Autism and Biting: How to Resolve Biting in Children with Autism

Dr. Mary Barbera discusses autism, biting, and how to reduce biting in children with autism.
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As a registered nurse and a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, I think biting is one of the most serious problem behaviors that I can think of. Biting will get kids thrown out of preschool and daycare. It will get them into restrictive placements, like older kids who bite will sometimes not be able to continue on in public school. They'll have to go to autism school where professionals wear bite guards. When I think of biting, it is just something that we have to tackle as early as possible.
Human bites are actually even more serious than animal bites because we have more bacteria in our mouth. If you get a bite as a professional or even as a parent or a sibling, it could lead to the need to see a doctor, get blood tests, potentially go on antibiotics, and you might need stitches. I've even seen biting where it caused ligament damage and nerve damage.
I don't mean to scare you, but biting is very serious. And even parents who think that the child is just being playful and biting when they get excited versus aggressive bites, biting will still get you thrown out of really important places.
So biting should not be something dismissed as a part of autism. It's not. Biting can be an indication that kids can't communicate well, and we need to teach them to communicate. If children with autism also have Hepatitis B or AIDS, for instance, that can be even more dangerous. So we should tackle that quicker than most other behaviors that I can think of.
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Dr. Mary Barbera. I fell into the autism world as an autism mom in 1999 when her first-born son, Lucas, was diagnosed with autism. Since then, she became a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst and best-selling author of The Verbal Behavior Approach. Since 2015, she’s created 3 autism online courses based on applied behavior analysis for professionals and "gung-ho" parents. Whether you’re looking for autism parenting strategies, working with development delays in children, or in search of autism help for professionals, I can encourage you to subscribe to the channel and join me on my journey. I’ll be providing weekly autism resources that you don’t want to miss.