Biting

[mel j]

I'm not weaning my 2.5 yr old but I'm limiting her nursing sessions - to 3 predictable times a day for now (when she wakes up, before her nap and before she goes to sleep at night and if she doesn't go to sleep she doesn't get to nurse after that) - and she's started biting... I'm convinced it is b/c she feels like she needs her mouth on something, but the biting worries me. She doesn't usually do it hard enough that it hurts badly; I think she is relating it to nursing a bit. She is mostly accepting of me not nursing her whenever she asks without a meltdown but keeps saying she wants to nurse on anyone she can possibly think of (everyone in our family and all of our friends that she remembers names of) and has been biting my husband's feet, me on the arm sometimes, and her little brother (who still gets to nurse whenever he wants pretty much since he's 10 months.) My oldest went through something similar when I was trying to lessen his nursing sessions and then when I weaned him... He didn't bite people, but he would bite his nails a whole lot. Anyone else been through this? Any suggestions or advice? (And we're definitely firm and already explaining to her that it's not good to bite etc. maybe that will be enough...)

[gardensparrow]

Hi there~
Well, I think it's not uncommon for kids to go through a biting stage. And, I'm sure the reasons they start this can differ from child to child. So, it's certainly possible it could be related to nursing. Maybe a good way to determine this would be to check with your pediatrician? I'm sure they've run into this before and might have some suggestions to offer you on how to counter this behavior and help you daughter transition away from nursing. Also, if you're interested, I've seen this issue brought up before in my time at Focus on the Family and they wrote an article called "Our toddler is biting us as well as other kids. How do we put a stop to it?" that I though was helpful. You can search for it on their website if you're interested. I hope it helps!

[kocho]

Biting is a hard one. My nephew is a biter. He wasn't nursed though. He is 2. He bites my kids all the time. To t he point where I limit them playing with him for now. He's been kicked out of two daycares. They sent him to some special eval to get him to stop and he still does it. Mostly when he is tired. I really wish we could get him to stop, but nothing they have tried seems to help.

[MN Mama to 3]

My DS 2 went through a biting phase around that age. Most of the time it wasn't hard, but enough so you'd notice. It seemed like it mostly due to frustration, like not having things go the way he wanted, and just a REALLY bad way of expressing it. It's hard for kids that age to vocalize what they're feeling.