Parenting a toddler that bites, pulls hair and throws food

[tweetiepie1]

I have a 2 year old girl, and she is starting to show negative behaviours such as throwing her food bowl on the floor and walls when she is done eating (but this is often unexpected as it is very sudden after her last mouthful of food). Also she pulls my hair, bites me very hard and scratches my face. I need help such as practical tips on how to stop this type of behaviour. My mother is very concerned and says I never behaved like this as a child, which is not helpful as well I still need to deal with my daughter. Can anyone help how do we as parents try to mould more positive behaviour and reduce the negative stuff?

Try to reduce her negative behavior by introducing the concept of punishment. Tell her on which positive behaviors she can be reinforced as well.

If she’s being physical then remove yourself or remove her from the situation. As soon as she starts to bite or scratch etc then walk away, or put her in a safe place for a few moments. You can say something like ‘I don’t want to be hurt’ and then leave the room for a minute. Try not to use too many words as their brains can’t handle it at this age.
Also are there any triggers for it? Does it happen more in certain situations eg before dinner time might be because she’s hungry. Is she tired and grumpy and so more likely to act out like that?
My son went through a bad hitting phase at around 2 and we noticed that a lot of the time it would happen when he was overexcited (play fighting with dad for example), or frustrated (can’t express it verbally, so was physical instead). If you can try to work out if there’s a reason behind it then you can try to get ahead of it e.g. making sure she’s not too hungry, stopping the game before she gets overexcited etc.
You can also show her how else to use her hands - so if she’s starting to pull your hair you could give her something appropriate to pull on like a blanket. Say ‘we don’t pull hair, we can pull blankets instead’. If she tried hitting then can give her a pillow and say to hit that, not people etc.
I don’t think there’s a quick fix as it’s a stage of development. Just have to be consistent with showing appropriate behaviour and hope it passes quickly!

The throwing should be fairly easy to sort. It sounds as though she’s going through the trajectory play schema. It can emerge after 18 months and 2 years seems pretty normal. There is some information in the schema here which includes ideas for her to explore trajectory hopefully without wrecking the bowls and walls

As for the biting and hitting, Dr Sears has a good article about those here.

You might also want to read Little Angels by Prof Tanya Byron. I think it might be out of print now but you can buy it through Abebooks. I think she also has some videos on YouTube but I could be making that up

I think as always when you get these little patches of inappropriate behaviour its worth doing this simple progress checker.

Has she had her 2 year check yet?

Thank you explodingSmittens and Row23, I will check out the links you shared, as I think I need to start some strategies. IN terms of the biting it happened on a flight and it was so painful I thought I would bleed. But normally she gets very excited the problem is it can go from 1 to 10 in seconds hence why I am confused, we will have the health check this month as she turns 2 in 24 days!

Ah I liked this website just had a quick glance, https://www.myteachingcupboard.com/blog/the-trajectory-schema
I am a trained teacher for high school so I like that I can build her exploration using this framework. And yes she loves to play kick the ball (we do it with DH and grandma) also she loves it when DH throws the ball up very high in the air.

Glad you e found the information on the Trajectory Schema useful. There are lots of activities you can do around that

If her 2 year check is coming up, has the HV asked you to fill in any assessments like the 2 year Social & Emotional Ages & Stages or the regular Ages & Stages?