Happy Biting

"We were playing and having fun, why did he bite me?!"

When children are biting it's not fun for anyone. Their ability to bite is often surprisingly strong, and sometimes their desire to do so is equally strong! It's common for children to go through phases where they bite, but it can become a real problem as they get older. I've worked with quite a few parents who reported a biting problem of some sort. It's often a problem that the child bites when angry, and we can kind of understand why the child is biting at those times. We tend to think of biting as an aggressive action (after all, it hurts!), but children may bite for a variety of reasons, and not always because of anger or aggression. In this case, we're talking about "happy biting."

To best help a child who bites, we need to understand a bit about why the child is biting and then how we should respond to it. Naturally a child may bite out of anger, but it often surprises parents that a child may also bite out of happiness. This seems strange, right? We need to understand that emotional reasoning takes time to develop and if a child is "worked up", then certain behaviors (like biting) are more likely. Being "worked up" can include being mad, being scared, or being very excited and happy. In all cases, the child is "in a state of high arousal."

High arousal has a bunch of behaviors associated with it, including things like laughing, jumping, clapping, screaming, spinning, biting, hitting/kicking, grabbing, and hugging. Most of those sound fine, and maybe even fun. But some of those we tend to associate with being angry. For a child who is 2 to 4 years old, they've not had a lot of time to understand the differences between these different types of "high arousal" states and may produce any of those behaviors during any of those emotions (such as biting or hitting when happy). As they get older, they'll learn to tell the difference and their behavior will become more specific (hugging is not part of being mad, hitting is not part of being happy, and so forth). They learn to tell the difference, however, based on the reactions of others and by observing your behaviors (they'll imitate you). It takes time, but patiently helping the child learn what is "ok" and what is not, and giving other cues to show how they maybe should be feeling will help them learn to tell these emotions apart.

Information on how to respond to and stop biting can be found here: Biting