How to Keep Your Toddler from Biting

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Steps

1. Give your toddler another way to express frustration. If they’re not talking too much yet, they may be able to use sign language to communicate instead – even if they have no hearing problems at all. Other ways to express frustration include things like hitting a pillow, or teaching them one new special word to say when they’re angry.
2. A teething toddler may bite to relieve the pain and communicate irritation at the same time. Provide your toddler with something safe to chew on. Cold drinks and topical anaesthetics help with teething pain, too.
3. When toddlers want to interact physically with people (such as during wrestling games), they may bite. Give them other safe options for physical play. Avoid play that encourages biting from a child until you have the behavior more under control, especially if it involves biting other children with whom they wrestle.
4. Remind your child that teeth are not for biting people, and moreover, that teeth are for other things – chewing food, smiling, etc. A long-winded explanation is not necessary either, and will not help to stop the behavior. Instead, use a short, firm (not “angry”) statement such as, “No biting.” This not only teaches the child what you mean, but gets their attention (and teeth) off whomever they are biting.
5. Be persistent. Toddlers can not change any behavior after one reminder or one day. Consistent, repeated reminders about appropriate behavior will eventually become a change in that behavior.
6. Check with a pediatrician to make sure there isn’t a medical problem. Many times, hearing loss goes undiagnosed until a child is a toddler, and the frustration of being expected to be able to hear is huge.
7. Maintain as regular a schedule as possible. Children appreciate having set routines for breakfast, bedtime, nap time, and playtime. If your child knows what to expect from most of the day, they’ll be more able to deal with new circumstances.

Tips

• Think of what it’s like to be so much smaller than everyone else, to be told what to do all the time when you’re excited about discovering the world, and not understanding a lot of what older kids and grown-ups are doing. Now think of how that feels when you don’t have any words to use to tell people how you feel, and if you do have the words, they may not understand you anyway. Now add being tired all the time on top of that. You might start biting people, too!
• Though you may not understand what your toddler is saying to you when they talk, or when they bite, they understand a lot more of what you’re saying than you think. Talk to them all the time, and give them lots of love and hugs.

Warnings

• Do not, under any circumstances, bite your toddler back. That only reinforces the behavior and shows that you’re willing to cause them pain.

Related wikiHows

• How to Teach Manners to a Toddler

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