 | I don't agree with this advice because any child at any time can suddenly become the child who bites. It's perfectly normal. Some children hit, others kick, others bite. I've seen parents go from indignant to humble as their child went from "victim" to "biter." I first had a child who never bit and then had one who bit all the time (only at home or when I was around, never at daycare, lucky me.) I felt the same way as Bmine with my first but became enlightened with my second. I've done a lot of reading and tried everything myself from ignoring to pushing my son's hand against his own teeth mid-bite. (Never bite a child back -- it's very poor role-modeling, can cause harm, and often the child doesn't even understand the connection; he just sees an adult biting him.) I found out that the child who bites is actually in more physical danger than the bitten child. Although the human mouth harbors lots of germs, human blood is more hazardous to injest. The solution, at least in part, lies in (1) discovering why and when the child bites so that it could possibly be prevented -- like maybe the child needs an early nap, maybe the child gets easily overstimulated and needs more quiet-time, maybe s/he is cutting a tooth, and (2) consistently and immediately letting the child know that biting people will result in nothing good -- not a toy she was trying to get, not attention (negative or positive), but will just result in a stern verbal response like "People are not for biting," and removal from the action. Depending on the age, the child who bit might hold the icebag on the other child's owie. It's a good idea for all the adults who care for the child to follow the immediate response plan. The daycare should assign someone to keep an extra vigilant eye on the child who is biting (notice I didn't say "biter" because it's not good to label the child) to catch the child before it happens. Lots of compliments and rewards should be given to the biting child when s/he uses other ways of handling his/her feelings,like crying or yelling. With my son, I'm not proud about some of the ways that I tried to handle his biting habit, especially when he bit me because it really hurts! Biting can evoke a lot of anger, as we see in Bmine's response, and as I also experienced. But, we have to keep remembering that it is normal and that the child who bites needs the same guidance as any other child who expresses her feelings in inappropriate ways.
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