Biting ****!

My son Owen is a biter. He got teeth fairly early, and has always enjoyed using them! He never used his paci much, but at about 9 months, due to his biting his brother so often, I started encouraging him to use his paci, because if his mouth was full, then the biting was minimized. He got all of his teeth by 15 months, and the biting slowed down considerably, but did not stop entirely, and was joined by scratching, pinching and hitting when his toys or perceived territory was threatened. But of course, he also developed a mighty pacifier habit (thanks to Mommy!).

Flash forward to today. He is now 23 months old (today) and is currently cutting his two year molars. I don't know if I can attribute all of the recent biting to cutting teeth, or if it is just contributing to his general aggressiveness. The problem I guess is that Liam (his usual victim) is very non-confrontational, and seldom fights back, and never bites. I really don't think Owen knows that he is hurting when he bites, because he sometimes bites in the course of play, not just when trying to get a toy or such.

The problem now is that I started the boys in daycare in June (3 days a week, the other two they are with my sister), and Owen started biting other kids there. It has only happened three times so far, but twice with the same little boy that the teachers say was not provoking Owen at all. This happened at the end of the summer session (this is a university daycare, so runs on semesters) when they had 18-24 mo. class combined with 2-3 years, and this little boy was in the 2-3 year, so he is now in another class and Owen has not bitten any of the kids in his current class yet, but I am truly scared that he will, and I don't know what else to try to get him to stop.

We started putting him in time-out for biting, scratching, hitting, etc, at about 18-19 months, but it has not been that effective. He understands that he is being punished, but it does not stop him from going right back and doing the same thing again. I have spanked him also, but this didn't work either, and I think really made it worse, because he then went around hitting for awhile afterwards.

The daycare suggested that I bring a teether for him, which I did, but he never used a teether much when he was a baby, I don't see him starting now, but I'll try anything! I've also been giving him teething tablets, and/or Tylenol and Advil.

This weekend was the worst. He bit Liam at least 4 times just Saturday morning, and bit me and his aunt once each. He was put in timeout for each instance, and I had him hug and express "sorry" afterward. But the behavior continues.

Does anyone have any ideas? Except biting him back? I won't do this.

I am truly at my wit's end.

Thanks for reading, I didn't intend to write a novel, when I started this post!

Omega

 

Just for what its worth, my oldest ds was a biter... i only had to bite him back once.

 

My first thought is, how is his speech/communication. My Jonathan was a biter--worse when he was teething, but even when he wasn't he might bite. He also would hit, kick, etc. much the way you describe. It turns out he has/had an expressive speech delay--he couldn't find the words to say what he needed, so he responded physically. Before we figured this out, I just had to be super vigiliant, and try to redirect him before he would bite. I refuse to bite back either.

As for time-outs not working, he is not at an age to have long term memory for cause/effect. So while he does understand that he is in trouble at the time, he quickly forgets why, and repeats the behavior--one of the reasons I firmly believe that full discipline does not have an effect until they are closer to 2 1/2.

 

QUOTE(Omega3tx @ Sep 4 2007, 11:23 AM) [snapback]392451[/snapback]
I am truly at my wit's end.


I just came on to talk about my being at my wits end due to dd biting ds. He looks so abused. seh si so fast and the minute I turn my back, WHAM! he has another bite mark. She even broke the skin and made him bleed yesterday. I feel like crying!!


QUOTE(sharongl @ Sep 5 2007, 03:58 AM) [snapback]393501[/snapback]
My first thought is, how is his speech/communication. My Jonathan was a biter--worse when he was teething, but even when he wasn't he might bite. He also would hit, kick, etc. much the way you describe. It turns out he has/had an expressive speech delay--he couldn't find the words to say what he needed, so he responded physically. Before we figured this out, I just had to be super vigiliant, and try to redirect him before he would bite. I refuse to bite back either.

