My child is biting or hitting at kindergarten: what to do

When your child is biting or hitting other children at kindergarten, it is usually not a sign of a bad nature or of failed parenting. Two- and three-year-olds use their bodies to show anger, frustration, tiredness or excitement they cannot yet put into words. What helps is a calm, immediate response, naming the feeling, looking after the child who got hurt and practising what your child can do instead of lashing out. For most children, biting fades within a few months as their speech develops.

A message from the teacher saying ‘he bit someone today’ is one of the hardest you can get. You feel embarrassed, you worry your child will be labelled as difficult, and you wonder what you are doing wrong. Parents on forums keep asking the same question: is this a phase, or the start of a problem? In this article we explain why children bite and hit and what is normal at each age. You will also find a plan for home, tips for working with the kindergarten and the signs that mean it is time to see a specialist.

Why children bite and hit

The American Academy of Pediatrics explains that aggressive behaviour is common in toddlers, because their impulse control and their ability to express themselves in words are still developing. Behind a bite or a hit there is almost always one of these causes:

• Missing words. Your child wants to say ‘that’s mine’ or ‘leave me alone’ but cannot say it quickly enough. A hand or teeth are faster.
• Frustration. A friend took a toy, the tower fell down, someone else is on the swing.
• Overload. Noise, lots of children in a small space, tiredness before lunch. Biting often appears at the hardest points of the day.
• Teething or a need to chew. For the youngest children, biting can be a physical need rather than an attack.
• Testing the reaction. A child discovers that a bite gets a big reaction from adults and children. For some, that is an interesting experiment.
• Self-defence. If someone pushes your child or takes their things, they may defend themselves the only way they know.
• Change and stress. Starting kindergarten, a new baby, moving house. The tension then comes out through the body.

What is normal at each age

If a four- or five-year-old bites for weeks on end, that is less common and deserves closer attention.

When you are trying to judge the situation, watch three things: how often it happens, whether it is slowly getting better, and whether your child can show regret or concern for the friend once they have calmed down. A child who bites once a fortnight and then brings a toy to the crying friend is on the right track, even if it still happens now and then.

When your child bites or hits: a step-by-step plan

1. Stop it straight away and calmly. Hold the hand or gently move your child away. Speak firmly, but do not shout.
2. State the rule briefly and clearly. ‘We don’t bite. Biting hurts.’ Skip the long lecture. Your child cannot take it in at that moment anyway.
3. Look after the hurt child first. Comfort them and tend to the bite. Your child sees that the attention goes to the one who was hurt, not to the one who did the hurting.
4. Name your child’s feeling. ‘You were angry because he took your digger.’ Your child learns that a feeling has a name.
5. Show what they can do instead. ‘When you’re angry, say stop or come to me.’ Act it out together for a moment.
6. Involve them in making amends. They can hand their friend a cold compress, stroke their arm or bring them a toy. A forced ‘sorry’ only teaches a two-year-old a word. Making amends teaches compassion.
7. Notice when it happens. Is it before lunch, when playing with one particular friend, or when it is noisy? Once you know the trigger, you can head it off.

Words that help

• ‘Stop. I won’t let you bite. Teeth are for food.’
• ‘You were cross. You can stamp your foot or squeeze a cushion, but you can’t hit Jakub.’
• ‘Look, Ema is crying. The bite hurts her. What can we bring her?’
• ‘When you want a toy, say: Can I have a turn? Then we wait.’
• ‘If you can’t calm down, come to me and we’ll have a hug.’

Labels (‘you’re naughty’, ‘you bite like a dog’) help less, and so do threats that have nothing to do with the situation (‘no playground for you’). They do not tell your child what to do differently next time.

What not to do

• Biting or hitting back ‘so they know what it feels like’. Your child learns that the stronger one is allowed to hurt the weaker one.
• Shouting and making a big scene. A strong reaction can actually reinforce the biting.
• Shaming them in front of others. Shame does not tell a child what to do instead.
• Letting it go ‘because they’re little’. Even a two-year-old needs a clear, repeated message that hurting others is not allowed.
• Dealing with it at home hours later. A small child will not link a punishment in the evening with something that happened in the morning.

When your child is the one being bitten or hit

The opposite situation is just as hard: your child comes home with tooth marks on their arm. Anger and fear are understandable. It helps to:

• talk calmly with the teacher about what happened and how it was handled,
• ask how they will supervise the situations where it happens,
• teach your child to say a clear ‘stop’, step away and call the teacher,
• avoid threats and avoid telling your child to ‘hit back’,
• accept that the kindergarten cannot share the name or details of another child.

Wash a bite with soap and water. If the skin is broken, bleeding, or later turns red and swollen, show it to your paediatrician.

Working with the kindergarten

Biting is easiest to manage when home and kindergarten follow the same approach. Agree with the teacher on:

• the situations in which it happens (time, place, which children),
• the words and steps the teacher uses, so you can use the same ones at home,
• whether she can offer your child a quieter corner or activity at difficult moments,
• how she will keep you informed, including about the good days.

