biting

At the first center I worked at I eventually took over a room after all three employees quit on the same day. The first month was rough as my co-workers and I taught them not to touch electric sockets and all kinds of other things they had been allowed to do that was unsafe when the other teachers were in the room. One of the things that was the hardest to stop was biting. It was difficult but after a month we went down from multiple bites a day to maybe once a week and as those children moved up to the next room and we got new children biting occurred around once a month.

I had a little girl in this room who was part of the new class after the other ones who moved up who were biting. She would bite at least once a day. After about two week of biting around once a day I started to shadow her so that I could not only prevent it but figure out why she was doing it. Turns out she was biting when she felt enclosed. Every time a lot of children were around her and she didn't see a way out of the crowd of children around her she would bite. I started to shadow her less but keep an eye on her and made sure no more than two or three children were around her at once. The biting lessened and then stopped unless I couldn't get to her on time and remove her from the situation in time.

This little girl wasn't the only child who bit that I've dealt with and what triggers the biting has varied. For this little girl it was enclosed spaces. For a little boy that bit it was because he was hungry. For another little boy it was because he had a cloth he used to bite on all the time and when the parents took it away so that he didn't get too attached, he started to bite other children instead. Some children bite because they were frustrated or were trying to communicate using their words, couldn't get them out so they bit. Some children did it because they were teething and it was a release of the pain.

With each situation I've dealt with it differently.  With the little boy who bit because he didn't have his cloth anymore to bite on I talked to the parents about bringing in another toy to help him feel the security the cloth did. With the boy who bit because he was hungry I broke the bread into bite size pieces for him and let him start eating on that while we got the rest of lunch ready. We did this with the whole class and it helped calm lunch time down. With the ones who bit because they got frustrated or didn't have the words yet to communicate I really started to help them gain their vocabulary and started teaching them to use their words to communicate. Each time the biting went down. One thing I did all across the board is right after they bit I would give them a teether and tell them to bite on it. This really helped those who were biting because they were teething. It helped relieve that pain and it always worked regardless of the reason the biting occurred.