Ask NML: A New Big Sister Bites At School
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Illustrated by Beatrix R., Age 6
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Q:
My daughter is 2 years 4 months. Her new baby brother is 1 month. She is a strong willed little gal with a low frustration tolerance. She has a large vocabulary for her age and generally communicates verbally for all her needs- except with her peers. At home she adores her brother and is super proud to be a helper and big sister. She has shown brief moments of frustration with our new situation at home but is generally happy. She has suddenly become really aggressive at school and is hitting, pushing and pulling hair at school. She also recently bit for the first time (her best friend!) What can I do at home to help her at school? I feel stuck because I am not there when it happens.
A:
It should be stated first and foremost that this is extremely normal. Like, “Oh man, is that all you got? Get more creative, kids!” normal. On a rational level, you probably know that, and it might even be annoying to hear it from me because “normal” though the behavior may be in theory, the lived reality is that this is your specific child who is away from you all day, for whom you worry and love and wish you could be with, and whom you know as a complex and vibrant human being - and they are hurting someone else’s. That’s hard. Very hard. I’ve seen how stressful these transitions are for parents and children alike.
But it’s not forever. Just as I’ve seen children and families struggle through this, I’ve seen how it eventually dissipates and makes way for new ways of being together. Promise!
With the standing caveat here being that I am not in your child’s classroom and don’t know the wider context of her daily life, I can make a few educated guesses about the how, why, and what to do next to support her through this (really long-feeling) moment.
Let’s use biting as the example here because it is generally the most emotionally-triggering physical behavior. Because the biting comes after a major life change and follows a pattern of hitting/pushing, we can likely rule out a purely sensory need for biting and see this and other aggressive behaviors as forms of communicating. The idea of communication here can be both literal - I am trying to tell you I was using that shovel - or a sign of some internal processing - Something about my life is different, and it’s making me different and my people different, and I CANNOT EVEN ANYMORE, MOVE IT OR LOSE IT.
Children under the age of 3 are just coming off the time when they primarily used physical contact and crying to both understand and be understood within the world around them. Physicality, even biting, is still developmentally -if not socially- appropriate. Children around your daughter’s age are also beginning to really test their powers of cause and effect. It’s amazing to think how many ways we can interact with the people and things around us! And they all respond differently, to a certain extent. Young children can mostly depend on the adults around them to understand, even intuit, their needs without too much guesswork. Peers at school, however, do not have these accommodation skills, which often leads to big feelings of frustration or behavior that can look, from the outside, like coldness toward other children (“Mine! Bam!!”). It’s a tough reality of group care, but children need time and scaffolding to develop the cognitive and emotional flexibility to control impulses, communicate clearly, and problem-solve together. The results are worth it but there will always be a little collateral learning along the way.
Now --- this is not even addressing the fact that you have a brand new, amazing, and loved member of your family. In no way would I suggest the addition of a sibling is a problem, but it will 100% be a factor in the way your daughter is forming and already re-adjusting her sense of self and belonging in your family and the world around her. That’s a stressful process. Not all stress is bad, however. This just gives us context into the many things your children are learning about life and self in the current moment. Having a new baby in the house means your child is learning to share her parents and extended family in a way she never has. It means she is now a “big sister,” which means she has to regulate herself in new ways with the baby (successfully, it sounds!) and also with you: Maybe sleep changes? Perhaps a pumping schedule to live around? A shift in energy? More caretakers? Less one-on-one time?
Any one of the above circumstances could cause behavioral changes and regressions to manifest. That’s okay! They have to! Life is about learning to adapt and grow and make meaning all at once!
So, combining the developmental with the situational (tip of the iceberg, really), we see that your child is learning how to navigate many kinds of shifting systems: how to be herself in the world, how to be in a changing family, how to be a member of a school community. To support her through these transitions, I would suggest a few things.
Partner with your child’s teacher to get as much context as you can about the physical behaviors. Take a wide view of the situation, and don’t worry about finding something or something to blame. You might get some ominous-seeming “incident reports” for the bites, but you can use these and conversations with the teachers to suss out patterns. Does this happen most often in the dramatic play space where the toy asparagus is in high demand? On the sandbox with that one red bucket? Does your child seem to get reactive when they are in close physical proximity, like the morning circle or the bathroom? Narrowing down some variables might help you and the teachers problem solve what triggers these reactions and then scaffold responses to them before and after they would take place.
When hitting/biting happens the best response in the moment is to help deconstruct the parts of what happened and emphasize the parts that do and do not work. This is how we can support children in working with that cause-and-effect impulse. “You wanted the shovel. You can use words to ask for the shovel. The words worked. Hitting doesn’t work.” Hopefully, you can get the support of your child’s teachers here to create consistency. Since you are not there when most of these incidents happen, you can also keep emphasizing the skills of using words to make things work at other, less charged times as well. “I noticed you wanted that shovel, and you asked me for it - that worked!” “I asked you to wait, and you did. That worked. My words worked.”
I know it’s likely a big ask with a new baby, but put some “money in the bank” with as much special alone time with your older child as you can manage. This can go a long way in assuaging some of the anxiety that comes along with life’s landscape shifting in such a major way. The more secure she feels in her primary relationships, the more at ease and confident she’ll be in other social interactions.
The real heart of your question is what can you do to support your child when she’s away from you. While I hope some of the above context and suggestions help, I know the highest hurdle is moving through the powerless feeling of having your heart walk around outside of you, maybe even getting in “trouble” or otherwise struggling - and there’s no developmental strategy for coping with that other than knowing that this, too, will pass. And you will get through it all together.
That is the best gift you’ve already given each other.