Biting at DC

chloebeth930

Hey ladies,

I normally hang over on PAL but hope you don't mind if I post a question over here.  My daughter is 20 months old and goes to daycare part time.  A few weeks ago she was bitten by a child. A couple other moms that I know who take their kids to the same daycare told me that room has a notorious biter in there. I realize that this can happen in daycare so I just requested to move rooms so she wouldn't be in the room with the child that is known to bite.

Fast forward to this week.  All the children were put in the same room (there are 5 different class rooms) because there was such low enrollement this week (I live on a military base and most people leave for the holiday). Today she came home with a bite mark again!  I called up to the daycare because no one had told us and so I figured the teacher just didn't see it (which is understandable, it can happen that quickly).

My biggest issue isn't with the daycare not preventing the biting, I understand they are toddlers and that will happen. FWIW though, I did alert the daycare to the biting incident again so they could look into it.  However, I just want to figure out some what I can teach Lilliana that it isn't ok when someone bites her and how to try and defend herself from that.  I don't want to teach her to hit or bit the child who is biting her back, but I am just not sure where to go from here.  Any advice would be appreciated.

financialdiva

Have you spoken to the daycare on what your child did to provoke the biter? Biters tend to be provoked by an action, like toy snatching, pushing, hitting- which is all NORMAL for this age. You should discuss this with the school so you can teach your child not to provoke instead of defending herself.

Although, I would love to know how you would teach a toddler to defend themselves??? Lol.

ETA: it's unfortunate and it sucks. My son was repeatedly bitten, like 6 times per week, and the daycare did nothing when they should of been shadowing my son AND the biter to see why he kept biting Ds1. I did ultimately pull Ds1 from that school, for many additional reasons. You were right to inform the school so they can better supervise the biter. Are there no incident reports being prepared?

chloebeth930

The first time she was bit it is because she wouldn't give up a toy she had to the child, the second time we don't know what happened because the daycare provider didn't see it in action. If it is sharing issue we could work on that on our end, but sometimes without being able to know why she got bit I feel helpless.

In regard to teaching my 20 month old self defense, I have no idea what I would do hahah! Hmm maybe I should google toddler self-defense classes

mb314

Estwd2 said:

Not much you can do with a 20-month old. It's the teachers' responsibility to observe, prevent, and appropriately respond to biting. Any decent daycare should have policies and strategies in place to address biting.

This.  My DS is a biter, and I hate being the mom of "that kid."  But my daycare provider and I discussed what they were doing to prevent it and how they "reprimand" him.  The most important thing is for the daycare providers to try to prevent situations where the kid might bite other kids.  For my DS, it's catching him as he's beginning to get frustrated with a situation (toy taken from him by other kid, etc).  Also, he's only 15 months, so saying "No biting" when he does manage to bite is key. 

I would be mad that they didn't notify you of the bite.  Rather than defending herself, I would make sure your DD knows to notify a teacher if she gets bitten.

Carnation77

Your child is 20 months old.  If the teacher didn't see if or hear your child react to getting bit then that's a problem.  They're being paid to WATCH your child.  Have you asked them what they're doing to try to prevent and correct the biting?