1 Year Old Predatory Biter

[leigh]

This little boy....ack! He is 19 months. He will scan the room for me, already in his attack position, to see if I am watching. If he thinks that I am not watching, he will bite. He knows that he won't be allowed to bite, and that when he does, he is separated (to a pack n play, then I tell him this is where biters have to go to keep the other kids safe from being bitten). He has good receptive language skills, but speaks very little. He is very likely autistic (like his siblings). He is quick to anger, and will bite when angry, as well, but that isn't so much the issue. The issue is him hunting his 2 main victims to bite them. He smirks at me when he sees that I "caught" him getting ready to bite, but tantrums loudly when removed from his victims. He needs 100% eyes-on supervision to prevent biting. He seems to think it is a fun game to bite before I can stop him from doing so. I have taught his 3 year old victim (his favorite one) how to respond, and she will put her arms out and tell him "no biting! biting hurts!". This stops it until I can get to him if I'm more than a couple of steps away (probably because he realizes that it draws my attention to him if I am preparing a meal or something).

I've given him a pacifier, which he never used before, to try to give him something to keep his mouth busy. I'd rather see him get braces than keep biting other kids, I guess. I had a kid years ago who was a sensory biter, but her victim would literally ASK (verbally) to be bitten and hold his arm out to her! Kids are just insane sometimes.

I'm experienced with biting. A large percentage of my kids are special needs (autism, ADHD, ODD, physical disabilities) and I'm used to being creative with meeting a child's needs, but I can't figure out this child's motivation for biting (it sounds like the attention from me is it, but I only deliver him to his PNP and tell him why he has to be there for a while-I don't engage in any other way). We've always been able to deal with biting before, but this kid just HUNTS his victims and I haven't seen one like this before. Does anyone else have experience with behavior like this? Keeping something in his mouth helps, but he still goes through the whole biting process, just with the pacifier in his mouth, so while it protects the victims, it isn't preventing the behavior at all.

Ideas?

[Blackcat31]

Ugh! That’s a tough one. I’ve had little to no experience with biters and as sad as it is to say, I won’t keep one in care if it becomes more than a 1-2 time thing. I’m a group care provider so what’s best for the group as a whole is my priority. Biting is common but NOT normal or acceptable in group care.

I hope you are able to find a solution.
As a parent I’d pull my child from a program if they were bitten more than one time.

Here are multiple threads on biting. Some very interesting reads…,

https://www.daycare.com/forum/tags.php?tag=Biting

[GirlMomma]

I won’t be much help - but I termed my biter after three instances.

[flyingjewels]

I do not have experience with that level of a biter but I have dealt with aggressive biters.

Do you do positive reinforcement and praise when the child is around other children and acting correctly?

Have you seen any patterns in time of day when you notice he does it more? Or during certain activities? Or when certain toys are out?

I love the book Teeth Are Not for Biting. I highly recommend it. It sounds tho like you may have it since the little girl he mostly bites says “no, biting hurts” but if not, try it.

At the end of the day, safety is priority. What’s best for these kids is not always us and our daycare. And experience or not, we can’t help everyone. So if you ever get to the point where you just really feel nothing you do is working and it’s getting bad for the 2 victims then you may have to term. Just wanted to say this to let you know it won’t mean you’re a failure. It just is what it is sometimes.

[Alwaysgreener]

" I've given him a pacifier, which he never used before, to try to give him something to keep his mouth busy. I'd rather see him get braces than keep biting other kids,"

lol Got to love old wives tales because sucking on a pacifier as a toddler with your baby teeth causes your adult teeth to misalign in your mouth, approximately 3 years or more years later.

And if it is true and please explain why my daughter may need braces, because she would have nothing to do with pacifiers or thumb sucking as a toddler or infant and not her cousin that sucked on it untill he was almost four doesn't need braces. Hmm 🤔


So Instead of giving him a pacifier and creating a sucking habit that he has to be weaned from and possibly bite through the rubber, (seen it happen)



Try Giving him a biting sensory toy tied to a pacifier strap that you clip to his shirt and tell him to bite that. They sell the toys on Amazon.

Also have you had the child shadow you?

[Blackcat31]

“According to the AAPD and American Dental Association, some dental effects of using pacifiers include:

• Crooked teeth
• Problems with bite and jaw alignment (for example, the front teeth may not meet when the mouth is closed)
• Protruding front teeth
• Changes to the roof of the mouth”

https://www.unitedconcordia.com/busi...pacifier-teeth

[Alwaysgreener]

LOL, again if this was true, wouldn't an infant or toddler's baby teeth come in crooked then, since it is their baby teeth that are coming through at that time?

