How do i get my 1 year old to stop biting people???

Question

My 1 year old son is teething he already has his to bottom teeth and his top teeth are coming anyday now. The problem is that everytime he opens his mouth he is biting some one how do i stop him from doing that?? He hurts!!!

Answer 1

When a baby has sore teeth or gums, she will gnaw on just about anything to help relieve the pain ' even people. Biting doesn't have to be a fact of life, though; it's actually fairly easy to deal with.

Steps:
1. Treat the teething pain. Whether you use homeopathic teething tablets, natural teething gels, or pharmaceutical teething pain relievers, find something that will help ease your baby's discomfort. For severe teething pain, children's acetaminophen may help.

2. Take away things that shouldn't be ingested. Some toys have paint that may come off in your baby's mouth if she chews hard on them; other objects may break into pieces and become choking hazards. Put these objects away until your baby's teething episode has subsided.

3. Be consistent and firm without frightening your baby. If she bites you or someone else, say "Don't bite!" or "No biting!" firmly, and put her down gently for a minute if you are holding her. She should realize fairly quickly that biting is not OK.

4. Provide alternatives. Teething rings, teething toys or bagels you can freeze or refrigerate, and dampened, frozen washcloths are all appropriate objects for your baby to bite or chew on.

5. Keep these alternatives close at hand so that you can do a quick switch. When you put your baby down, hand her a teething toy immediately ' this will send the message that some things are OK to chew on, while others most definitely aren't.

Tips:
Cool drinks can help ease teething pain ' a little bit of ice water in a sippy cup may be a good quick fix.

If you are nursing, your baby may want to breast-feed more often for comfort while she is teething. Try to ease her discomfort before you nurse; this will lessen the possibility that you will get bitten.


Warnings:
Try to restrain the natural impulse to yelp or shout when your baby bites you. She is not doing it because she wants to hurt you, but because it seems to lessen her own discomfort. She will catch on fast once you let her know what to do.

Avoid giving your baby ice cubes to suck or chew on ' they can pose a choking hazard.

Try to be consistent about the biting issue, even before your baby begins teething ' it can seem cute when small babies gnaw on your fingers, but it will hurt when the teeth start to come in.

Answer 2

Do not bite him back... Toddlers are very "ME" oriented, and do not understand that what they do affects others, but biting back is not the answer. Biting is a very scary incident... both for the person/child who is bitten and the biter. Biting is very primal and instinctual, but is also something that can be controlled. I work in a preschool for children with special needs, and here are some techniques you can try to help lessen and eventually eliminate the biting:
- Make sure someone (can be you)"shadows" your child... this means that someone is constantly following them around wherever they go. This is necessary to help determine WHEN and under WHAT circumstances your child is biting. Is someone provoking them? Are they feeling afraid? Are they cornered or being asked to do something they don't want to do? Are they hungry? Observe and write down what you see when biting incidents take place.
- Look over your notes. Do you see a pattern? Is there a specific time of day when incidents are at a peak? Is there a particular person that is constantly targeted? What can you assume from the information you have gathered?
- Try some intervention. When you see a moment/situation starting to escalate where you think biting may be a response, step in. Two kids are arguing over a toy, and you know that one has a tendency to bite. Step between them and guide them in saying things like, "It's my turn" or "I'm playing with it".
- Try alternative methods. Children who bite also may have some developmental needs they are trying to satisfy with their biting. They may still need that firm pressure. Give your child chewy foods like tiny pieces of beef jerky or licorice. Bagels and granola bars also work well. You can also get a piece of plastic tubing (the kind you can get from ACE Hardware or Home Depot for fish tanks) for your child to chew on (almost the same effect as a teething ring). At our center, we punch holes in these chewy tubes and attach an elastic key-ring holder to it (the kind you can wear on your wrist) so that the child can use it any time they need to.
Experts have found (and I have seen personally) that children who eat more chewy foods have less biting incidents because that primal need to chew has been satisfied. Good luck!

Answer 3

Bite him back. Not hard of course but hard enough so it hurts just a little. Sometimes children do not realize how there actions affect others. They have no experience. Don't bruise or break the skin of course. But with just a little pressure it shows them that biting is pain full.

Answer 4

My 2 yr old still bites to communicate his anger at us. As easy as it would be to bite him back-which I have done-a firm direct NO and redirecting them works. We have also done time-outs in his pack-n-play. Kids also have that natural instinct to want to bite when they're teething-so give him a cold teether-some tylennol and lots of love-it will pass. but for me it hasn't been soon enough.

Answer 5

He is probably so young that he does not know that it hurts. My daugher was like that. What I did was bite her gently just enough so that I could tell from her facial expression that it started to hurt. I stopped and then said, "Biting hurts." She got a thoughtful look on her face and then bit herself to see how it felt. She never bit anyone again.

Answer 6

Honey, if you find out let me know...I get called at work at least once a week because my 17 month old has bite another child. It's so frustrating!

Answer 7

Find some sort of icky tasting medicene (maybe something you can make yourself, just not harmful) Then everytime he bites someone you say "Allright, now you have to take a spoon of the Icky Bite Medicene" .... He will learn quickly.
Go to Mommytalk.com for more helpful advice and tips! I love it there!~

Answer 8

bit him back. Let him know that he is hurting people. It may take more than one time ( and it has be a little bit hard or he won't know that it hurts). My son started biting at 8 mths. this is the advice my pediatrican gave me. It worked. after getting bitten 3 times, he stopped bitting.

Answer 9

at a year old he's old enough for you to explain to him that biting isn't ok and tell him why.
if that doesn't work i'm all for biting hom back and then asking him if he thought it was nice? don't do it to other people so on and so forth, if nothing else works, there's nothing wrong with a swat on the behind. be sure to explain why.

Answer 10

One drop of Hot Sauce per bite. Have a glass of milk ready immediately. Dairy offsets the heat created by the capsaisin. It sound barbaric but it works.