My two year old daughter has developed a nasty habit of biting other children when she is annoyed. Last week she bit the little girl next door and actually broke the skin. Each time she does it, I give her a real telling off and I really lost it with her last week. But it doesn’t seem to do much good. Sometimes she throws a tantrum and other times she laughs at me when I give out. I also really worried about why she is doing this. Some people say I should smack her when she does it, but I don’t want to go down that route. What can I do?
Biting is a very distressing behaviour to have deal with as a parent. Aside from being a nasty and painful it can be really embarrassing as a parent when your child behaves this way in public. While young children bite for many different reasons, it can be that she has not yet learnt other ways of dealing with her frustration and annoyance. It could also be that she is getting a lot of attention (albeit negative attention such as giving out) when she bites which might be fuelling the problem. Here are some suggestions to deal with it
- When your daughter bites, simply and calmly say ‘no biting’ to her and then introduce a consequence, for example, the game stops and she has to stand in the corner. Remind her that she can rejoin game when she ‘plays like friends’.
- The trick is not to give your child too much attention for biting (giving out, shouting are all forms of attention and often counterproductive). Rather, make sure to give positive attention to the other child who has just been bitten. Make a fuss of the other child, soothing her and saying you are very sorry she was bitten and it was wrong to happen.
- Make sure to praise and reward your child at other times any time you see her sharing or getting on well with other children, particularly when she manages to refrain from biting.
- Finally, use a picture story to teach her about getting on with other children. This could be a story about a bear who used to hurt other animals but then ended up with no friends. You can get children’s stories like this in bookshops or if not, you could make one up yourself!
The long term goal is to show your daughter it is more rewarding not to bite and to teach her other ways of managing her frustration.