At Childspace, we understand that biting is a common, natural behavior for young children in groups. While we take biting seriously and try our best to prevent it, we also try not to over-react. Our primary goal is to determine the cause or need behind the biting and provide alternatives that address the cause or meet the need. While bites sometimes leave ugly little bruises, most young children can't bite hard enough to break the skin, so there is no health risk with the vast majority of bites. In general the child who is being bitten calms down quickly after the act of biting is interrupted and an adult provides comfort. Sometimes, cool water, and ice pack, or a cool cloth is applied.
Particularly for young toddlers who are becoming mobile and independent but don't have enough verbal language to express themselves, biting is a way to meet powerful needs such as eliciting a response, relieving teething pain, getting adult attention, finding oral stimulation, expressing emotions, feeling powerful, or needing more physical space. Many young children bite others for some period of time in their development, and this phase usually doesn't last more than a few weeks or months. We believe our mixed age classrooms with small numbers of children and better-than-required ratios (7 infants and young toddlers with 2 teachers; 10 older toddlers/young preschoolers with 2 teachers) provide less "need" for biting and allow teachers to have good supervision, but it is impossible to prevent all biting in a childcare setting without expelling children, which we have never done. We have, on the other hand, accepted children who were expelled from other programs for biting, and have found they adjust well to our play-based program and quickly form positive relationships with teachers and peers.
It can be distressing for parents if their child is bitten once, and even more so when their child is targeted by a child who bites. Usually the parent is more upset than the child who was bitten. Children at this age generally have lots of physical discomforts and get lots of small injuries, and to them a bite is not much different than a fall or a belly ache or a scratch from a pet's paw or an injection. Children's bodies are resilient and have a great capacity for healing.
Targeting sometimes happens when a mobile child who needs to feel powerful or needs to elicit a reliable response discovers that a non-mobile child can't get away and will give an exciting response when bitten. It also can happen when a mobile child grabs toys or hasn't learned to give another child physical space. In general, toddlers can't yet take the perspective of another person, so when they get a big response from an action, such as another child screaming, they don't understand they have inflicted pain. We try to keep a targeted child a safe distance away from the child who is biting, including using different spaces or physical barriers and assigning a specific teacher to closely watch a specific child or pair of children. To maintain confidentiality, we do not disclose the names of children who are bitten or biting. If a bite leaves a visible mark, the parent of the injured child is given a completed incident report at the end of the day to be signed and filed. These incident reports are tracked at least monthly to help teachers look for patterns and prevent future incidents. Parents receive a copy of all signed incident reports related to their own child.
When a child gets into a pattern of biting, we take note of the circumstances of the biting so we can try to meet the child's needs in another way, such as providing a frozen teether, providing more space and more adult attention, and separating children as needed. We also notify the parents of the situation and how we are handling it, and we recognize parents can't do much (if anything) to influence their children's behavior in our classrooms. For younger children, we use an immediate brief, stern, negative verbal response, such as "No biting!" We then solicit parent input as we consider what reason the child might have for biting so we can attempt to meet that need in another way. For older children, we use more language to explain why biting is not okay and that biting hurts, and we sometimes have them help console the child they have bitten, by offering a hug or holding a cool cloth on the bite.
Particularly for young toddlers who are becoming mobile and independent but don't have enough verbal language to express themselves, biting is a way to meet powerful needs such as eliciting a response, relieving teething pain, getting adult attention, finding oral stimulation, expressing emotions, feeling powerful, or needing more physical space. Many young children bite others for some period of time in their development, and this phase usually doesn't last more than a few weeks or months. We believe our mixed age classrooms with small numbers of children and better-than-required ratios (7 infants and young toddlers with 2 teachers; 10 older toddlers/young preschoolers with 2 teachers) provide less "need" for biting and allow teachers to have good supervision, but it is impossible to prevent all biting in a childcare setting without expelling children, which we have never done. We have, on the other hand, accepted children who were expelled from other programs for biting, and have found they adjust well to our play-based program and quickly form positive relationships with teachers and peers.
It can be distressing for parents if their child is bitten once, and even more so when their child is targeted by a child who bites. Usually the parent is more upset than the child who was bitten. Children at this age generally have lots of physical discomforts and get lots of small injuries, and to them a bite is not much different than a fall or a belly ache or a scratch from a pet's paw or an injection. Children's bodies are resilient and have a great capacity for healing.
Targeting sometimes happens when a mobile child who needs to feel powerful or needs to elicit a reliable response discovers that a non-mobile child can't get away and will give an exciting response when bitten. It also can happen when a mobile child grabs toys or hasn't learned to give another child physical space. In general, toddlers can't yet take the perspective of another person, so when they get a big response from an action, such as another child screaming, they don't understand they have inflicted pain. We try to keep a targeted child a safe distance away from the child who is biting, including using different spaces or physical barriers and assigning a specific teacher to closely watch a specific child or pair of children. To maintain confidentiality, we do not disclose the names of children who are bitten or biting. If a bite leaves a visible mark, the parent of the injured child is given a completed incident report at the end of the day to be signed and filed. These incident reports are tracked at least monthly to help teachers look for patterns and prevent future incidents. Parents receive a copy of all signed incident reports related to their own child.
When a child gets into a pattern of biting, we take note of the circumstances of the biting so we can try to meet the child's needs in another way, such as providing a frozen teether, providing more space and more adult attention, and separating children as needed. We also notify the parents of the situation and how we are handling it, and we recognize parents can't do much (if anything) to influence their children's behavior in our classrooms. For younger children, we use an immediate brief, stern, negative verbal response, such as "No biting!" We then solicit parent input as we consider what reason the child might have for biting so we can attempt to meet that need in another way. For older children, we use more language to explain why biting is not okay and that biting hurts, and we sometimes have them help console the child they have bitten, by offering a hug or holding a cool cloth on the bite.
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