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Biting (each other!)

2 replies

RosinaCopper · 16/09/2011 16:16

My boys are 14 months old and are getting increasingly more aggresive when one has something the other wants. The smallest especially will snatch things off his older brother and bite him if that doesn't work. The older one has started to bite back, but also often just lets the younger one take things off him.

In the interests of fairness, I usually replace the stolen toy with something else, if there are no tears. But the biting is a different matter. At the moment I am picking up and cuddling the injured party, and ignoring the biting completely, but I'm wondering whether I shoul also be saying 'No biting!' to reinforce the message? What did you do with yours when they went through this stage? (It is common, isn't it??) And how long did it take? We have an au pair at the moment, and I need a very clear plan for her to follow, as I'm sure she thinks I am way too lenient by not smacking my child's hand for biting! (when i told her I wanted her to ignore the biter, she said she didn;t think that was a good idea!)

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Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
AtLongLast · 17/09/2011 21:16

Sounds familiar! Here it's usually ds1 taking anything & everything from ds2. Ds2 usually lets him but also is learning to run away laughing with said item, seemingly knowing that will wind up ds1. We always give the toy back to the boy who was playing with it originally & explain to the other it's not nice to take things off other children. Sure they don't understand the words... but one day! Doesn't help when we make a big fuss about not taking it off the other & give it back to the one who had it first..... who then turns out not to be interested any more. Makes it all seem worthwhile!

Ds2 is the biter here. We usually find he's worse when teething but actuallly has been biting ds1 a fair bit this week. Poor ds1 had some lovely teethmarks on his finger today. I always say `no biting' v sharply, sit the biter facing away from us & give the other lots of comfort.

neverknowinglyunderdressed · 19/09/2011 10:23

Mine went through this stage as well, from about 10 months onward. At times it was really bad, each child was covered in little bite bruise marks, horrible. I tried everything, but nothing really worked. The just sort of grew out of it, by 3 ish. Sorry cant be more help.

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