2.7 year old won't stop biting - don't know what else to try?

[TowMater]

Hi all,
My son has been biting other kids in his age group at nursery for 4 months and we have tried everything, he's still doing it and we are totally stumped about what to do now. We've read him the "Teeth are not for Biting" book over and over (I'm starting to think he sees it as some sort of instruction manual!). He has been told firmly "No Biting" and sat out on his own for a while as the bitten child is taken care of, he's been taught to say he's sorry and give the other child a hug.

The nursery are exceptionally good and have always worked with us to try to come up with a strategy, but even they don't know what to do next.

At first he did it if he was obviously anxious or frustrated, as he has speech delay and can't express himself very well. We developed tactics to head off any frustrations and he has come on hugely in terms of his communication, but the recent biting incidents seem totally random, he just marches up to another child and bites them, often quite hard.

Are there any other parents out there with kids who have resisted the usual tactics to stop biting? Any ideas on what we could do now?
Thanks!

nothing short of paranoid vigilence (hovering) to prevent it the moment it happens, sorry.
Which you can't do much of at nursery, obviously, THEY have to do it.
Also, anything they seem to seem to be fighting over, the attacked party gets. So he gets told off, has to say sorry, AND he doesn't even get to keep whatever object he wanted. Lose lose lose all round.

My eldest was a biter - turned out tone an attention issue (he was about 2.5, already had a younger DB and DD1 wagon the way). I went to the GPs surgery who had a behavioural specialist, so worth asking your surgery for help.
I had to keep a diary, things like what happened before the bite, how I handled it, etc. I also had to spend 10 mins a day with him, 1:1, no distractions, doing his thing (big on Thomas trains back then). It worked for us almost immediately.
It is incredibly hard, I really feel for you. My son is 9 now and never bites ;-) but he can throw a strop! I still think attention is an issue for him and it reminds me to spend 1:1 time much in the same way as I did then.
Good luck.

Sorry for typos, blame typing on phone

Hi, Thanks for the responses.

Its so difficult to know what to do with DS. He used to bite if there was a tussle over a particular toy, or if another child was deliberately winding him up, but now he appears to be doing it for no reason that we can see. He also only does it in nursery. He did try to bite me a couple of times, but that was months ago and after he got ticked off he never tried it again.

His key worker at nursery has been great, all the staff have tried to keep an eye on him to try to head off any biting, and he gets special one-to-one time with the keyworker every day. He also gets loads of attention at home as he's our only child, although we work we make sure that we spend individual time with him for as much time as we can (this is particularly because of his speech delay and the work we put in to help him - probably around 2-3 hours a day and then all day at weekends). So he doesn't lack attention, but the flipside is that he just wants attention ALL the time, and he's always been like that - he never ever plays on his own.

He bites every day he's at nursery (4 days a week), and as well as the actual biting he does attempt to do it a few times too. To be honest, we are mortified, I can imagine how the other parents feel collecting their poor child who has a set of livid teeth marks on them. He used to get upset when he was told off and told No Biting, but now he seems to be completely oblivious and he's even gone and plonked himself down in the 'time out' area after he's bitten, so he does know what he's doing.

We are getting desperate now, I know nursery won't ask us to remove him but I'm worried about his relationships with the other kids and him being left out of birthday parties and play dates etc.

TM

Do 2yos get invited to playdates? .
Annoying as it is now, I bet you'll have this sorted by the time he's 4yo, OP, that's when social life really begins ime.