Using a pacifier as an infant or toddler does not cause crooked/need for braces on adult teeth. Using a pacifier as a child (5-12 years old) as your Adult teeth are coming through may cause crooked teeth/need for braces. But I will not buy that a toddler/infant using a pacifier is going to have or increases the chances of having braces.

Honestly, I'd be more worried that a toddler may bite through their pacifier and choke than get crooked teeth.



https://stanfordpress.typepad.com/bl...no-braces.html

A key precipitating factor for malocclusion relates to the size of our jaws. For healthy development, jaws must be able to provide sufficient room for all of the thirty-two teeth that grow in the mouth. Over time, our teeth have grown crooked because our jaws have grown smaller. Why? The epidemic’s roots lie in cultural shifts in important daily actions we seldom think about; things like chewing, breathing, or the position of our jaws at rest, and these changes have in turn been brought about by much bigger sociohistorical developments—namely, industrialization.

https://www.lunadna.com/crooked-teeth-genetic/

With the introduction of the modern baby bottle in the mid-1800s, human populations became less reliant on breastfeeding their young. Research has shown that the muscles required for an infant to breastfeed are not used as extensively when a child is bottle-fed. At the end of the 1940s, German dental experts Dr. Wilhelm Balters and Dr. Adolf Müller discovered that babies who had been breastfed had significantly fewer crooked teeth. Studies continue to be conducted to determine if there is a link between the use of bottles and the impact it has on jaw development and crooked teeth.

(interesting fact pacifiers are from the1900 after bottles)

[GirlMomma]

Baby teeth are straight because they are formed in the womb while the baby is still a fetus around 5 weeks gestation, long before the baby is breast/bottle fed or given a pacifier. It’s wild to think babies have teeth before they form fingers and toes!

I think the point is a prolonged and frequent sucking habit may cause these issues.

[Blackcat31]

LOL, again if this was true, wouldn't an infant or toddler's baby teeth come in crooked then, since it is their baby teeth that are coming through at that time?

Using a pacifier as an infant or toddler does not cause crooked/need for braces on adult teeth. Using a pacifier as a child (5-12 years old) as your Adult teeth are coming through may cause crooked teeth/need for braces. But I will not buy that a toddler/infant using a pacifier is going to have or increases the chances of having braces.

Honestly, I'd be more worried that a toddler may bite through their pacifier and choke than get crooked teeth.



https://stanfordpress.typepad.com/bl...no-braces.html

A key precipitating factor for malocclusion relates to the size of our jaws. For healthy development, jaws must be able to provide sufficient room for all of the thirty-two teeth that grow in the mouth. Over time, our teeth have grown crooked because our jaws have grown smaller. Why? The epidemic’s roots lie in cultural shifts in important daily actions we seldom think about; things like chewing, breathing, or the position of our jaws at rest, and these changes have in turn been brought about by much bigger sociohistorical developments—namely, industrialization.

https://www.lunadna.com/crooked-teeth-genetic/

With the introduction of the modern baby bottle in the mid-1800s, human populations became less reliant on breastfeeding their young. Research has shown that the muscles required for an infant to breastfeed are not used as extensively when a child is bottle-fed. At the end of the 1940s, German dental experts Dr. Wilhelm Balters and Dr. Adolf Müller discovered that babies who had been breastfed had significantly fewer crooked teeth. Studies continue to be conducted to determine if there is a link between the use of bottles and the impact it has on jaw development and crooked teeth.

(interesting fact pacifiers are from the1900 after bottles)

The above paragraphs support the theory that pacifiers can have an impact on tooth alignment.

Pacifier use in general isn't the cause of crooked teeth but it definitely impacts whether teeth are/aren't crooked if the pacifier is used long after infancy as sucking for prolonged periods of time can change the structure of the roof of the mouth which in turn alters the jaw and how teeth (adult) grow.

From my understanding, it's generally uncommon to see pacifiers causing dental problems prior to age 3.

[Alwaysgreener]

Anything can have an impact on the teeth position as the teeth are coming through, just like my DD, her adult teeth came through before her baby teeth fell out and grew behind her baby teeth making her teeth crooked. (My ds has a slight over bite with his baby teeth, again no pacifier and no bottle)

But using a pacifier as an infant or a toddler, (child above is only 19 months old) does not impact the adult teeth when they're coming through, this is an old wives tale.

In the end I think we both agree on this, that infant or toddler use of pacifiers do not create crooked adult teeth, we are just looking at it differently.

