Biting Toddler

[RBanks]

Help! My grandson is 2 1/2 years old and is behaving in a very aggressive manner in day care. He is an only child and started day care about 6 months ago. My daughter works about 30 hours a week.He was doing fine in day care until about 6 weeks ago when he started biting other children.It has now become a daily,sometimes as much as 3x daily.He has bitten more than 1/2 of the children. The day care is ready to expel him and my daugthter is at her wits end. We have read all the advice-from don't over react, redirect his attention and to bite him back.The school has been putting tabasco on his tongue.The class is 9-14 children ages 2-3yrs old/with 1 teacher and 1-2 helpers. My daughter has been putting him in time out and taking away priveleges (ie. TV, dessert.. etc.). The day care called again this morning by 10:30 and asked that he be picked up-he had bitten 3 x within about a minute, one little boy was bitten twice and then he went after a little girl and bit her.He is at home right now, in his room for the day. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

[worried mum]

Hello. I havent got any easy solutions to your problem =I went through the same with my son. For the first 2 yrs of his life he was looked after by his nannan and then after his 2nd birthday I decided to put him in daycare full time as I thought he needed to mix with children his own age. For the first 2 months he seemed okay, then he started having tantrums. this escalated into violence against the other children. I consulted my Health visitor and eventually got refered to the hospital. My appointment arrived about 3 months later and they diagnosed him with ' behaviour problems' about 2 weeks later we were asked to wothgraw him from the nursery as he had bitten 11 children in 7 days. He was aslo very aggresive with myself and his daddy. His nannan looks after him now and he is better behaved (though not an average 3 1/2 yr old) he starts nursery in september and I am very worried about how he will cope. I wonder did your child mix with children before the nursery and was it in such ;arge groups? Maybe he needs to attend a nursery with a smaller no of children/ a greater level of adult/child supervision? I am certain this is what my son needs. I am trying to get him mixing more with children and it does help - but I do 'supervise' in case he has a tantrum and lashes out. Good luck

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

There is, of course, a limit to how much a daycare setting can tolerate of such behavior, because they are responsible for the safety of the children. In an ideal world, they would start him off each day for now playing by himself, and then permit him to play alongside one other child. Large group interaction should be avoided for now. At the first sign of any aggression, and an adult should always be close by, he should be placed in time out for approximately ten minutes. At the conclusion of the time out he should, once again, play by himself. At home, it does make sense to sit him in time out in the wake of any such behavior, but the time out period should be fairly short (10 minutes or so is sufficient at his age). It's probably not useful to confine him to his room, but privileges such as viewing TV or playing outside can be withdrawn for the duration of the day. Children so youn benefit primarily from the immediate consequence that follows in the wake of the misbehavior.