At wit's end with ds - he has a reputation as "the boy who bites".

[TAFKAAAAAARGHtheUrbanDryad]

Ds is 3 in Jan, and has a really bad biting problem. He bites anyone and everyone, me, his baby sister, his friends, dh - literally everyone. The other week I had to remove him from a soft play party because he bit 3 children (2 of them complete strangers), I smacked his leg - after warning him that I would - after he bit baby dd yesterday. Today we were having a really good day, so I took him to the park to meet my friend and her dd, who's the same age. I had my back turned for a minute (if that) while feeding dd and he attacked my friend's dd and bit her so hard that she is bleeding.

I just don't know what to do anymore - I have tried biting him back, smacking, ignoring and giving the injured party the attention, time out, taking toys away, removing privileges, reward charts. Everything.

He also kicks, bites, spits, hits - his behaviour is just vile, to be honest.

You know you see those threads on here about the horrible child who attacks other children for no reason whatsoever, the "little shit", well that's ds. Parents tell their kids not to play with him because he's so awful to other children.

I am at a loss. I am struggling to think of a single redeeming feature that he has. Even I don't like him anymore, and he's my son.

Oh dear.

I've seen plenty of posts like this before and I think the only thing you can do at the moment is to make sure his opportunities for biting are as as limited as you can possibly make them.

So, no soft play and any play dates you have you have to keep as close eye on him as you possibly can. If you are feeding dd you have to go and get your ds first and have him sat at your feet doing something else until you can put dd down and your hands are free to remove ds at the first instant he looks like he is going to bite.

I know, I know it is going to be very hard, and your social life will be curtailed as a result BUT it is a phase and he will grow out of it.

As a mother of a child who was badly bitten (at a soft play place) you have a responibility to other children atm to ensure your ds doesn't bite them.

I'm sure you know that biting and smacking a 2 year old will be of no help whatsoever.

With him biting you all I would do it get down to him and say in your very most strongest serious voice with the VERY serious eyes.

That hurt Mummy, We do not bite.

and leave it at that.

Can you not spot the triggers when he is going to do it? Are the biting incidents more frequent when he is tired/hungry/bored?

sorry, last thing before school run, SD don't sweat it that he is becoming the kid that other parents don't want their DC playing with.

2 yos are notoriously rubbish at playing with other children. It's all ME ME ME isn't it. Don't set him up to fail. Cut back on social events with other children until ds is a little bit older. He will stop biting, eventually

slubber - there's no pattern to it at all. He can be well-fed, well-rested, entertained, on no colourings or additives, not too much sugar and he will still attack other children. I can't see a trigger at all.

Biting him back and smacking him - the last resort - has Not Helped At All, as I'm sure you can understand, and now I feel like even more of a shit. It hasn't made any difference anyway.

He was bit very badly on a number of occasions at nursery, which was dealt with very badly by the nursery, and I think this is where it has started. He sees biting as something that's acceptable and normal, and doesn't seem to get that it's a Bad Thing to do.

I think you're right, I just can't trust him - or myself - around other children. Which, you know, is fine, because to be honest parents don't want their kids to play with him anyway. It just makes me really sad that I've failed so comprehensively that my child is the one everyone talks about, that I'm the parent everyone thinks "isn't coping", or is the soft touch, or abuses him at home, or whatever.

Do you think I should keep him at playschool? He goes 2 afternoons a week at the moment and that is under review after he attacked another child and kicked them repeatedly in the face while laughing.

You nned to remove him from social situations for a while and be consistent in your punishment. Repeat yourself over and over again.

To be honest , I am shocked that you have hit him and bitten him yourself. You are supposed to be teaching him it's wrong.
He is 2, don't label him as vile.

Is there someone who can care for the baby for an hour or so on a weekend? Maybe he needs some one on one time with you.

MrsR - Have your dc ever bitten other children All The Fucking Time? Have you got any idea how shitty it is to be the one who has to be looking over their child's shoulder all the time?

It's lovely and easy to judge, isn't it, from the other side of a computer screen?

I know that it isn't the right thing to do, I know that ffs, why do you think i'm posting this thread? I already feel like a fucking failure so thanks a bunch.

UD, the other thing he has comprehensively learned is that he will get an ENORMOUS amount of attention from you if he bites. If you are spending time with dd (which of course you have to) then I'm sure he has sure he has worked out that by biting he brings your attention straight back to him, even if it is negative. Negative is better than nothing.

tbh if you don't have to send him to play school then I might be tempted to give it a break for a few months.

