Biting

[Aligater]

Susanah just bit me and it wasnt a gentle bite either then she turned and laughed what can I do I dont want it to become a habbit. She is 15 months and goes to daycare 1 day a week but she is in a room with only 3-4 babies (1 only half day so mostly 3)

[Fleur]

I hate to say it but it's likely just her age.. so not an awful lot you cando, but deal withit as best you can.
Pie went through a bit of a biting stage a couple of months ago, and it's become a big problem at her daycare lately. It can be due to teething, overstimulation, frustration - that seemed to be when we copped it; all kinds of things. We dealt with it by telling her firmy 'no' and removing her from whatever situation had caused it.

Good luck

[OceanPrincess]

Ahhh we went thru this as well. Lovely phase, isn't it? Unfortunately just saying "no" didn't work for our DD - she is mighty headstrong!

Their lack of understanding and inability to effectively communicate with you work against you at this age too...

What we have done with DD was prevention, while she grew a bit older to enable us to put a strategy in place. We started the strategy immediately but it took a while to take hold and while she was still learning, the best I could do was be vigilant and make sure if I saw her getting the "I'm getting frustrated with you and think I might bite you!" look on her face, I'd remove her or divert her to something else. With her it was tiredness and grumpiness - my toy, my turn, that kind of thing.

The strategy that we put into place was to tell her a new rule: Keep your hands, feet and mouth to yourself! She had also started pushing and hitting... So whenever we went to play with other kids, I'd tell her she had to play nicely and to remember the rule, keep your hands to yourself! I also used to clap my hands together in front of me when I said it and she now does that too. Someone told me that they key is to tell them what to do, as opposed to what NOT to do. So saying "No biting!" doesn't really help, whereas telling them to keep their hands to themselves should help.

To begin with, I would watch her and if I saw her looking "bitey" I'd call out and remind her about the rule, "Keep your hands to yourself DD!". Now, she is older and understands more, so when we go to play, I remind her of our rule to play nicely before we go and she tells me "No hitting! No biting! Keep hands to myself!"

The other thing was - zero tolerance on physical violence. So as soon as she did bite/push/hit, she went straight to the naughty corner. No warnings, no second chances. We started using the naughty corner around the same time as our disciplinary method.

These two things have worked well for us, she still does get a bit pushy, mainly with her little bro now though But she knows. The other day the cheeky monkey was sitting next to me on the couch and DS crawled over and pulled up to stand right in front of her, looking pleased with himself. She looked sideways at me, reached out towards him, looked at me again, I raised my eyebrows, she gave him a shove (quite gentle... he didn't even move...) and looked back at me, I glared, she said "I go to naughty corner now?" I said "YES" and off she ran.

Good luck... it is really horrible.