Part 1: Biting happens in the early years, and when it does, it's useful information

Few behaviours send a room into panic faster than a bite. Sometimes there's blood, almost always there's screaming. Then there's the incident report and phone calls, and somewhere in a staffroom someone says the word "biter" like it's a diagnosis.

It isn't. It's a strategy.

Every behaviour a child chooses is their best attempt, in that moment, to meet a need, given the skills and resources they have at the time (Glasser, 1998). Biting is no different. It's fast, it's effective, and for a small child with limited language and even less impulse control, it works. Once we stop asking "how do we stop this child from biting" and start asking "which Cup is this bite trying to fill," everything about how we respond changes.

And children don't only bite when a Cup runs dry. The brain is a prediction machine, constantly budgeting for what the body is about to need (Feldman Barrett, 2017). Sometimes a child will bite in anticipation, before a Cup fully empties, because their brain has already predicted the shortfall.

I see five reasons behind biting, and if you know the Phoenix Cups® Framework (Phoenix & Phoenix, 2019), you'll already know where I'm going with this.

The motivation is coming from the Will to Fill™ their Cups. Every one of them.

The five needs behind a bite

The Connection Cup® bite is the one that surprises people most. This is the "I love you so much I want to hug you with my teeth" bite. Think about cuteness aggression, that overwhelming urge to squeeze something adorable a bit too hard. Small children feel that same intensity of affection, minus the impulse control to soften it. A connection bite isn't angry or vicious. It's often unexpected, and it's not uncommon to see it from an older toddler to a much smaller child. But the child who did the biting usually does not run afterwards. They stay close. They're ready to make it right.

The Mastery Cup® bite comes from frustration. A peer gets in the way, takes a toy, blocks a goal. This bite carries annoyance or anger behind it, born of not yet having the language or skill to solve the problem another way. You can often hear a Mastery Cup bite before it happens with a loud, angry protest.

The Freedom Cup® bite can look and sound almost identical to a Mastery bite, and sometimes it's both at once. Picture a child who's competent on the balance beam and wants to move fast, stuck behind a slower child. Bite, and the obstacle moves. I've also seen Freedom Cup bites land on the adults trying to restrain a child or stop them doing something they want to do.

And sometimes the child's Freedom Cup started emptying well before the bite, as they walked through the car park gate, through the child trap, the next gate, into a door they won't be let back out of until home time. Six hours held hostage indoors is a long stretch for anyone who values autonomy. Enough bites, and a child learns they might get a trip to the sanctuary of the director's office, or even go home early. That's a lot of freedom on offer for one bite.

The Fun Cup® bite is easy to spot because the child doing the biting was bored, and now they are decidedly not. They bite, then laugh out loud, at the reaction. Then they bolt, and if the game turns into chase, they laugh harder still. The child chosen to be on the receiving end tends to be different too. Less likely to crumple, more likely to squeal dramatically or leap up and give chase. It's a performance, on both sides. And for a child seeking novelty and excitement, it's entertainment.

The Safety Cup® bite is the one educators most often misread, because on the surface it looks like nothing at all is wrong, like it ‘came out of nowhere’. I've often called this one the 'zombie bite'. The child just gets up, locks eyes on a target, and slowly walks towards them ready to chew. This bite is about the body needing sensory input it isn't getting. I'll come back to this one properly in Part 2, because it deserves its own space. If you are seeing a zombie bite, or worse, are in a biting epidemic with more than one child biting, then part 2 is for you.

When one Cup teaches a Skill to Fill™ that works everywhere

Here's the twist. A child will often discover biting because one particular Cup is emptying, for example the Safety Cup and its need for sensory input, then realise the skill itself is useful and start applying it wherever any Cup needs filling. What began as a sensory bite ends up serving Mastery, Freedom, Connection, and Fun as well. So don't be surprised if a child's biting doesn't fit neatly into one box. Once a skill works, children are efficient enough to put it to work everywhere.

Jack: a case study in getting the diagnosis right

I was asked to observe a child, let's call him Jack (because we are never, ever calling a child "the biter"), who was biting several times an hour, all day, every day.

I saw the aftermath before I saw the act. A child had been bitten, an educator was giving him plenty of comfort, and Jack stood close by, watching, waiting. The educator turned to him and said what she always said. "We can't bite our friends. What do we do now?"

Jack, who had early language, said, "Owie. Ice pack. Sorry."

She confirmed, took him to get the ice pack, and Jack sat beside the child he'd bitten with his arm around him, patting him, apologising, while the ice pack was applied. The other child settled, then they went off to play together.

Later, I caught the bite itself. Jack had been playing alone. He approached another child, glanced around to check that an educator was nearby, opened his mouth wide, and leaned in. I got a hand between his teeth and the other child just in time. "Whoa, Jack! What's happening?" I asked. He looked at me and said, "Sorry. Ice pack?"

That's when it clicked. Whenever Jack wanted closeness with his peers, he'd found a remarkably effective way to get it, engineered by an adult, with his new friend sitting perfectly still while he hugged them.

We looked to the program to respond, not a behaviour management plan (you know how I feel about those). Jack didn't know most of his classmates' names, and the children rarely came together as a group. It was otherwise a lovely program, long stretches of uninterrupted play, my favourite kind. I'm not usually one for adult-led games, but offered as optional invitations, they can be a great way to teach children some early games to play together and learn each other's names. So, we introduced a few like Duck duck goose and Musical chairs. We intentionally planned experiences to enhance his Skill to Fill his Connection Cup.

The first time there was no spare chair and Jack's friend had to sit on his lap, his smile went ear to ear. You could feel the joy in the room. He threw his head back, and belly laughed so hard. I'm not going to lie, I was nervously right there close while that mouth was open just behind his peer's back. But he did not bite.

Jack's educators worked hard at their plan, and Jack stopped biting entirely within two days. He never bit again.

Jack's story is a good reminder that the fastest way to reduce a behaviour is rarely to target the behaviour at all. Find the Cup, support the Skill to Fill, and the child trades up. A bite is only ever the best strategy a child has. Teach them a better way to meet their needs, and they'll use it.

Part 2 looks at the Safety Cup bite in depth, the one hiding behind almost every "biting epidemic" I've ever walked into, and what to actually do about it.

References

Feldman Barrett, L. (2017). How emotions are made : the secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ophtha.2013.02.035

Glasser, W. (1998). Choice theory (1st ed.). Harper Perennial.

Phoenix, S., & Phoenix, C. (2019). The Phoenix Cups: A Cup filling story. Phoenix Support Publishing.