My 3 1/2 year old is biting - any tips?

Question

I have a 3 1/2 year old boy who is biting his friends at school. With MUCH work, he has brought the biting down to once a week or so, but now he has added pushing and pinching and talking back. He doesn’t come from a home that has violence. Any parenting tips to curb this behavior?

Biting back is not an option. Teachers at the Day Care (by law) are not allowed to do that.

Answer 1

Is he only doing this at the day care? I would take a few hours off from work and sit in at the day care to observe him with the other children. Is he being provoked or does this behavior surface at any moment? You need to see this for yourself. If the behavior is provoked then your son needs to be separated from the children that are provoking him. If he is doing this all the time, and for no apparent reason, then he needs to get a solitary time out of up to 4 minutes per instance. You and the day care provider need to get down on your knees when issuing this punishment and look him straight in the eyes, explaining why he is getting the punishment. Explain after the time out that he will be rewarded with a sticker for every day that he behaves himself. After 5 good stickers he gets to pick a special activity that he gets to do with you, like you reading him an extra bedtime story or an extra special bubble bath. After 30 good stickers he gets to pick a day out activity with you like going to the zoo or the beach.

He is acting out for a reason. It may be a justified reason or just because he angers easily. It is up to you to solve this and take care of it now!

Answer 2

The teachers at his school should have the knowledge to appropriately discipline your child at school. They should be telling him every time he does something, in very firm voices, that ____ HURTS! And he MAY NOT hurt his friends. Teeth are for eating, hands are for playing, feet are for walking, ETC. And have appropriate time out. You need to follow through at home with the same things, and you need to remind him every morning No biting, hitting, punching, pushing, etc. Tell him EVERY morning, what he CAN do when he is frustrated... go find a teacher, and ask for help. You will need to really work on the biting, in my center, when a 3-4 year old continually bites, they can be asked to leave the center, as at that age, they should NOT be biting anymore, they should have the words to express when they are frustrated or angry, and we document ALL biting incidents in the children's files.

Answer 3

My little girl tried that and I started biting her back and she quickly learned that it hurt and she stopped. But if you don't want to do that try to come up with some form of punishment taking toys away from him and not letting him get them back until he goes a whole week without biting, pinching or anything else bad. You are going to have to find something that is going to work for him. And stick to it. For example with the toy thing everytime you are told take away his favorite toy and keep doing it. Then whenever he goes a whole week without being bad then let him pick out one of his toys that he wants back. Good luck.
Also biting is a normal behavior my 3 year old was our first child and she stayed at home with me and was never exposed to biting but she still did it I talked with the doctor and he told me that biting is just something almost all kids do.

Answer 4

When I worked at a daycare for 8 years we had to deal with this situation several times and we found that if you make them bite into an orange peel for biting they stopped biting. I am not sure if it was the taste or if it satisfied their need to bite but it worked. Children that bite usually bite because they are frustrated and can't get their point across any other way or else they have a need to chew on something.

Answer 5

My mother had several ways to stop kids from behaving badly. One was for biting, and it may well seem a bit cruel to you, but I can tell you it worked for both of my two younger brothers. First, she would try to tell the child that it was NOT ok to bite because it hurt. If that didn't work after several attempts (and it didn't),she took the little hand into hers and bit the hand as hard as the child bit. The result? The child screamed and screamed, but NEITHER brother EVER bit another person again. That was some 60 years ago.

Chow!!

Answer 6

He desperately needs an age appropriate time out with every offense. 1 minute in the timeout chair for every year of his age. Buy an inexpensive egg timer. I remember one child whos biting was so problematic that we got an empty honey bear bottle..filled it with water and would squirt her in the face when we caught her biting. She would then do her timeout. Within a week she had stopped.

Answer 7

Flick him in the mouth hard enough to make him cry everytime he bites. If that doesn't work, build him a little wooden house and put it in the backyard for him to sleep him. Make him eat leftovers off the floor and smack him in the nose with a newspaper when he gets annoying.

Answer 8

Where did he get that from? Mine is 3 and he better never think about biting someone tell him thats bad and use some time out..if older kids are in the house he is learing it from someone.

Answer 9

My son did that one simply tell him that he can bite people. Then if he dose tell the teacher to exclude himm from all teh activities until he can learn to stop hurting people

Answer 10

Why is he doing it? Is he being bullied? Is he bullying the other kids? Look at the situations where this behaviour is happening and see if you can find a root problem to it.