As for time-outs not working, he is not at an age to have long term memory for cause/effect. So while he does understand that he is in trouble at the time, he quickly forgets why, and repeats the behavior--one of the reasons I firmly believe that full discipline does not have an effect until they are closer to 2 1/2.



I thought this may be true with my dd but she bites, hits scratches, flicks constantly. It is unprovoked and out of the blue. She will scream when he does something that annoys him but she seems to bite him for pleasure. The time outs have to worked and I have tried to flick her in the mouth but that is not working. I keep trying to tell myself this is a phase but it is so hard. I am totally worn out by the end of my day, especially when despite my vigilance, he has THREE new bite marks today!

I guess the good side is he is learning to say "bite" After he is bitten he will point to dd nad say "Bite"

 

Thank you everyone for your responses. [Also, please excuse my inappropriately titled subject line. I promise I don't swear often, and certainly not online, but just thought the word was descriptive of our situation. Forgive me if I offended anyone.]

Sharon - I too thought speech might be a problem, but we had both boys evaluated in Aug, and Owen is right on target for age, Liam on the other hand is 7 months behind and started speech therapy last week. Liam's speech therapist offered to speak to their staff counselor about Owen's biting and get his opinion, I'll pass on the information if it is helpful.

Currently we are having the daycare watch Owen's interactions with other kids to try to head off problems. We are also encouraging using words instead of actions (saying NO! MINE instead of biting, hitting,etc) but with limited success.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that getting his molars all in will stop the bite-fest! I guess we'll see.\

O.

 

My Ethan was a biter. It was a long long process to get him to stop. I tried everything and in the end the biting back...as cruel as it may sound, Was The Only Thing That Worked. He really did and does have some speech development troubles because his tongue was underdeveloped, ever so slightly. The piece of skin attatching the tongue to the bottom of his mouth is too short. He bit when he was mad and happy. Just whenever! Stay strong and keep teaching him. Make daily or hourly reward for not biting. Totally focus on just that behavior for a while. We started rewarding him for not biting~once he got the idea that biting hurt, he was able to want to stop. It was still a battle but once he understood that he was really hurting his friends, he wanted to work with us to stop the habit. A habit is what it was too. So it took some time and lots of encouragement to completely stop him.

 

mrsjo--

At what age did you offer rewards? I had thought to start this as well, but don't know if he will understand what he is being rewarded for, especially since he doesn't seem to remember what he is being punished for!

Thanks,

O.

 

I'm dealing with two biters here. Sometimes it's out of agression (when one steals a toy from another), but sometimes it's just out of the blue. It's worst when I try to leave the room for a minute - one boy will immediately start crying, and his brother will rush over and bite him. I always have to take one boy with me when I leave the room even for a second or someone always gets hurt!

Obviously I have no solutions here - just wanted you to know I'm in the same boat. My boys aren't in daycare, but we have had them try to bite other kids during playdates, and I'm worried the other moms won't want their kids around mine if they do that! I'm interested to hear the possible link with speech delay. My boys are 16 months, and still only have very few words - I guess I'll keep an eye on that and mention it to their doctor at their 18 month appointment if I think it may be an issue.

 

I started offering reward at about 2 to 2.5. I had to explain it quite a few times at first, but eventually he got that he would get something he wanted for not biting during playtime. I would sit the boys both down in the floor to play and tell him several times that he would get his jelly bean(that is what I used~because my kids very rarely get candy) and showed him not to bite by pretending to bite my own arm and say no biting. No biting or you don't get your candy after playtime. I also gave a piece to Eric for not biting. That is unfortunatly the way it is with twins, because Eric never bit he almost always got his candy. Sometimes it soothed his pain from being bitten, too. I would try to do this once a day and made the play times short at first. He eventually could go for 45 minutes then and hour and so on!
It was a long battle, it did get better once he realized that he was hurting his brother and friends. Some days I just wanted to cry because people at day care and church look at you like you have a terrible kid. We did not teach it to him, he was just a biter?!? :blush: