Is Your Child a Chewer?

A: Almost all of us struggle with understanding and helping our children when they do things we don’t understand. Here are some guiding principles for understanding and relieving your daughter’s aggression, so and she can relax and enjoy your time together.

When children lose their sense of connection, they feel tense, frightened, or isolated. In this “emotional emergency,” they may lash out at other children. This could take the form of aggression, or in your case, chewing on everything.

For instance, on an ordinary morning at daycare, a child’s inner voice of emotion might be saying:

Mommy's gone. She doesn't like me—she rushed me out of bed and ordered me to eat my breakfast. She cooed at the baby, but she doesn’t like me. I feel awful. Here comes Joey. He looks happy. How come he gets to feel happy?

The child is loved. She has good parents. But, feeling disconnected and alone, she may lash out. This stems from the thinking: “No one understands me; no one cares about me.”

Children get these feelings of isolation, no matter how loving and close we parents are. Children acquire fears from a difficult birth, medical treatments, family tensions, the unhappiness of others around them, and from the absence of loved ones.

The chewing can’t be erased by reasoning, Time Out, or enforcing “logical consequences.” The knot of intense feelings inside the child isn’t touched by rewards or punishment. A child’s behavior out of her control, once she begins to feel disconnected.

Step one in helping a child is moving close and offering a warm connection. Then, listening helps heal the hurt. The child will either laugh or cry, and might tremble, perspire, or struggle mightily. The adult provides a safe connection and the time the child needs to release the fear she feels. The crying and physical struggling and perspiring she does get her limbic system—the part of her brain that sounds emotional alarms when she feels frightened—back in working order by providing an outlet for those unmanageable feelings.

Here are some simple steps you can follow that may help. These measures will, over time, drain the feelings that cause the need to chew, and will help the child feel closer to you and much more flexible in her play with other children.

Know yourself and your child. 

Ask someone to listen to you while you talk about the feelings you have about your daughter’s actions. Hurtful behavior kicks up lots of feelings—fear, anger, guilt—that freeze our warmth and make us react in ways that frighten our child further. Talking to a good listener, and offloading your own feelings, will prepare you to help your child.

Observe. Under what conditions do the child's fears overtake her? Is it when Mommy has been at a meeting the night before? When there have been arguments at home? When other children crowd close? When left to play with a sibling in a separate room? Generally, you can come up with a good guess as to when your child might lose her sense of connection and take in out on the clothes, hair, plastic around her.

Don’t fool yourself. Give up the hope that "this time it might not happen.” Mental preparation is important. If your child bites you suddenly when you're doing rough and tumble play, then every time you play this way, be mentally prepared for biting to occur.

Do a friendly but attentive “patrol” to catch the behavior as it rises.

Prepare for chewing by staying close by. Move close enough to be able to reach the child quickly, should it begin.

Stop the behavior, then Staylisten

When you have stopped the aggression, connect. Give the upset child eye contact, a warm voice, and kind physical contact. She needs some sign that it's safe to show you her feelings. You can say things like: “I know you don't feel good,” “I'm right here and I'll keep things safe for you,” “It looks like things are hard right now,” “Please tell me about it,” “No one's mad at you,” or, ”I want to stay with you right now.”

The feelings causing the aggression will surface. The crying and fighting a child does will release the hurt that drives her off track. Don't expect your child to be reasonable. She probably won't use words to tell you how she feels. Her body language and tone while crying or screaming will speak to you. Show your caring as you let her writhe with upset. If your child can cry or tantrum at this point, healing has begun.

While she is offloading feelings, she can’t reason. Don't lecture or explain. Even very young children know right from wrong. But when they are wild with feelings, they can’t listen to their own best thinking, or yours. After the unhappy feelings are gone, children remember, on their own, the important principles you have taught them.

Listen. Sometimes, your presence breaks the crust of isolation and the child’s bad feelings can pour out. The feelings that she expresses are the root cause of the problem. She may feel of anger toward you, or feel suddenly afraid of your touch and closeness. These fearful responses indicate that your child feels safe with you, and trusts you to handle her wildest, scariest feelings. Let her feeling pour out until she reaches a state of calm. She'll decide when she's done enough.

A child who can’t show feelings isn’t bad, she’s lost and isolated.

Do what you can to encourage closeness and create connection.

Encourage her to come to you when she's upset. Children don't do this easily when they carry a big knot of tension, but offering the idea that you want her to ask for help indicates the direction things will go in over time. After many cries she will have released some of her fears, and she will be more likely to run to you for help rather than chewing toys when she doesn’t feel connected.

Spend playtime with her and elicit laughter when you can. Connecting with a warm adult in play can be a powerful means of keeping a child’s sense of closeness alive. It's that sense of fun and closeness that will help her stay on a good track with her friends and siblings.

All in all, remember that a chewing child is a frightened child. Something has happened to frighten her, and she’s managing as best she can. She’s waiting for someone, possibly you, to move in close and ask her what the matter is, to listen, and to tell her she’s a good child even when she feels bad.