biting policies

biting policies

by: parsbabe85 - 22-06-08 15:20

Hi I am new to the forum and I am needing help. I am a senior nursery nurse and have a problem in our baby room as we have babies aged 7mths - 20mths in one room. At the moment we have 3 children aged 1yr - 1yr 3mths that are biting, we are reviewing our policy, but are finding this hard on how to deal with the situation. They are only babies after all and I know we need to be teaching them right from wrong but how have other people dealt with this? The children have bitten a number of times and we are very lucky that the parents have been understanding. We have tried everything from shadowing the children to having a member of staff stick with the children, but it happens really quickly and is not working as we are a busy room and cant have a membe of staff to sit with one child each.

any help/advise would be very grateful

by: joshuajones

Please don't take this the wrong way, I am not trying to be rude, but have you looked at the practice in the room ?

I have found, in the past, that when you get a biting problem that cannot be solved, it is quite often down to boredom.

Are the children getting plenty of activities to keep them occupied and having plenty of attention. (and before you say yes, try and be objective about your room and the activities going on) So often, especially when you have such a mixed age group, the older children are not being stretched or challenged. The tendency seems to be providing for the younger children and assuming it will be enough for the older ones.

They need sand,water, playdough, painting, etc all th ethings that you would offer older children, after all they are not really babies any more.

Try to up your planning and see if that helps.   

by: kalual

Are they biting children of the same age or younger ones?? If they are biting younger one than is it possible to divide the room off for 0-1 's and 1+?? That way, you can provide a more stimulating environment of the older ones and keep the smaller ones safe. Is there a pattern to the biting?  

by: perky

hello,

we had the same problem as we have 12 children in one room aged 3months to up to 24 months.  like others have said, we ended up seperating the room, we are quite lucky that it is a big room, and so we have a 'non-walking' side and a side for children that are walking so that we can have more stimulatng activties for them.  we also have a connecting door to the 'toddler' room, with children up to 30 months, and so we allow them to 'freeflow' as much as is possible.  Once the 'babies' have attempted to bite an older child they soon start to learn!  without sounding like we encourage the youngers to bite the olders, it seems to help !