How To Prevent My Toddler From Biting
Toddler biting can be one of the most frustrating and painful things we need to deal with as parents. The hitting, kicking, and tantrums, I can still manage, but it’s the biting that can really test my patience (especially when you’re still breastfeeding them).
But before we dive into how we can even stop our toddlers to stop biting, we need to understand first the reason behind our little ones biting.
Biting to Deal with Big Feelings
Remember that young children (specifically toddlers) are impulsive and tend to react based on their body’s base reactions. The part of their brain that handles logical reasoning is still under construction, and so when they become dysregulated (with lots of big feelings), they shift into a fight or flight mode. Ergo, cue the biting (and other bodily throws here and there).
Gain Attention through Biting
Parental attention is the most coveted treasure of our children. And any attention, be it good or bad, is better than no attention at all. Hence, if your toddler biting before has resulted in a big reaction from you, they’ll carefully store that in their toddler’s brain that biting is one way to gain your full attention.
Testing the Boundary
Our toddlers are exemplary examples of boundary testers. Mainly out of curiosity to see what happens when they test the limits of ‘Don’t bite’. To see and witness how you or other people would react when they simply bite.
Teething
One reason could also be simply physiological. Toddlers could still be teething, and their natural response would be to relieve the pressure in their mouth by biting and putting things in their mouth. And especially when they’re frustrated, they’d have a lot of energy in their mouths itching to be relieved.
Now that we’ve established some of the potential reasons why our toddlers bite, we can now dive into some ways to prevent our toddlers from biting.
1. State the truth of biting.
Our toddlers are at a stage where they can oftentimes understand more words than they can express. So when they’re in a biting mode, state as calmly as you can the truth of the action. ‘Biting is painful’ or ‘biting hurts’. This is for them to internalize the meaning of their action, that biting is actually painful and it hurts.
Avoid putting labels in them for biting such as ‘Bad boy’ or making them feel responsible for your feelings when they bite by saying ‘you make mommy sad when you bite me’. This just fosters an unhealthy sense of self in them of the labels placed in them as they grow up.
2. If someone is hurt, pay more attention to them rather than to your toddler biting.
This probably goes out more to playdates and sibling fights. When they tend to bite other people, turn your attention to the person that they’ve bitten. Model saying apologies for your child to eventually internalize that their bites caused pain. Again, our toddlers are developmentally not yet capable of empathy, but it’s never too early to model and teach them.
One way to further develop empathy is by asking your toddler an insightful question such as ‘what should we do to make [person bitten] feel better?’. Even if they’re still preverbal, teaching and modeling these language skills helps them to articulate them in the future.
3. Redirect what and where your toddler can bite.
As stated earlier, toddlers’ biting is more likely due to big emotions and feelings that need to be released from their bodies. So sometimes, instead of stopping them, we can redirect them to where and what they can bite.
We can provide them with stuffed toys, chewing bracelets, pillows, basically, anything that doesn’t harm them or another person/animal/precious ornaments in the process. Help them build emotional regulation skills when they’re not yet dysregulated, and hopefully, it will lessen the chances of them biting you or another person.
There you have it, dear parent. Three ways to prevent your toddler from biting. And just to put it out there, our toddlers may not completely stop biting. They’ll eventually outgrow it, but level your expectations with your toddlers. It would take a lot of repetition, patience, and more repetition for them to actually get it.
If you need more posts with dealing with your toddler’s tantrums, here are some articles that might be of help to you:
How To Deal With Pushbacks After School
How to Set Boundaries for Your Child’s Screen Time
7 Steps to Handle Your Toddler’s Big Feelings
Cheering for you dear parent in this parenting journey we have together!
Kristine