Short, regular feedback shows you whether things are improving. At home, praise your child for specific moments when they solved a conflict with words: ‘Your teacher told me you said stop to Tomáš today. That was brilliant.’

How to help your child at home

Build a vocabulary of feelings

Name emotions when you read books, play with puppets and in your own life: ‘I’m tired and a bit cross, I need to sit down.’ A child who can say ‘I’m angry’ has fewer reasons to bite.

Play at solving arguments

Two teddies want the same car. Think up together what they could do: take turns, ask, find another car or call Mummy. Play gives your child a range of solutions they can then use at kindergarten.

Look after sleep and food

A tired, hungry child has the least patience, and that is as true for a two-year-old as for an adult after a long day. Regular sleep and a filling morning snack reduce outbursts more than you might expect.

Make room for movement

Offer your child running, jumping, punching a cushion or playing with a ball. A child who can let off steam needs to take their tension out on others less.

Why biting is linked to speech

Between the ages of two and three, a child learns dozens of new words a month, but cannot use them quickly when upset. At that age the body has a ‘faster line’ than language. Biting and hitting drop off most sharply just when a child starts using short sentences. So anything that supports speech helps with aggression too: talking during everyday tasks, reading, songs, and giving your child time to finish what they want to say. When your child shouts ‘mine!’ in anger instead of hitting, that is progress, even if it is not yet polite.

Biting from excitement and during cuddles

Not every bite is about anger. Some children bite a parent’s shoulder during rough play or a cuddle, when they are overjoyed and do not know where to put the energy. The rule still applies, but your tone can be softer: ‘Ow, that hurts. If you want a cuddle, give me a hug.’ Give your child another way to express a strong feeling: a tight hug, a clap, a ‘bear squeeze’ of the hands. If biting comes mainly with excitement, it also helps to calm the game down in time, before your child gets too wound up.

A typical situation and how to untangle it

Just before lunch, two children are sitting at a table with blocks. One builds a tower, the other pulls a block from the bottom and the tower falls. The first child is tired and hungry, cannot find the words and bites their friend’s hand. It helps when the adult:

1. stops the situation and looks after the hurt child,
2. says ‘Your tower fell down and you got very angry. Biting hurts, you mustn’t do that.’,
3. models the sentence ‘Stop, that’s my tower.’,
4. gets both children to rebuild the tower together, or gives each of them their own blocks,
5. and next time offers a calmer activity or an earlier snack before lunch.

The same approach works at home with siblings. What matters is teaching both children what they can do differently. Looking for someone to blame does not help.

When it happens only at home or only at kindergarten

If your child bites or hits only at kindergarten, it is usually down to things that come with being in a group: noise, arguments over toys, less space, tiredness from a long day. Work out with the teacher exactly when it happens and adjust those moments.

If aggression appears only at home, it is often because your child has managed the rules all day at kindergarten and then ‘lets go’ with a safe parent. It can also be a reaction to a change in the family or to a sibling. What helps is a calm first few minutes after pick-up, more one-to-one time and clear rules that apply equally to all the children in the family.

How to talk to the other child’s parents

Kindergartens usually do not say which child did the biting, and that is right. If the parents know each other and meet, a short, calm apology without excuses helps: ‘I’m sorry, Adam is dealing with anger with his teeth at the moment. We’re working on it at home and with the kindergarten.’ The other parent mainly needs to hear that you are taking it seriously. Long explanations of why it happened, or doubts about whether it was really your child, do not help.

When to seek professional help

Talk to your paediatrician, a child psychologist or a Centre for Counselling and Prevention (centrum poradenstva a prevencie, a free state service in Slovakia for children and families) if:

• your child still bites or hits often after the age of four,
• the aggression has lasted several weeks and is not improving despite a consistent approach at home and at kindergarten,
• your child hurts others seriously or on purpose and does not notice that someone is in pain,
• the aggression comes with a marked speech delay or other developmental difficulties,
• your child also hurts themselves, for example by banging their head or biting themselves.

If your child’s speech is behind, a speech therapist can help too. You can read more in Speech therapist for children: when pronunciation is a reason to worry. If the aggressive behaviour shows up mainly at home after kindergarten, read Why is my child grumpy after kindergarten?

A short checklist for parents

• Do I know in which situations my child bites or hits?
• Do we use the same words and steps at home and at kindergarten?
• Is my child getting enough sleep, food and movement?
• Have we taught them what to do instead of hitting?
• Do we praise them when they solve an argument with words?

How we do it at Sovička

All three of our kindergartens run the EQ programme. In it, your child learns to name emotions, cope with anger and sadness, cooperate and solve conflicts. We build their self-confidence and empathy so they can say ‘I’m angry’ before they use their hands or teeth. Each class has 7 to 15 children and one teacher, so a conflict can be caught early and worked through with both children. Your child goes outside every day and has plenty of room to move. If your child is going through a biting phase, tell us. We will agree on the same approach at home and at kindergarten. You can read more about the programme on our Curriculum page.

If you would like to see what your child’s day would look like and how we work with children’s emotions, come and talk to us. Book a visit at a quiet time, when the kindergarten is not busy. You will find answers to other questions on our FAQ page.