An Early Childhood Journey

While biting is completely normal behaviour, it is one we have to address—left unaddressed things are going to escalate.

Children learn a lot in the early years, particularly through their feet and their mouth, so it makes sense why children would experiment with biting. There can be a number of reasons why a child might bite and some of these include:

• Biting as a sensory experience or for relief from teething pain


• Biting as a form of frustration. This can come as a result of a child not yet developing the skills for emotional regulation. Often times when children get angry, upset, or they want something, they act out of impulse


• Biting as a form of communication. Often frustration and communication can be quite linked. As a generalisation, when children over a certain age still engage in bitting we would be looking at communication being the primary reason as to why that behaviour is still displayed. As a result, we would put in place a number of support structures to help with that


• We also look for patterns that might reveal underlying reasons for biting like time of day, tiredness, hunger etc. Based on what we observe, that determines what our course of action will be

Related Episodes

• How Your Child’s Brain Works


• Understanding Your Child’s Emotions

Thank You

We’d love to hear from you! If you have any feedback, suggestions or questions about anything we discussed in this episode, please feel free to reach out – [email protected].

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