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[quote=Anonymous]Longtime nanny here. In my last position with twins, they went through a biting stage between 16-18 months. We also read that book but it didn't really help much. We tried the playpen method of "modified" time out but that didn't work because the child outside of the playpen would often go over to the playpen and end up getting bitten again, plus by 17 months they knew how to climb out of the playpen anyway. We started using the high chair for time outs because it was successful in actually keeping them contained for the 90 seconds of time out. At the end of time out I would give one more quick "talk" about why we don't bite. It's hard to know if the methods we used were very successful or if they just grew out of it, but the first couple weeks there were several bites (and several more attempted bites), the next few weeks there was on average one bite per week, and in the last few weeks I saw the attempts taper down considerably until they stopped completely.

Things that helped the twins:

1. Teaching them to sign for "hungry" ( I noticed biting happened more frequently when I was preparing lunch or snack; I think hunger and lack of direct attention, even just for a couple minutes, contributed to the biting, but once they could sign "hungry" I could pop them right in the high chair with a few bites of food while I finished making the quesadilla or pasta, etc for lunch)

2. If you catch them about to bite (but are able to intervene before it happens), you can remind them "ouch biting hurts, we don't bite" and hand them a frozen washcloth (put it in the freezer damp) to chew on.

3. Watch them like a hawk. That helps a lot.

I have to agree I'm disappointed that your nanny isn't doing more to be  proactive about this. Does she have experience with taking care of multiple toddlers at once? How many children is she watching at a time? [/quote]

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