2 year olds do all sorts of crazy, weird shit for no reason whatsoever. Please try not to think of your child as vile, he is just two, and expressing his feelings in a particulary physical fashion. It is utterly mortifying for you, but he has no idea what is socially acceptable or not. Just give him some time.

Try not to beat yourself up too badly either. What you are doing isn't working and you have acknowledged that. Move on and do things differently.

I suspect other parents think less about it than you do. I've been lucky in that my dc have only bitten in the home, but they've often had bites at nursery. When we get told that they've been bitten we say oh dear, and forget about it. We all know that 2 year olds can behave atrociously, and most of us are sympathetic to a person going through difficulties because we know that it could be our child next week. Like a lot of posters have said, give you and him a break and avoid situations where he's likely to bite anyone but the immediate family - I know you don't want him to bite you, but it's a lot less embarassing when it is you and not some stranger. He's not evil, he's 2. You're not a terrible mother, you're just very stressed out. It will pass.

I dunno, if we take him out of playschool then we lose his place, unless we pay for it while he's not there which I don't want to do. We have tried so hard to get him into a good one after the awful experience of his last nursery that I'm loathe to let it go.

God, I'm an awful person. I shouldn't even be allowed to have kids. I need to go and wake him up - he fell asleep after I sent him to his room after the park incident - but I really don't want to.

One of my sons went through a stage of biting me or his brother and it was horrible . The only thing that worked was putting him on the floor wherever we were and ignoring him completely . Even if he was in full blown screaming mode I would just ignore him , stay calm and generally sit and read a fun story to my other son .

It did take a wee while but it did work . I can understand your frustration and also trying everything with him but really you need to pick one thing and keep sticking to it . Maybe if you try and think of it as a thing he needs to learn along the lines of potty training rather than thinking he is doing it because he is a little sod that might help keep you a bit calmer .

mate you need to breeeeeeeeeeathe

It's going to be OK you know.

Is dd quite small? Are you getting much sleep? You sound super frazzled.

Oh and everyone else, why don't we lay off the flaying for a minute and try to be, you know helpful.

jeeee - my friend, who is the mother of the girl he bit this afternoon, says she doesn't want him to play with her anymore. Every time they see each other he attacks her - it's the same with all my other friends. No-one wants to see him (so by extension, me) because they all hate him, or his behaviour, anyway.

And as all my friends have kids - well, I guess it's going to be a lonely few months, years, whatever.

Thanks Slubber.

Dd is 8 months. She sleeps fine but he wakes at 5 sodding 30 every fucking morning regardless of when he goes to bed. He then tries his damnedest to wake dd up until me or dh gets up with him. I don't want to lock him in his room but what else do i do?

x post after helpful posts

UD what have the play group supervisors said? Are they happy to keep him. I'm sure they've come across this a zillion times before.

I'm not judging. I think biting back could be adding to the problem instead of solving it.
My comment was part of a constructive post, I thought.
I'm sure you know that it's important to find a solution and a balance as a parent and we do have to examine our own reactions to behaviour.
Anyway, I don't think I am giving you the kind of advice you are after so I'll leave it to other MNers.
Good Luck

I know the pain of the half five wake up call as well . That is another joyous one to try and fix .

He's asleep at the moment, isn't he?, so let him sleep (when my eldest was nearly three she was always horrible largely because her sleeping was such a mess). Honestly, you're better off not seeing your friends for a few weeks - because you'll be so fraught in case he's naughty that he's bound to behave badly. I used to go out every day because I felt I should, and then burst into tears every time I got back home because my two eldest had behavee atrociously - and this was every day. Eventually DH pointed out that if going out was upsetting me that much I was better off not going out. A few weeks of not trying to do anything but survive and things did get better, honestly.

10 minutes on your own with him, every day, doing his thing (I was playing Thomas the Tank engine on the floor at 6am every morning with DS1). It got so bad, DS2 was 6 months old and I was PG with DD1, I took him to a behaviour specialist at the GPs and she suggested this.

She also suggested I keep a diary of where you were, what happened, what led to it and what you did about. This helped me to keep it in perspective and understand he wasn't a devil-child out to get everyone! Just a sheet of A4, columns drawn ready to fill in.

