Northern Ireland

Nursery chain uses bite boxes to stop children hurting each other

A child takes out a toy from a 'bite box' at the Tops Day Nursery. Picture by Andrew Matthews/PA Wire
A child takes out a toy from a 'bite box' at the Tops Day Nursery. Picture by Andrew Matthews/PA Wire A child takes out a toy from a 'bite box' at the Tops Day Nursery. Picture by Andrew Matthews/PA Wire

A CHAIN of nurseries has come up with a novel way of dealing with children who are serial biters.

Bite boxes, which contain rubber toys and teethers, have been successfully used by Tops Day Nurseries when more traditional methods to stop the behaviour, such as redirection and warnings, have failed.

Amy Alderson, the chain's operations director, said the idea came about when a nursery was trying to find a solution to help a child who was consistently biting others.

"In partnership with the parents I suggested that we created basically a box that's got various rubber toys and teethers in so that the child could basically satisfy their urge of biting but on appropriate objects and it's actually shown really high success rates," she said.

"Over the last few years, whenever we have had biters in the nursery we implement a bite box and that's available for them to go to.

"If we can see the children are getting a little bit anxious, or a little bit excited, which is quite oftentimes when children will bite, we can just offer them the bite box, and usually that satisfies the urge and it actually prevents them from biting other children or staff members."

Children still need to learn that biting others is wrong, Ms Alderson said, and this is explained to them.

"It's not that we're ignoring the fact that they're biting," she said.

"It's still very important that they learn that that is not socially acceptable, children shouldn't bite other children, it hurts them."