Biting 9 Months to 20 Months
You probably thought biting was over when your younger toddler’s friends finished teething and started playing with objects instead of putting them in their mouths. Well, not so. Investigative/exploratory biting (which usually occurs from infancy to around 14 or 15 months) is followed by biting to get a reaction.
Why does biting seem to occur among children in groups at school? The simple answer to this question, according to noted psychologists Louise Ilg and Florence Ames, is that children bite because they lack language and social skills. They say biting is a developmental phenomenon – it happens at predictable times for predictable reasons tied to children’s ages and stages.
This predictable age and stage is called action/reaction biting. The most frequent reaction children create is a big response. When you bite down on the finger that is gingerly exploring your face, it gets a big, loud reaction from the other child and from the adults in your preschool classroom. The ruckus that is created is interesting, different, and, yes, even fun.
Children between 9 and 20 months of age are beginning to connect actions with reactions. They are exploring interesting combinations of actions to see what reactions they might discover. Other younger toddlers provide a wide array of interesting reactions to being bitten, whether purposefully bitten or accidentally bitten. As a result, biting may be quite an interesting activity!
Regardless of why the child is biting, childcare professionals and preschool teachers have a variety of strategies for preventing it. Most of their efforts will go into close super-vision, careful room arrangements that spread children out in the classroom, and, most importantly, by getting to know your child’s needs and temperament very well. The teacher also will make sure popular toys are duplicated so that biting isn’t necessary to get a toy. She will continue to teach your younger toddler to touch his/her friends gently. But even with all of these efforts, biting may still occur.
How will your teacher handle this stage of biting?
Your child’s childcare provider or preschool teacher’s first reaction will be to comfort your child by holding and cuddling him/her. She briefly isolates the biter, so he/she gets the message that biting is not acceptable.
At this stage, younger toddlers also need to know that as interesting as the reaction to the bite was, the teacher does not approve of hurting others. She will tell the biter that she doesn’t like it. We want younger toddlers to get attention from positive social behaviors, not from negative ones. The message we want to send is that the preschool teacher will spend more of her time with children who have positive social behaviors than those who don’t.
Your younger toddler’s preschool teacher has already started to teach your child early social problem-solving skills. She started by responding quickly to calls for help from your toddler, validating that she would always be there when your child needed her. She uses narration – a kind of ongoing monologue about what is going on in the younger toddler’s world – to help him/her learn to pick up cues about other toddlers’ feelings and reactions. Narration helps children get information to use in their interactions with their friends.
Remember These Key Points About Younger Children and Biting
Biting disappears and is replaced by more mature skills as your younger toddler’s skills grow.
Be your child’s first teacher about biting. Don’t let him/her bite you without getting a negative reaction from you.
Give your younger toddler lots of attention and hugs for positive social behaviors with friends and siblings like touching softly or taking turns.
Talk about what your child is doing and describe his/her actions and reactions and the actions and reactions of others as they happen.
Model behaviors you want your child to use like talking softly, saying please and thank you, and holding your hand in dangerous situations.
Parents of older children can be a resource to help you understand biting.
Who did the biting is not as important as the teacher’s plan for handling it.
Talk to your child’s teacher if you have concerns about any of your younger toddler’s behaviors.
If you’re concerned about your child’s biting, visit our Parent Advisor and The Buzz Blogs . You are welcome to join our private Parent Advisor Facebook group. It’s a growing community of parents and preschool teachers where you can learn and share more parenting tips.