Its hideous and you have my absolute sympathy, but it didn't last long. Infact, it stopped almost immediately. Perhaps it was a co-incidence, perhaps it just happened to co-incide with new babies, I'll never know.

But it did stop. And quickly.

Other things to do:

Repeat: "Its just a phase. Its just a phase".
Watch like a hawk.
Apologise profusely to the parents.
Don't cry, if you can possibly help it.

Good luck, it will get better. DS1 is 8 now and hasn't bitten anybody since. As far as I know.

UD, please, please believe me that your friends don't hate your ds.

Hating a 2 year old is just bonkers isn't it?

When dd was bitten I went all raaaaaaaaaargh mother lion and nearly got VERY CROSS but then got a hold of myself. It is normal behaviour in the specrum of totally unpleasant oh my god I am going to tear all my hair out and have a stroke if you do that again behaviour of toddlers.

They will absolutely want to see/play with you again when he stops biting. It's not going to last forever.

Just caught up with your other message. Your situation is so similar to how mine was.

Painful as it is, I would really, really recommend getting up with him and using that time positively.

It really could make all the difference.

Give yourself a break first and foremost - you must be totally stressed and knackered and no-one can calmly deal with a terrible two-year-old when they are wrung out. Is DH helping out with DS at weekends? Any other family support? I have two DDs so am no expert on boys but have always thought 'Boysarelikedogs' is the most accurate MN name out there! Is DS getting loads of physical exercise? My friend whose DS likes to violently wrestle other small children says they have an amazing concentration of testosterone in their little bodies at that age. She has hers doing laps round the park on his scooter every day - if he's moving too fast to get other kids in one of his famous throat locks then she is happy! IT WILL PASS. Your social life will come back. Just give yourself and DS a rest from playdates etc for now. I'd stick with playschool mind you unless you can't agree on a behaviour management plan with them.

Oh poor love, it sounds like a nightmare. My boy's really rough sometimes and I find it difficult socially and hard not to feel dislike for him at times, so I can imagine how you're feeling.

I think it's so easy to feel that their entire personality is somehow down to you but that's not the case and you're not a failure - you're trying to think it through and strategise and that's half the battle. This is just a facet of his personality that needs management and at his age there's no more judgement to attach to it than if he were shy or something.

Maybe try sitting down one evening when he's in bed and thinking through all the situations you've been in with him in the last week, and how you would like to approach them from now on (including perhaps just not participating in them in the first place), so you have a calmly thought-through and consistent plan of action. At least it's a starting point for you to feel you're taking control of it somehow and that you have a long-term approach, not just knee-jerk reactions every time because you're so frustrated.

As Slubber says I would not expect your friends to hate you or your DS.

I do not have experience of this with my DD - she is only 18 months. However I do have experience of older SN kids who were mentally on a level with a 2-3 year old. The main thing was to be absolutely consistant. So the outcome was the same for biting, hitting, kicking etc. and everyone had to follow the same plan. Can you talk to the nursery to agree a strategy that they can use and you can also do the same at home?

I know it is very easy to say, but very hard to achieve, but the goal needs to be less attention for the bad behaviour and more attention for the behaviour you like. Quite often we would remove the child from the room and they sat on a chair or the floor outside the room, with as little attention being given as possible. Also, have you tried a sticker chart or jar of pasta / marbles?

That ten mins thing sounds like a good idea. Apparently you can give your kids all they need from you in half an hour each day - 3 sets of ten mins of concentrated attention.
Brilliant! Half an hour on each child and you can spend the rest of the day free to put your feet up and watch telly, complete a simple craft project or just wander around in a pleasant glazed fuddle.
Seriously, might be a real antidote to the bad behaviour as attention seeking.

I feel for you. My DS is not a biter but he went through a phase of doing something undesirable. It lasted 5 months and then it just stopped, I have no idea why. Like you I had tried everything, which I think didn't help because they want to see what you are going to do next! We also had a little DD in the equation.

I really recommend spending some time just with him every day, partly because it might make him happy, but also because you will have fun and you will remember that he is lovely really.

Maybe see a HV/someone at Sure Start too - I got advice from one that was actually quite useful. She gave us some story books and suggested techniques I hadn't thought of, that I think might have worked, but I only got advice just as the problems sorted themselves.

BTW my friend has a biter and I am still friends with her but one of the main reasons is that she consistently says no, makes a fuss of the injured and does time out, so I feel that there is 'justice' if you see what I mean.