Sharing Web Resources: A Further Look Into Equity in Program Policy

            The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), offers numerous features with it’s membership and online subscription.  One of the features I have dove into this month is the NAEYC's platform for interest forums and online communities.  I have been receiving regular email digests with open discussion forum egroups.  Early childhood professionals network about challenges and practices in their personal settings.  It really has been interesting to follow along and see what various early childhood professionals think and feel is best for young children.  The topics are based off interest brought from professionals currently in the field working with children, discussing various topics, such as sunscreen application, biting in toddler classroom, incorporating infant/toddler songs into curriculum, educators who work in communities that fear/distrust law enforcement, meaningful play in Pre-K, and teacher preparation for kindergarten transitions.  These examples are just a sample of one days open discussion, the topics vary everyday with professionals input and interests.  

I was particularly interested in the topic of biting in the toddler classroom because I am coming out of that exact situation currently.  I am the head teacher of a toddler room that has just dealt with a fifty percent biting ratio out of eight children in the classroom.  It took four weeks to get through the phase with great effort and support from my organization.  How early childhood professionals deal with this kind of situation is up to each organization to decide.  This causes great differences in how early childhood professionals are handling developmental behaviors, such as toddlers biting.  Here is how the discussion begun, an early childhood professional has reached out to her peers for thoughts and suggestions on a situation in her setting:

Subject: Biting in Toddler classroom

Yes, this action is "normal" at this age. But what do you do with a child who bites a few times a week? I recently wrote a policy for our parent handbook since previous handbooks did not have one. I said we'd send the child who is biting home of it occurs 3X in one day.  The parents of the bitten children were thankful. The parents of the child who it's biting weren't.  The teachers have not managed to help this behavior to cease. The parents say theirs is a loving home and they didn't know why the child bites.  One child was now bitten on the face twice! While I think it may have been the same child biting, no one saw the incident yesterday.  Any advice or resources welcome. Thanks!

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Paula Hance, Zion Early Childhood Center, Hopkins MN

            This discussion post caught my attention because of the suspension policy of the organization for a developmentally appropriate behavior in a toddler, not desired, but does occur at this age.  This also struck other professionals similarly as I read on through the discussions.  However, there were also professionals who supported suspension and parent shaming, proposing scare tactics in shaming parents for possibly spreading disease within the school setting.  Upon my current situation, I dealt with parents who were opposites in opinion on how our organization should be handling the situation that was occurring in our toddler classroom.  We immediately began researching why and what the children were communicating about the classroom and their peer and adult interactions, before acting with the biters families.  The fact is biting is a school’s responsibility to manage at this age, and I am a firm believer in seeking social services if biting continues into preschool and may communicate a social delay or disorder, but not at toddler age.  Additionally, we hired a spotter for a two-week period to support the current staff while we problem solved on how to support the children and families.  Here are some of the ideas and thoughts other professionals had on this topic:

Subject:  Biting in Toddler classroom

Several resources I find helpful in understanding and acting to address biting in young children are:

NAEYC https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/understanding-and-responding-children-who-bite

<https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/understanding-and-responding-children-who-bite>

http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/documents/biting-parenting_tool.pdf

<http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/documents/biting-parenting_tool.pdf>

https://www.zerotothree.org/resources/232-toddlers-and-biting-finding-the-right-response

<https://www.zerotothree.org/resources/232-toddlers-and-biting-finding-the-right-response>

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Robert Gundling, Ed.D., Better Futures LLC, Senior Consultant, Washington, DC

Subject: RE: Biting in Toddler classroom

 Folks, we need to get the latest studies of the brain into a higher level of circulation. Biting is a learned behavior and the response needs to be about learning a new construct in the brain. Anything that causes stress in the child works against learning creating neurons (learning) to fight or flight learnings not to the thinking learnings. Robert's sites were pretty good in this regard, especially the Zero to Three and Vanderbilt ones, but even they didn't have an emphasis on soothing the child to get them thinking well. We need to stop thinking about the causes of things like biting behavior as forming personality issues. Emotion is the energy of all behaviors and emotions are learned. We didn't used to know that. We need to learn it as fast as we can.

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Jack Wright, Success with Children, St Ignatius MT

Subject: RE: Biting in Toddler classroom

In a toddler classroom, I find it odd no one "saw the bite happen." I could understand the first time it happened, but after you know a child is prone to biting they must have constant supervision. I have a toddler who (if I wasn't watching) would bite 10-20 times a day, perhaps even more. This is a completely developmentally appropriate behavior for a toddler. That said, it is not okay to actually allow it to happen. I do not feel it appropriate to have a policy of 3x and you are out (whether it be per day, hour, or even minute.) I have seen biting occur due to lack of verbal skills, set up of the environment, lack of teacher supervision, teething, intense emotions (excited, frustrated, etc.) If we have a child who bites, they become glues to a teacher. We might wear them in the ergo, sit next to them.  I have dealt with biting in preschoolers as well. I had a 4-year-old who would sometimes bite their peers out of frustration. She also bit staff on several occasions. I would never have thought to expel her, she had (still has) a social emotional delay. She now has an IEP. Some of those toddlers who bite in your classroom, may be diagnosed with a delay. "Scaring the parents" of the biter will do nothing to help the children learn appropriate coping skills. 

