My Son Won’t Stop Biting

There comes a time in every father’s life when he must sink his teeth into the fleshy pudge of of his three-year old’s arm. No? Is that just me?

I know it is a very common thing for a child to go through a biting phase, but it is my understanding that it is also very common for that phase to come to an end. Perhaps my little boy is just too suborn. Maybe he’s acquired the taste for human flesh. Maybe he’s just a jerk. Either way, his biting phase won’t seem to end.

His older sisters bit when they were little, but to say that was a phase wouldn’t be accurate. They each bit a couple times and after getting their mouths washed out with soap a few times, they decided that the grossness of the soap outweighed whatever joy they may have gotten from biting. Also, they mostly bit my wife or I, so its not like they were a social liability, just bad daughters.

UPDATE: They are bad daughters, and sisters. They lied about the whole thing. They framed my son for bites he didn’t commit.

My son on the other hand has been completely unswayed by soap, or any other repercussion his biting has brought on. Sure, in the moment he hates it. He’ll cry and he’ll pout until he begrudgingly apologizes to whichever one of his sisters he chomped. Then he’ll do it again. Sometimes a day later, sometimes a week later, sometimes five minutes later. Over the last several months, I don’t think he’s gone more than two weeks without sinking his teeth into somebody.

At first we tried sending him to his room, but that didn’t work. He’d end up spending hours in there and then come back out and bite anyway. I don’t see the benefit of wasting the better part of a day in his life. Though it was nice to provide that time of bite-free safety for everybody else in the house, it wasn’t an effective deterrent. As I said, soap didn’t stop him either, so from there I decided to get physical.

A slap on the hand worked as a punishment when he was little and learning not to hit or touch dangerous things, but that didn’t work for biting. I thought perhaps it was an issue of association. If hitting got him a slap on the hand, perhaps he’d connect the dots from biting to a slap on the cheek? Maybe that would have worked, but I just couldn’t bring myself to slap my son in the face. Am I too soft on him? Is a slap in face what he needs? I’m sure it would have been the punishment of choice for generations before me. Am I forgoing an effective corrective measure because I don’t want my kid to think I’m mean? I guess I’d rather have a good relationship with a son who bites than have my son be afraid of me.

So even for perpetual biting that felt like crossing a line. A punch in the arm felt better. For me. Didn’t feel great for him. Once he experienced that, I thought the fear of getting another one would be a strong enough motivator. I’d even tell him, “If you bite, I’m going to punch you.” But something about it didn’t resonate. He started to fear getting punched, and by extension, fear me – but it didn’t stop him.

I thought it was still an issue of association. Much like you need to train a dog by immediately punishing the action, I thought immediate punishment would be more effective. This would be a good time to point out that I’ve almost never actually seen my son bite one of his sisters. It always happens when I’m not in the room. The bites are brought to my attention when one of his sisters shows me the bite marks on their hand. Always on their hand. Always on the same spot on their hand. Which begs the question – what the hell are my kids doing?

Not that I want to blame the victim…but…maybe move your hand when you see a small child coming to chow down on your digits? I mean, my son is not a stealthy ninja so much as he is a puppy in human form. Most days the first sound I hear in the morning are my son’s feet pounding around on the floor. I’m pretty sure at least 8 of his 38 pounds reside in his feet. When I ask my daughters, they make it sound like he came out of nowhere. They are always just standing there, minding their own business, just so happening to be looking the other other way, when without any warning he sneaks up and sinks teeth into their hand that is always simply resting on a chair, shelf, or counter. I don’t believe them.

It is much more likely that they are dangling their hands in front of his face like they noodling a fish. I just can’t prove it.

Provoked or not, he needs to stop chowing down on his sisters. I thought perhaps the issue was that the punishment would always be delayed, and so he wouldn’t associate it with what he did wrong. In hopes that his puppy-like qualities also applied to how he’d learn, I authorized my daughters to hit him as hard as they could immediately after he bit them. I should say, the sister he bites most often is two years older than he is, but also weights 38 pounds. Medical professionals may disagree, but I’m fairly certain she’s hollow. So the force of her hitting him as hard as she could really didn’t resonate as a punishment. I think it just left him confused.

Time to take confusion out of it, and get biblical. Eye for an eye. Bite for a bite. He kept biting so I needed to give myself a taste of his medicine. I grabbed his harm, I told him I was going to bite him, and I did. I wasn’t sure how hard of a bite would be appropriate. I mean, I definitely didn’t want to break the skin, but I did want it to hurt. I’m pretty sure it did. He got tears in his eyes and he pouted. Now only time would tell if it worked or not.

Honestly, I don’t think it did. He had a good run without biting, but he still does it from time to time. What is likely most responsible for his longest bite-free stretches, is time away from his sisters. He’s never bit another kid at pre-school, so if he keeps the biting to inside the family, I guess I’ll take it. But the longer he is around his sisters, the odds he’ll bite seems to increase. I never had a sister, so I don’t really know the brother-sister dynamic, but maybe it’s how little brothers bond with older sisters? Kind of like the way brothers wrestle, or sisters make passive aggressive snide comments about each other. Or maybe he’s just a jerk.