I was watching my two boys interact a few days ago, late in the afternoon. They are fighting me on their second nap of the day (and today did not take a long first nap) so both of them were pretty tired. I was on the phone with my mother-in-law watching their interaction. My one son had a favorite toy phone in his hand. My other son decided he wanted to play with it. He reached for the phone and couldn’t tear it out of the younger son’s hands. I could see it coming a mile away – he was going to bite.

It’s funny but it’s not funny, because as I watched the scene unfold it was like in slow motion. My biter (who I’ll jokingly refer to as Jaws in this post) got this look on his face, opened his mouth as wide as he could, grabbed my other son’s arms, bent over and took a bite out of him. I hung up the phone, grabbed Jaws and told him “No, we don’t bite – biting is bad behavior” and pulled him away from my other son.

I started wondering why he was biting, but my other son did not bite. I did a quick search on the Internet to find out what was going on and how I could stop the behavior. Here’s what I found out.

Many children go through a biting stage between their first and third birthdays. There are many different reasons a child might bite someone else, which include:

• Teething. Their teeth are coming in and they need something to chomp on.
• Exploration. As a child explores his world he puts things into his mouth as a part of this exploration.
• Attention. Biting someone certainly gets the attention of their parent or caregiver.
• Frustration. When a child can’t express his emotions or can’t speak one of the ways he can express his frustration is through biting.
• Stress. When a child feels stress biting is a way to relieve their stress.
• Independence. Biting is a way to control others. If you want a toy and someone else has it, taking a bite out of them is a sure way to get them to drop the desired toy quickly.

Since my sons had not slept that day, their tiredness could have led to some stress or frustration since they were so tired. Plus I think my older son wanted the toy my younger son had in his hands, and the younger one will usually drop the toy and start to cry when he gets bit by his brother.

OK, so now I know why he is biting – now I just need to do some research to figure out what to do to help control this behavior.