You Need To Avoid Giving To Your Child?
Typically the immediate response that a little one generally gets from an adult once they have bitten someone is a very large response like:
- The adult lectures the toddler on why biting is wrong and what they should do in the future.
- Or the adult punishes the toddler to stop biting behavior.
Now, this natural response that parents often have, does not actually stop biting and in fact can increase the likelihood of it occurring in the future and that’s for a number of reasons.
- A Big Response to the biting can encourage more biting.
A big response to that behavior where you essentially stop whatever you are doing, you race over to the little one, get in their face, and then you raise your voice, use lots of animated facial expression and arm movements to tell them that what they’ve done is wrong, that action in itself can be extremely interesting and exciting for toddlers. So they might just do the biting again to see you reacting that way.
Also, toddlers do not care whether or not the attention they’re getting is negative, which is the yelling or positive attention. To them, it’s all attention. So if that is how they’re going to get the one-on-one time with an adult, then they might result in biting more often to get that interaction.
- We often try to teach why biting is wrong immediately following the incident.
We often use the time immediately after the biting instant to try and educate our little one on why biting isn’t helpful and what they need to do instead. Now, unfortunately this is not the time to educate your little one.
When a toddler has bitten someone, they’re in a high emotional state and they are unable to learn a new skill. Also when we are trying to teach them why they need to do another skill, we often use lots of words and toddlers just get confused when you’re using so many words, when we really should be limiting how much we are talking to them in this heightened state.
- Using physical punishment can increase the biting.
Which might be biting the toddlers so that they know what biding feels like or hitting the individual doesn’t actually stop the biting behavior. In fact, what they’ve found is that by using physical punishment, it may stop the child from doing that behavior when you are present, but they haven’t internalized why they shouldn’t be doing that behavior or what other behavior they should use. So it often results in the biting behavior occurring when you are not present.
Also it sends the message that using violence is an acceptable behavior that they can use to solve problems. So given that our response can have a huge impact on whether or not our little one may be biting or continuing to bite.
What Can You Do To Reduce Biting?
- Respond immediately but stay calm.
The very first thing that you want to do is when you see your toddler bite, you want to react immediately, but you want to stay calm. So you would approach your little one, get down to their eye level. Now this is extremely important because if you stand up above your toddler, you are intimidating and it can be really overwhelming and that can move them into the fight, flight or freeze response.
And then you want to use a calm voice with a neutral face and limited arm movements, it’s not a lot of over attention that they’re getting.
- State what has happened and label the emotions.
What you want to do is state what you saw happen and what emotion they may be feeling. This is important because it helps your little one understand that you are there for them, and
- helps to build the connection.
- helps to reduce the emotion
- helps them to start to learn what those body feelings mean
when they’re feeling angry or happy or sad, and this will make it easier for them in the long run to correctly identify the emotion and then use an appropriate response to manage that emotion.
- State that biting is not Okay.
It might sound something like, I can see you are really angry that Mia took your toy. It is okay to be angry, but the next thing you want to do is to state that biting is not okay. So you would say, I can see you’re really angry that Mia took your toy. It is okay to be angry, but it is not okay to bite.
- Move your focus to safety.
After you’ve clearly stated that biting is not okay, you want to move your focus on to safety. So you want to keep everyone safe. So if your little one is biting you, then you would put them on the ground and move away. And you would state, “I’m gonna move over here because you are not playing safely.” Or if they’re biting a sibling or a peer, you would say, “I’m gonna move with Mia over here to play because you are not playing safely.”
By doing this, you are effectively moving the attention away from that behavior, and by giving sympathy and engaging with the child who has been bitten, you are sending a clear message to the child who did the biting that his behavior is not going to get them the desired response. So if they bite a peer to get the toy, it shows them that they’re not going to get the toy or the attention from you by biting someone.
- Talk about what happened and tell them what they can do instead.
Once your little one has calmed down, so that might be 30 minutes after the incident or later that day, it’s really important to talk about what happened with your little one and identify other ways that they can manage their emotions in the future that doesn’t result in biting.
If you miss this step, then your little one is definitely going to keep biting because it’s an effective way to get what they want. So, this might look like saying to your little one, “I could see this morning that you were really angry with Mia because she took your toy. Let’s think about other ways that you can tell Mia that you’re still playing with the toy. You could say, stop. You could say, I’m still playing with that toy. You could say, it’s my turn. Or you could say, I’ll give you the toy when I’m finished.And if Mia doesn’t listen, then that is when you can come and tell an adult, and then I will come and help you.”
Then once you’ve gone through alternatives options, I would then role play it with your little one. So I would get on the floor with them, and if it’s around that sharing, I would sit on the floor with them and pretend to play with them.
And when they’re playing with a toy, I would say, I’m going to pretend I’m Mia and I’m going to grab your toy. Let’s practice what we’ve just said. So then you’d grab the toy and then you’d get your little one to say stop, I’m still playing with that toy or to practice the agreed upon strategy.
Then when you see your little one using these skills throughout the day, you would obviously praise them. And this is really important, and you want that praise to be very specific. So if you see your little one playing with their sibling and they wait their turn, then I would say, “Max, that is excellent waiting. I can see you’re waiting until it’s your turn to play with that toy. Or you might say, Max, you do really well at telling Mia to stop because you were still playing with that toy.”
When we praise our little ones for doing the desired behavior, we actually encourage that behavior to occur more often, and it will help to decrease the biting.
Biting is often extremely common when a toddler is tantruming. So, one way to effectively stop biting is to prevent that tantrum from occurring in the first place.