2yo biting, almost drew blood. I'm so tired of this.

[PickledLily]

I've posted about this before, sorry, but it's got to a point where I really need something to work. I get bitten by DD once or twice every day. It's not a quick nip, she's like a bull terrier, hanging on and biting harder when I ask her (as calmly as I can manage) to stop. This morning she almost drew blood. It was agony (it was my neck she bit) and I lost it with her, shouted at her and burst into tears. She looked scared and shocked.

What can I do? She knows she's not to bite. I normally tell her in a calm voice not to bite, I put her down and walk away. She immediately gives me a hug and says sorry. But then she does it again the next day. If she doesn't bite me, she bites herself. She's worse when she is tired, and there is very little warning, so I'm starting to tread on eggshells to avoid a situation where she might bite. I know many toddlers bite, but this is getting out of control.

Sounds hard. DS is much the same. It is a phase honestly. It sounds like you are doing a good job of dealing with it, just calmly saying no and walking away. She will stop biting.

Sometimes with DS it's a combination of me not really engaging him properly when I talk to him and he gets frustrated. A lot of it is teething though and him being a toddler.

It's hard work though.

I got a copy of the book "Teeth are not for biting" and we read it a lot, and repeat the phrases from it all the time. Have a chewy toy that she can bite to hand as much as possible.

Have you noticed any pattern as to when she bites? Eventually with my DS I could usually tell when a cuddle was about to turn into a bite, and I would put him down and actually say "if you feel like biting, what should you do?". Most times he would go and get his chewy toy.

If I didn't manage to anticipate, I would react similarly to you - either a real or exaggerated "ow that hurts" and then I would put him down and walk away saying "teeth are not for biting". I would also say this if he started biting himself (he used to bite his forearm in frustration sometimes).

It can seem like it will never stop, but my DS now has come out the other side of this phase and biting is now extremely rare.

I haven't noticed any pattern, despite it going on for months. She does sometimes bite a toy instead, but usually it's just me I'm covered in bruises! She's been suddenly very unsettled at nursery too, crying for ages at drop off. We've been trying to work out why, but assumed it was just a phase as there wasn't anything obvious.

My DD has a tendency to bite. I have really lost it with her when she did it a couple of times really badly. In a way I think it helped her see that it hurt me, but obviously it's not an ideal way of dealing with it. The best way we've found to avoid her biting is keeping her blood sugar up. She turns into a bit of a monster when she's hungry and tired (like me!) I kind of know now when she might be in a biting mood and I put her down and remind her we don't bite.
If she does bite she gets sent to her room and has to say sorry and give me a kiss where she hurt me. She knows it's wrong, but I see that it's kind of an instinct that she struggles to control. She bites other things when she's frustrated.

Hmm, it could be low blood sugar. I'll see if that ties in. Thanks!