[Pestle]

Does your setup allow you to create a couple of smaller gated areas, where either your child who is biting or the kids who are bitten can play separately? I have found that often times, older kids would like to have their own little "studio" with a taller chair and a table where they can do some of the bigger kid activities with small parts. Then they can keep themselves busy at more-challenging projects while I am doing meal prep or interacting with the smaller kids.

You could also make it your habit always put the child who is biting into a pack and play with a couple of toys while you are doing those transitional things like diapering or meal prep. I don't know what the regulations are where you are, but I am allowed to place toys in a pack and play, but not in a regular crib. If you did that, then "taking a little time to myself with a toy nobody else can access" would become part of the daily schedule, unrelated to the biting. It would mean there are fewer points at the day at which you have to just hope it doesn't occur to this child to go bite again, while they are busy building the "meal prep time is bite time" association.

Those schedule associations are ridiculous. I have one kid right now who leaps up from their chair partway through the meal and starts running around in a circle, and slips and crashes and begins sobbing because they hate what just happened. I used to have a kid who would finish eating, then stand up and jump in place until they vomited, and then sob because, again, they hated what just happened.

[leigh]

Does your setup allow you to create a couple of smaller gated areas, where either your child who is biting or the kids who are bitten can play separately? I have found that often times, older kids would like to have their own little "studio" with a taller chair and a table where they can do some of the bigger kid activities with small parts. Then they can keep themselves busy at more-challenging projects while I am doing meal prep or interacting with the smaller kids.

You could also make it your habit always put the child who is biting into a pack and play with a couple of toys while you are doing those transitional things like diapering or meal prep. I don't know what the regulations are where you are, but I am allowed to place toys in a pack and play, but not in a regular crib. If you did that, then "taking a little time to myself with a toy nobody else can access" would become part of the daily schedule, unrelated to the biting. It would mean there are fewer points at the day at which you have to just hope it doesn't occur to this child to go bite again, while they are busy building the "meal prep time is bite time" association.

Those schedule associations are ridiculous. I have one kid right now who leaps up from their chair partway through the meal and starts running around in a circle, and slips and crashes and begins sobbing because they hate what just happened. I used to have a kid who would finish eating, then stand up and jump in place until they vomited, and then sob because, again, they hated what just happened.

I have moved furniture around to separate play areas more, as well as set up 2 more pack n plays to help make it easy to put him in for a few minutes, if necessary. His parents also suggested an oversized sleep sack during free play to make it a little harder for him to move quickly to other kids to bite. These things have helped. He still has twice tried to bite with a pacifier in his mouth in the 2-3 weeks since I posted, but isn't hurting other kids right now. I have tried other chewelry items, but if it isn't in his mouth the entire time, it won't stop him. I know that pacifiers aren't a big concern at THIS age, but after age 3, they do start to contribute to orthodontic issues, according to the NIH. I had one who couldn't be understood at age 5 because he never learned to talk without the pacifier. He literally had it until he started kindergarten. Imagine putting your thumb on your tongue and then speaking-that's how he sounded, the poor kid. It took way too long for him to get diagnosed and address his issues that probably contributed to his dependence on the pacifier. He started orthodontic care in 3rd grade (which I understand it kind of early) because his bite was messed up, too, so I encourage parents to start weaning around age 2. This one, however, had never taken a pacifier at my house before, though I did try a lot (he was a high-needs baby with in utero drug exposure, almost certain autism (family history + traits in the child) and allergies-he would go from happy to fury in the blink of an eye, and could be inconsolable at times). Suddenly, he appreciates the thing.

The 3 year old's mom is very understanding because she had two biters of her own. I have told her, though, that I won't let it continue, and will term if we can't overcome it or if he continues to get actual bites in, she has told me NOT to term, but this child is a liability when his behavior causes harm or danger to himself or others, which is why I am reaching out here for ideas that I haven't encountered yet! I have made it clear to the biter's parents that the behavior HAS to stop. His parents and I agree that we will work overtime to try to encourage verbal skills in him, because, IME, talkers are much less likely to be biters. His parents are committed readers with their kids, but we're adding flash cards and games to get him to identify things and try to get him excited about talking.

Separating often is obviously the answer for now, but I am still searching the reason he is biting and ways to address that and just put this behavior in the past. I've only had one other child who just couldn't stop biting in a short amount of time. She is the one that I mentioned previously, on the old forum, whose "victim" would literally ask her to bite him, which the parent didn't believe until he witnessed his child put his arm in the pack n play and verbally ask for the bite. Right when I think I understand kids, then I don't again.

Thanks for the suggestions-they have helped improve the situation. This kid, however, has literally driven me to send a resume to our local clinic. I don't know if I'll accept if offered, but at least I'll know if there is an option that lets me keep working with kids without worrying about them hurting one another all day long.