I would suggest having the teachers track number of bites and attempted bites per day. Break the day into 15-minute increments. When an incident occurs, mark the time block it occurred in. You can note the activity and other children involved. Look for a pattern. In my experience, bites to the face indicate the biter was trying to talk to the other child. (So perhaps a verbal delay?) I actually find these bites easier to explain to parents (rather than a child who sneaks up behind and bites on the back.) 

My classroom is a mixed age group of children ages 1-5, 12 children total per day. I feel like I ALWAYS have at least one child who is biting :( Good luck with your classroom! I've attached a letter I use with families. Feel free to modify for your setting. 

Here are a few resources.

https://ccids.umaine.edu/resources/ec-growingideas/bitingvtk/

https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/understanding-and-responding-children-who-bite

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Sasha Shunk, owner/director, Shunk Child Care, Portland ME

Subject:  Biting in Toddler classroom

I think the parents of the biter needs to be informed and scared straight that the victims might carry blood-borne pathogens- hepatitis or HIV, or even herpes. This will make the parents prevent the child not to bite by reminders.  I also know that some want to bite something- so even a teething ring might be good, or something to chew on- food. Another is to pay more attention to the bitten than the biter- as he/she might want attention and found it to have a great response.  I would also train the bitten to avoid being near the biter, and look for signs. The biter should also be isolated until the parents face facts that biting is not a healthy behavior, and could result in disease. The scare might do the trick.

Hope this helps. I have isolated students who tried to bite. The older ones, once they were told they could get really sick from biting others, decided germs were not fun and stopped.  But these are older kids.

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LynMari Fukuda, PreK Teacher, Pahala Elementary. Hawaii

            As I mentioned before, there is no universal policy on how to handle toddler biting in a classroom.  I was quite surprised at the variation within the field of thoughts and beliefs of child development and effective practices.  This creates an inequity within infant/toddler programs that can create negative school experiences at a dramatically young age.  Organizations are either not pursuing or receiving consistent information on developmentally appropriate practices and may also lack the support of additional resources and staff to do so.  I will end my weekly insights with how we did end up getting through our biting phase in my toddler classroom. To start, we did research on toddler biting through credible resources, like Robert Gundling had suggested in his discussion posting.  Utilizing the most recent findings in effective practices with young children.  Additionally, we shared this research with all the families in the classroom.  We wanted everyone to have the same information and understand our strategies.  

            We began a log on every child that was biting, like I mentioned before, that was four out of eight children.  This felt like a lot to one of the staff members to be documenting and was resistant.  As we went through the process, it was becoming evident it was not just a child problem.  We had every child that was biting wear a teething necklace to have an appropriate item to bite when they had the urge to.  The staff in the classroom began meeting for 15-20 minutes during their planning times to discuss what was logged each day and what may have happened.  The Director also met with each staff member individually throughout this process when necessary.  The classroom was assessed for interests and sensory inputs and revamped.  We asked families to bring in grocery containers to add to our house area to support a current interest of cooking and grocery shopping.  We added sand and water bins to be available throughout the day, previously we only had sand.  The large motor area was supported with heavier materials and push toys.  We created a pillow pit where children could wrestle pillows or relax with a book, it was up to them.  Lastly, we developed a script for all staff for when the incidents occurred that as not shaming or laze fair.  We firmly signed and said, “Stop biting, biting hurts” and moved into conflict resolution steps to solve whatever problem was taking place.

            Here’s what we learned from all the things we did.  Through logging behavior, we learned it was happening during transitions, almost every transition there was an incident occurring.  We also learned that it was only occurring during transitions in a specific teacher’s shift.  This was the teacher who was resistant to implementing the documentation and materials in the beginning.  Through individual meetings, we learned the teacher needed Employee Assistance Program services for her mental state at the time and was not effectively supporting the adult/child relationships in the classroom.  The children were communicating they needed her attention and she was not present, burnt out is what some might call it.  The children were also lacking the verbal skills to negotiate problems as they were occurring and had not supporting adult during those times.  

The consistency we began to implement, the spotter provided, and additional resources got us over the hurdle.  The phase lasted for three and a half weeks and then virtually disappeared.  The adults and children are back to being well-balanced and much more aware of how quickly things can go awry.  And most importantly, we did not ask any children to leave and our families trusted us to remedy the situation.  We originally asked parents to give us about four weeks to implement our strategies before we moved forward with any decisions and we were successful.  I am very curious to hear other thoughts on this topic!

References

www.naeyc.org