To Bite or Not to Bite?

So one day that sweet little angel you've been caring for suddenly decides that the best thing to do with those brand new pearly whites is to chomp down directly onto your arm. How do you respond?

Your first reaction may be some indecipherable vocalization signifying pain. Some would immediately follow this vocalization with a swift return of one's teeth onto the predator.

But don't be too quick to react on impulse. The messages we send to our children regarding aggressive behaviors can have lasting impacts.

Drs. B. Terry Brazelton and Joshua Sparrow recently responded to a grandmother's recommendation to use the "fight-fire-with-fire" approach when addressing bighting (article). I can relate all to well with this woman, who for all intensive purposes could very well be my mother.

In fact, just a few years ago my mother did that very thing, only not on her own grandchild. It was my niece who was the victim of a biting toddler, and my mother took it upon herself not to confront the child's parent about the incident, but to go straight to the horses mouth, so to speak. Yes, she actually bit this little girl in an effort to teach her a lesson: biting hurts.

Sure, the little girl may, indeed, never bite again. But for what reason? What has she learned? Has she learned that biting is an inappropriate outlet for anger or frustration?  Or, as the doctors point out, has the child perhaps learned that the adult is out of control, unpredictable, and untrustworthy? Has she learned an acceptable way to express her emotions?

According to the article:

Learning self-control is a major goal for childhood, never more than now in our world of schoolyard shootings, road rage and orange alerts. This is a much more important goal than just teaching a child that parents can hurt back, and to suppress his stunned and violated feelings. Suppressing angry, hurt feelings just postpones them — until the time that the child is bigger and more powerful than the parent.

So what does one do? Well, it depends on what is driving the behavior to begin with.

When our toddler acts out for attention, we put a stop to the behavior by diverting her energies elsewhere. We then try to attend to her while she is playing nicely, thus reinforcing the appropriate behavior.

When she acts out because she simply doesn't have the resources she needs to express herself, we explain to her that what she did was not nice and we show her a better way to respond to the situation.

Kids act out. That's how they learn about the world around them. Teach them the tools that will help them throughout life rather than just focusing on stopping the behavior.