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Home › Articles › Behavior › Why Do Babies Bite?

Why Do Babies Bite?

When Teething Goes Too Far

By Shannon McKelden

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the attention, because I had heard that even negative attention at this age can be reinforcing because they can't differentiate," she says.

That still didn't quite work, so Carney tried putting Megan in her playpen when she bit, sort of as a time-out. When her twin just crawled over to play with her, diminishing the lesson, Carney says, "I started playing with [Jacob] while [Megan] was in the playpen so she would get the message that he got attention when she bit. I think a combination of these things is what finally got it under control. The main thing was that we had to address the biting every time, every incident. When we were consistent, we noticed a big improvement."

Dr. Brown agrees that Carney followed the right steps to halt the biting. "Your reaction should be a stern statement, 'no biting,' followed by removing the baby from your body and ignoring him for 30 to 60 seconds," she says. "The baby quickly learns that biting actually loses a parent's attention instead of gets it."

As Carney's story illustrates, though – and Page agrees – it can take a while to break the biting habit. "Babies at this age are very stubborn and not verbal like a 2- or 3-year-old, so it takes longer for the lesson to sink in," Page says.

Obviously hitting a biting child or "biting back" is an inappropriate reaction to the problem. "This communicates that violence is an appropriate way to handle emotion," Page says in a pamphlet she hands out to parents of biters in her childcare setting.

"Biters are predictable and it is a normal part of development," Dr. Brown says. "The key is to watch that child more closely while he is going through that phase. That prevents most incidents."

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