Toddlers: 12 - 24 Months
Malibu45
member
Options
Help! 19 month old pinching and biting
Malibu45
member
I wrote a few weeks ago about my daughter's biting habit and sadly it has not stopped or even decreased. She is now also pinching in addition to biting. Typically her biting or pinching does not happen out of frustration or anger. It appears that she trying to get attention when she engages in the behavior. I feel so defeated and a failure as a parent. DH and I are at our wits end and are not sure how else to handle these behaviors. We have been consistent with how we handle the behaviors, and have tried several different things but nothing seems to be working. I do not know what else to do so I am really needing some good, solid advice 
Here is a little background. DD is very active, extremely social and very bright. She has always been advanced in regards to her speech and language. Her receptive and expressive language is definitely advanced for her age..at this time she has at least 50 functional words. She is very independent and likes to explore/experiment to learn. She definitely engages more in these behaviors when there is down time or when she bored. I am always trying to keep her stimulated or engaging in meaningful activities but I obviously can't do that always. I have noticed she does not like to play by herself, which is most likely the result of me staying out of work to be a SAHM for the first 13 months of her life. Any suggestions at all are very much appreciated ! Also, she typically only does these things to myself or DH but just recently she did it to another peer and attempted to do it to a different peer. I just am not sure anymore how to handle the situation when she engages in the behavior...
Here is a little background. DD is very active, extremely social and very bright. She has always been advanced in regards to her speech and language. Her receptive and expressive language is definitely advanced for her age..at this time she has at least 50 functional words. She is very independent and likes to explore/experiment to learn. She definitely engages more in these behaviors when there is down time or when she bored. I am always trying to keep her stimulated or engaging in meaningful activities but I obviously can't do that always. I have noticed she does not like to play by herself, which is most likely the result of me staying out of work to be a SAHM for the first 13 months of her life. Any suggestions at all are very much appreciated ! Also, she typically only does these things to myself or DH but just recently she did it to another peer and attempted to do it to a different peer. I just am not sure anymore how to handle the situation when she engages in the behavior...
Re: Help! 19 month old pinching and biting
First off don't beat yourself up. You and your H aren't doing anything wrong and you being a SAHM mom didn't cause any of these problems. Kids do weird crap when they are growing up and learning about the world.
Here is my story and an example of how I handled negative behavior. When DS was around 17 months old he starting hitting. Not necessarily out of anger but perhaps for attention. We decided to start time-outs for hitting only. We would give him a warning that if he did it again he would get time out and we told him that it's not nice, etc. Well, he would hit again so I wouldn't raise my voice or give any more attention to the negative behavior, I simply picked him up, put him in time out while calmly saying "no hitting, time out".
We did this over and over and over again until he finally got it. You have to stay on top of the behavior but don't give her any extra attention for it if that makes sense. Her being "smart" or "advanced" doesn't really have anything to do with this because most kids go through a phase like this. She just needs to learn correct behavior versus negative behavior and that she can't get away with it.