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Northern California Babies
What to do about biting?
My 17 month old bites all the time. Mostly me, but sometimes his brother or someone else. I always say "Ow! No biting!" loudly when he does it, and then I put him down or walk away to not reenforce the behavior with attention. If he bites his brother then I coddle him and give him the attention. The thing is, it doesn't seem to deter him at all. He just smiles when I say no. He'll cry when I walk away, but will do it again as soon as I come back. I have bruises from where he's bitten me.I know sometimes he'll do it for attention, so I try to give him more positive attention when he's being good, but he'll bite out of the blue even then too. He does it both when he's teething and when he's not. I've tried giving him teethers to chew on but he's not really interested in them. He's not in daycare, my ILs watch him (and right now I'm on summer break so I'm with him most of the time)so I'm not sure where he's getting this from.I've even swatted him on the behind after he's bitten me especially hard, which I'm ashamed about, but I don't know what to do. I hate that he's a bully and he's not even a year and a half! Any suggestions?
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Re: What to do about biting?
Riley was/is a bitter too. He was bitting us hourly sometimes and bitting other kids too. I found that saying "no bitting hurts" made him laugh at me so we started raising our voice and doing time outs (just 60 seconds). I also started figuring out when/why he was bitting and we began tying to stop it before it happened. It took about three weeks of time outs each and everytime before we got improvement. It has been a week (7 whole days!!!) since anyone has bit! He still attempts from time to time, like yesterday when I got home from the movies and he was excited. But we remind him that teeth are for eating and mommy would rather have a kiss and he gave me a kiss instead. And it had been 48 hours since his last attempt to bit before that.
I will admit that this issue caused us to yell at him from time to time. Only when he was about to bit us or another child not after the fact.. We found yelling in a deep voice "NO" would get his attention long enough for us to run over and phisically remove him from the situation. I know many parents on here don't agree with yelling at a toddler but we took this approch because bitting is dangourous. I wouldn't hesitiate to yell for him to stop if he was in danger so why would I let him put other kids in danger? I understand our approch isn't for everyone nor will it work for all kids but it has so far seemed to work for us.
Good luck. Bitting sucks and it made me feel like the worst parent in the world when it was happening so I understand your pain and frustration. I hope this helps you guys figure out a way to stop it. ((((HUGS))))