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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > Why Little Janie Bites? (Pedcast)
Podcast: Portable Practical Pediatrics
Episode:

Why Little Janie Bites? (Pedcast)
Category: Kids & family
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2017-10-16 15:27:26
Description:   Introduction Parents frequently ask me about why their toddlers behave the way they do? Why do they at times, get aggressive and push or grab toys from other children? They find some of their toddler's behaviors disturbing, disappointing, and embarrassing.  The symptom that parents bring up most frequently, usually at their child's 18-month checkup, is biting of other children.  Why does little Janie bite other children and is this behavior normal?  Let's break this down in today's discussion that I have titled "Why Little Janie Bites"? I don't blame parents for dreading the call from daycare..."Mrs. So and So, your child bit another child again and it is time to find another daycare!" These calls evokes feelings of embarrassment, disappointment, and downright despair in parents. Even if their child is not expelled from daycare, the stress of such a call and the realization that they can do very little to change this situation is upsetting, to say the least. I can hear the distress in the parent’s voices when they bring the subject up at Janie's checkup. So in today's pedcast, I thought we would take a closer look at the origins and natural history of some of the aggressive behavior parents are likely to encounter from their children during the toddler years. Stay tuned. Musical Intro What behaviors are we talking about? What are the behaviors we are talking about? Biting is just one but there are others that I group into the disturbing category that I call unusual toddler behavior; behaviors that are unique to this age group (1-3 years of age), that are exhibited by otherwise normal children, and that are likely to disappear in time.  When I use the verb biting in this pedcast, you could easily substitute any of the other aggressive behaviors we are about to discuss. I think of them as all the same thing. The aggressive behaviors are things like grabbing, pushing, head butting, hitting, and biting.  Just spend a little time in a daycare and you will think you were in a bar with a group of drunken sailors watching the toddler’s go at it. Not a lot of diplomacy and self-control going on in that room. There is another group of behaviors that are somewhat unique to toddlers and disturb parents; those that are intended to give the toddler a unique sensory event.  Things like rocking, head banging, spinning, and even masturbating but we are only going to focus on aggressive behaviors in today's pedcast. Why are toddlers so impulsive? Why are toddlers so impulsive you may be asking yourself and is their impulsiveness normal?  Well, I think the answer to the first question is simple... a toddler's frontal cortex, the place where they think through behavior and its consequences just hasn't developed to a point where they can make socially acceptable judgments about how to react.  Janie was not born knowing right from wrong or how to deal with her own anger and she certainly doesn't know what behavior is socially acceptable. Properly handling anger or disappointment are learned abilities that you will slowly teach her over years and that require a functioning and trained frontal cortex to master. As I said before, a toddler's brain is just like the adult sailor's brain under the influence of large amounts of alcohol. Neither can control their impulsiveness. Neither group, the toddlers nor the drunken sailors can stop their instinct to hit or bite, albeit for different reasons. They are up against the same problem. Impulses to act that are unchecked. So you can see that a toddler who reacts to frustration by biting or hitting is normal since they don't have the ability, the reasoning power, the practice or even the language skills to work through these situations. They just react and act on whatever impulse is driving them at that moment. Actually these are the same impulses that we all have; moments of resentment, embarrassment, fear, anger, and sadness. And here is an important point to remember.
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