Is it ok to bite a child to discipline him/her?

If all the mother did was bite and didn't tell the child anything then the mother was wrong. I had to bite my oldest son to stop him from biting other people when he was little but I didn't just bite him. That is almost like showing him that biting is OK. I bite my son back the one time he bit me and he started to cry. I asked him if I hurt him and he said yes. I explained to him that that is how other people feel when he bites them. That it hurts them. And that he doesn't want to go around hurting people does he? He said no, and never bit anyone again. That was 1 time 3 years ago. So I think I did alright.

Well.. i can honestly say that i DID bite my kid back once or twice. and then put her down and away from me and told her NO and that biting was mean. Later when she stopped crying i would ask her if she liked it when mommy bit her. She would obviously say no, so i would tell her that i didn't like it when she'd bite me either. And no one else liked being biten either! She was 15 or so months old and now she no longer bites, but it only took a few times.. I would think at 3 years old and the kid is still bitting people, I'd say that the biting back method is NOT working for her and she should try something else!

I've heard that before but that is a real old school way of parenting. Recently I have heard not to bite back because the child thinks its' okay if the parent is doing it. Remember monkey see, monkey do.

this is the craziest thing i have ever heard of.a mother who bites to teach her 3 yr old son?????GOD.....SAVE US....i think there much better ways to make a 3 yr old learn what to do and what not to.

I remember when my son was about three and got into the habit of biting. He didn't bite adults but did bite a couple of the children he played with. One friend of mine got fed up with him and bit him when he bit her son. While I understood her frustration with my son's behavior, I couldn't believe she bit him. It didn't cure him - it wwnt away with my keeping sharp tabs on him and intervening and redirecting his attention. So, no biting back is not the correct response to this behavior. I'm not sure what it does teach, but definitely something negative. Whit

No, this is totally wrong psychologically. 3 years old child is not matured enough to understand anything. Biting is a natural tendency of many children less than 5 years old which itself finishes as he/she grows up. In my relations, I saw many children with this habit. Nobody gave any such punishment to them. But their habit finished itself as they grew you. But this act can harm child psychologically. So this act of any parent itself is a childish and immature. On the other hand this comes under child abuse.

It may not be the right way to handle a child but it's effective. I had one child who was a biter. She bite me one day and in order to release her jaws from my finger, I had to slap her. I, in turn, bite her back but not with any intention to hurt her or break the skin. Only applied enough pressure so she would feel it. She never did it again. We raised three daughters and they are grown now. All well adjusted, mannerly and have good careers. I have an excellent relationship with all of them. It didn't damage her character or warp her by simply letting her know biting is not acceptable. This was many years ago. I am not sorry about the way I chose to stop her from biting again.

Usually that does not work, especially if it is out of temper that the child is biting. It only teaches them that because the adult is bigger the adult can do this thing. Now I will contradict myself, somewhat. My son would be looking out the door, or doing something and would just get SOOOO excited, he would run across the floor and wrap his arms around my legs and bite my knee. He just was so excited he did not know what to do with himself. I talked to him, told him no, etc. and it did not stop. I did finally grab his hand and give it one bite and say,loudly "That hurts!" and he quit doing it. He would still run and grab me, but he quit biting. He finally understood. I baby sat a biter, and she started it for two reasons--one was temper, and the other was that family played "eat the baby's toes". She got much better about the angry biting when she learned to express herself with words. Both of these incidences were in children younger than three, though. At three there should be some other consequence, but not biting.

Is she a dog?haha!There are other ways to discipline than that.Terrible.

This is an age old question :) Some people swear it works, some people think you should never bite a child back, others have said they have tried it but it didn't work. I think it depends on the child, whether they have a major biting problem or not & if you are happy to do it, if it will stop them from doing it. My daughter has bitten me once, i growled at her 'NO' in a very angry voice, she's never done it again. For some kids i'm sure that wouldn't work - for others i'm sure it would do the trick. If you decide that biting a child back to show them how much it hurts will work, then you decide :) I don't think there's a right or wrong answer here so just do whatever you think is the right approach! If it worked for her son, then it was the right thing for her to do, if it didn't work, then she'll just have to try something else another time, should she catch him biting again.

An adult biting a child back as disipline? Is that even legal? Or is that considered abuse? Doesn't seem like a wise thing to do to me.

nope, i think it is not alright for a mother to bite her child back to teach him a lesson. I've seen quite a lot of out of control kids hitting and biting their parents. I'm not sure how things got to this state, but I think the parents have to exericise authority and make sure that the kids show some respect to their parents. in this case, the parent should have emphasised that this was wrong and punish the child by taking away certain toys and making the kid apologise.

I think that she was right with what she done cause it teaches a child not to do it cause it hurts and it shows the child if they didn't like means no one else likes it either.

Wow, I definitely have to admit that the idea of anyone, even a parent, biting a child is just creepy for me. I definitely don't see this method as being anything but childish and harmful to the child in the long run. I mean, what is she going to do if the child does other things? Kicking? Screaming? The answer really isn't in returning what the child does. In fact, it may encourage them to think that it's the right answer if their parent does it as well.

I want to believe that the mother's bite was not so hard, so the bite was a way to tell the child that its bad to bite and that will create an instint in the child and anytime he/she as a notion to bite a reflex action will prevent it. So I believe that can work as a form of discipline.

None of my four children were/are biters. My sister was a terrible biter and her son, my nephew was a biter at the same age (around 2 years). My sister would bite me and other little kids when she was two or three. My nephew on the other hand would only bite my sister. Both my mom and my sister bit back. It wasn't after the first or second or twentieth time...it was after they just couldn't think of anything else to do. I was only 4 years old, I remember running from my sister because she would bite me so hard I would be bruised for days. She would do this to children she didn't even know as well. I know that my mom finally bit her back. Honestly, I have no idea if it worked because I was little. My nephew kept biting and biting my sister. She bit him back, not hard enough to even leave a mark. He didn't like it though and has not bit her since. This was over a year ago. I am not advocating biting children, just like I don't advocate hitting. I don't hit my own children. This were just simply my own family tales. :)

I am not in favor of doing what your children does to you in order to disciline them. What I usually does to my kids as a form of discipline is letting them sit on a chair without getting off. Then after few minutes, i will talk to them like a matured people. I will explain to them why it is wrong to do things they done.

you probably opened a hornets nest on this one!!! I would bite them back enough to show them it hurts but not enough to hurt them! It does show them that it hurts because how else will they learn? But i know alot of people would never do it considering it child abuse. But they have never had a child that does not listen to you because that is the difference i think its all about the child you have on your hands!!!My first child i never had to do things like that because she was a good child and would listen to me. Now my second child is completely different. She does not learn by being told. I have to show her that it hrts andf that you can not go around hitting and pushing and stuff. She just doesn't learn!!!

No, it doesn't. A rational adult may believe in fear to retaliation, that is: "now you know how does it feel like being biten... you didn't liked it, huh?". But at three years old, those "rational" patterns are not still fully established, at that age the patters that work foremost are the model role ones: the child just discovers that biting is an acceptable way of resolving a conflict, as he has just learnt that her mother, her top 1 model of behaviour, also uses it. So, she did really bad.

It may work as some sort of discipline to the child, but there are much more effective ways.