Biting is a common behavior often seen in toddlers and 3-year old kids. When children grow and develop problem-solving skills, they usually outgrow this biting behavior. Children bite usually to cope with a challenge or fulfill their basic need.
Try to understand the underlying cause of the biting will definitely help for an effective response on an infant who is exploring biting. If you avoid in the first stage, that is the best strategy for responding appropriately.
In This Article
Reasons why do Toddlers Bite
Sometimes toddler bites instinctively because of insecurity, scary, tensed or not developed self-control, etc. Here is some of the list that you can check out with your toddler’s behavior. You can find in the first stage and helps to avoid this behavior.
- Feeling insecure
- Imitate the other child behavior or sometimes elder.
- Overwhelmed by sounds, lights, dark place, scary behaviors, etc.
- Just to check what will happen
- Not developed self-control, sometimes under stress, too much tensed, feeling hunger unable to expose, etc
- Anger, frustration, joy, excitement, overwhelmed, etc.
- Active on play time
- Satisfy the need for oral stimulation.
- These are the reasons toddler doesn’t know to express their feelings in another form and start to bite. There are many precautions to stop your child from biting. Let’s see one by one.
Do Toddlers Bite Themselves
Yes, of course, toddler bites themselves, as they don’t have any other option to explore their aggravations or frustrations. Toddlers don’t have the communication links to express their feelings and needs so they start to bite themselves. It is an unknown way of ignorance.
What kid knows about the outer world, it is drastically inner feeling showing that is shown in the outer form. They teething themselves and feel more comfortable and relaxed.
To avoid this situation think about the frustrating need of a child, spend time with them and understand their feelings will greatly help you in stopping the toddler’s bite.
How to Prevent and Stop Toddlers Biting
When you see the signs of the child that may be on verge of biting, do the following steps to help in order to prevent or stop from biting.
Strategies to Prevent Biting
Distract your child with toy or game activities
When the child started to bite never punish them, just distract them with a toy or some colorful books. Allow them to walk along with you by holding your fingers and distract their behavior unknowingly.
Our main aim is to reduce the tension of the child, change the attention of the child by giving some works related to fingers or hands will greatly reduce the biting behavior.
Create a situation to handle on triggering the need to bite
When your child is specific about biting, allow them to bite any kind of crackers, carrot sticks or a pacifier. A child may bite due to oral stimulation so allow them to bite safely with the help of some chewing items. If your child is teething, you can offer them with a pacifier or cold washcloth for biting.
If the child bites for a long time, they may feel insecure or bored. Sometimes they feel frustrated or angry. We can’t guess the behavior of the child.
It is better to spend more time or show our care to the child and understands the feelings of the child and share your love is the most common trigger for biting.
Help the children to move on
The moment you start see the biting of the child, never punish them or warn them. If you do so, they start doing vigorously. So help the child to move on to some interesting works like play-dough, drawing, walking to the next room or garden, and make them relax in an easy way.
Remember, when you start giving new behavior to the child, again they start to bite seriously. Allow them to do the work which they are more interested in. Make them understand the cause and effects of biting.
Provide Oral Stimulation
When your child needs for oral stimulation, offer them with crunchy healthy snacks at regular intervals of time to avoid biting. Make them be active in some work or allow them to engage with several funny activities and sure they forget about biting.
Spend more time with your lovely kid is the best way to prevent the child from biting. When you are with your child, they feel secure, comfortable, happy and safe. There is no chance for biting with fingers, mom’s or parent’s shoulders, breast during feeding, etc.
The best way to prevent your child from biting is, give too much care and make them understand you are caring for them too much. Give regular intervals of snacks and foods to reduce biting incidents.
Provide them with a great opportunity for active plays. When your baby is totally engaged with different kinds of activities sure it never thinks about biting.