Curbing Toddler Biting

One day last year, Jeffrey Marsh, a family therapist, was working in his Los Angeles office with his dads' group. Their children, two and three years old, were playing quietly in the same room, when a loud scream pierced the air. Two-year-old Brittany, frustrated that Evan was playing with the truck she wanted, had decided to bite the little boy.

"She bit him hard and he was crying. The dad was clearly humiliated. He yelled, 'That's bad!' at his daughter, and picked her up, getting ready to leave. But all the other dads chimed in with, 'No, don't go! This is why we're here. Let's talk about it.' It was a great group," says Marsh.

Why Do Toddlers Bite?
While Brittany's dad was clearly shocked by his daughter's behavior, biting is not as uncommon as one might think. The majority of toddlers engage in some biting between their first and third birthdays.

"Young children bite for a number of reasons," explains Heidi Murkoff, co-author of What to Expect -- The Toddler Years (Workman, 1996). "Probably the most common reason is that it is one of the few ways of communicating that's effective for them, before verbal skills are developed." She adds that not all kids bite, and that some choose other forms of communication, such as grabbing, shoving, or punching.

Another reason toddlers bite is to express frustration, a feeling which is very common with toddlers, because both their communication skills and their motor skills are so limited. According to Murkoff, some very young kids bite just because of the response it produces.

"While words may fail to get a reaction, biting never fails to get a reaction. And with a young toddler, negative attention is better than no attention at all," she says.

"They are also entertained by these reactions -- it's funny, or intriguing, to see mom jump up, or for a playmate to start crying." Toddlers may also bite because they're teething or because they put everything in their mouths anyway, so why not someone's arm? Or it could even be that they are hungry.

Responding to Biting
While parents may understand that biting is a phase many toddlers go through, it can still be upsetting when it happens to their child. Christina Elston, from Altadena, Calif., remembers vividly when her daughter was the victim of a biter.

"It was at her preschool, and they had this one particular child who was a biter. It wouldn't even happen necessarily in the middle of any confrontation. Sometimes, during naptime, he would sneak out of his cot, and go over and bite other children," states Elston. "He bit Lauren one time and she ended up with a horrible bruise on her arm. I, of course, was furious and quite upset with the teachers, that they hadn't managed to prevent it." And in this case, with no skin broken, there was no question of any major health risk. "But biting is different from when another child pushes or hits your child," Elston adds. "It seems like so much more of a premeditated act."

Controlling Biting
If you do have to deal with your toddler biting, what is the best way to proceed? "The one thing you should never do, although it's a common mistake that parents make, is to bite back, so that the child knows what it feels like," says Murkoff. "All that does is reinforce the habit."

Instead, she suggests that if your child bites another child, you should first give the attention to the child who has been bitten. This will make it clear that biting is not a good way to get attention. In Murkoff's daughter's case, "the other child got the attention, which sort of caused the whole thing to backfire," explains Murkoff. "Since a very young toddler really doesn't understand that other people have feelings, it's the parent's job to explain that."

Tracey Porter, from Los Angeles, Calif., describes her experience dealing with her son Sam's tendency to bite as "horrifying." When Sam was two, he went through a biting episode for about three months. During that time, he occasionally bit other children, with maybe three or four incidents altogether. "Sam never bit Sarah, his older sister, or us -- his biting only came out at daycare," Porter says.

She talked to her son a lot, telling him every day when she dropped him off that she wanted him to be a good boy, that biting hurts people, that mommy and daddy didn't like it, and that he was not allowed to bite. "And eventually he got there, and he stopped. I don't know if all the talking helped, but we really focused on it, as a daily thing," says Porter.

According to Murkoff, Porter was doing exactly the right thing with her child. "While biting may be a normal phase for kids to go through, parents need to let them know that it is unacceptable behavior," Murkoff explains, adding that parents should take time to explain that no, we don't bite, we use words to express our feelings. "If your child couldn't figure out what words to use, you might suggest some for the future."

Experts agree that parents should try not to give biting so much attention that it becomes an attention-getter. This is true of all behavior that you don't want to see repeated. For example, it is not a good idea to laugh, because the child sees that she is getting a response, and she will do it again. A negative or a positive reaction is still a reaction. "You want to say firmly, matter-of-factly, 'No biting,' or 'We don't bite,' and then move on to something else," explains Murkoff. "And if you think the child might be hungry, suggest biting on some apple slices!"