{"id":1841,"date":"2014-04-22T10:29:52","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T10:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/veipd.org\/earlyintervention\/?p=1841"},"modified":"2020-11-05T20:04:17","modified_gmt":"2020-11-05T20:04:17","slug":"ouch-he-bit-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.veipd.org\/earlyintervention\/2014\/04\/22\/ouch-he-bit-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Ouch! He Bit Me!"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do you say when a parent asks if she should bite her child back? That’s an easy one for many early interventionists – no, definitely don’t bite the baby back. Knowing what to DO about toddler biting, however, can be more tricky. Let me tell you a story about my son’s first bite…
\n\"Baby<\/p>\n

When my son was a toddler, I remember picking him up and before I knew it, he had chomped down on my left shoulder with his sharp little baby teeth. Without thinking, I yelped a great big “ouch!” I pulled him off of me and I’m pretty certain that I had an incredulous look on my face. I was shocked – that he bit me and by how much it hurt. He hadn’t been upset at all, or at least I had missed any cue that the bite was coming. Despite all that I knew about toddler development, I had no idea what to do in that instant. After my reflex reaction, I tried to recover with a firm, calm “no biting” but it was way too late. He’d already seen the effect he had and it was pretty awesome. I learned that knowing what to do and doing it in that instant were something completely different. He learned that mama makes a pretty cool noise when he bites. Not good!<\/p>\n

I did some thinking about why he bit me and what to do the next time, because I was pretty sure it would happen again – and I was right. Thinking about the ABCs of the biting behavior: what causes a bite and why it happens (antecedent), what the biting behavior represents for the child (behavior), and the consequence of the bite are all important. Let’s look at each of these, because changing something about any of them can make the difference between having a toddler who continues to bite and one who learns not to.<\/p>\n

The ABCs of Biting<\/h2>\n

Antecedent –<\/strong>\u00a0A parent can often figure out why a child bit by looking at what was happening just BEFORE the bite occurred. Did another child take his toy? Was he chewing on a teether and your hand got in the way? Was he trying to communicate but he doesn’t have the words? Does he always bite the same person or at the same time of day? Sometimes the reasons for biting are obvious. In my son’s case, it wasn’t, so I needed to look at the behavior itself.<\/p>\n

Strategies:\u00a0<\/em>Help parents learn to watch for signs that a bite is coming, like the child opens his mouth and is leaning in, drooling, or already biting other things.<\/em><\/p>\n