Bite Me!
Genuine | March 20
“Hannibal Lecter: A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”
It seems that our toddler has turned into a Hannibal Lecter of late. A week ago while he was wrestling around with his sister, he decided to sink his teeth into her. Yesterday as he was horsing around with his older brother, he thought it would be a good idea to taste test his back.
We never had a biter in the family before now, I assume it is bound to happen with four kids if not just by statistical probability. I have read all of the information on why children bite and what the response to the misbehavior should be, but I’m still afraid he is not getting the message.
Granted, he is undersized and underdeveloped from his older siblings and they usually are rough with him not knowing his ability to fight back, and this usually results in said bite. He sure knows how to quickly turn the tables and gain the upper hand. I just wish he could do it different.
He has a hard time communicating with the older siblings and this causes him to use his fists and now teeth instead of his words. His vocabulary is not expanding as quickly as we would like though and I fear we are raising the next Fighting Championships cage match winner on pay-per-view.
I guess what I’m really afraid of is whether I’m next on the menu? With his sister’s hot headed temper, and his proclivity to munch on anything that moves, we may be seeing the next cast to Shark Boy and Lava Girl. Any ideas short of biting him back?
Our daughter was a very early biter — not so much about self-defense or anger, just not real sure how to manage her brand-new teeth — so your mileage may vary here. We were able to be very firm with her about immediate and consistent timeouts for biting, along with the simple commentary, “No biting! Biting hurts!” It took less than a week before she stopped.
In terms of communication, we also had good luck with baby/toddler sign language when our children (twins) were not yet able to verbalize their wants and needs (although it sounds like you’re on top of the communication issue). If you’re interested, you can look here http://www.sign2me.com/ for more information (no affiliation; this was the program we used). Much of the information is geared toward families with younger babies, but it’s never too late for this kind of thing. Good luck — this is a frustrating problem to deal with.
He’s around 2, right? I think it’s the same thing our older guy went through–extreme frustration and not being able to channel it into something more effective. I wrote about what we did at http://moxie.blogs.com/askmoxie/2006/03/qa_aggressive_2.html . It took a couple of weeks to be fixed, but it was a pretty direct line to stopping the biting. HTH.
Davey was known to chomp into his sister when he got frustrated enough. A quick time out and an explanation of frustration helped to curb it pretty quickly.
Our son has occasionally chewed on us, mostly on his mother though. It seems like it’s rarely because of anger or aggression, it’s more of excitement and love. I’m not sure it makes sense to bite out of love but we get that feeling sometimes. It hasn’t been a problem but it’s always a bit scary. We have usually tried to tell him it’s not alright to bite and not made a big deal out of it. You have far more experience than me when it comes to this so do what you think is best. Our son is now 2 years old and has stopped the occasional biting but six months ago it happen a few times a week. I used to come home from work and see my wife display some bitemarks. Scary!
I’m sure it will work out alright, just have some patience.(Am I allowed to even say that since you have four kids…..?)
AD
I’ve never had a lot of experience with a biter - my mother was of the “bite back” school and apparently it all worked on us. My daughter is a hitter, and we use a combination of slapped hands and timeouts and find that both are effective for her. My son is currently biting, but that would be because he’s seven months old and those top central incisors are trying to break through. He bit my arm this morning.
If you don’t want to try the “bite back” route, I’d tell the older siblings to cool off on the rough-housing unless they want to get bitten, and enforce some timeouts on the spot (no warnings - biting is a “one-strike” offence). And if it doesn’t seem to be working, try the “bite back” once. It’s not so much the pain as it is the shock that “Mommy/Daddy bit me and it didn’t feel good!” that makes younger kids think twice about doing it again.
Have you thought of just dousing the family daily with bitter apple spray? (heh heh)
(Sorry … no real advice … fortunately haven’t had to deal with biting. Good luck.)
Maybe stop the shenganigans before they get out-of-hand? Start teaching him how to use his words?
My son bit for a very short period. We used immediate time outs and we taught him how to respond in a situation where he felt like biting. But he was an only child then, so I don’t have any experience with siblings and biting.