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Hi treaco, Adopted children tend to be very emotionally immature for their age in general and so i would suggest that you think younger - treat her as you would do a much younger child. Therefore, you must closely supervise your ad, esp with your birth son, and learn to anticipate problems before they arise. so lots of distraction and redirection when things are starting to look at bit hairy!! Also, when she does nip or bite - redirect her with a gentle but firm " no biting/nipping it hurts and is not allowed, use your words instead". Also have a chat with your son so he understands that it is not personal - that she is much younger than her age and it is her way of communicating her anxiety/fears. Given time and patience I am sure it will improve. best wishes xx

Hi waterfall, thanks for your reply, we have spoken to her about it and told her how it's bad and how she shouldn't do it and asked her how she would feel if someone done it to her. Sw has brought us a couple of books to read with her. We don't think it's going to improve much until contact with bf stops as we think it's alot to do with her insecurities. She hasn't done any of it in a couple of days now so long may it continue M xx

Hi treaco, Gosh, your post bought back so many memories for me. Our adopted son was 18months old when he arrived home and our birth daughter was 7 years old. She was SO excited to finally have a brother and he adored the ground she walked on from the moment they met. But only days into him arriving home, he started to bite her, very hard, whenever he couldn't get her attention or she did something he didn't like. He even drew blood once or twice. It was so so hard for myself and my husband to watch this happen, and of course we disiplined our little boy, just as we would have our daughter when she was that age, and he'd cry and cry when he was told off. We then found a book called 'Our Teeth are not for biting' (and bought all of them in the series) and slowly but surely it started to work. Our daughter would even sit and read it to him over and over again and whenever he did bite her. She was incredible at understanding that he wasn't doing it because he didn't love her. And it did stop. We used lots of distraction techniques too, but found that the book was the key. I truely hope its stopped and I wish you all the luck and happiness in the world with your newly created family. xxx

Our daughter has bitten a few times when younger and it was totally mortifying at the time. She always did it to other children at pre-school/school. It was definitely one of my triggers and I found it really hard to stay calm. She has grown out of it now thank goodness and hasn't done it for years. I didn't find that telling off or consequences helped at all. What did help was closer supervision and structure and seeing an OT who understood adoption and sensory integration. Our dd has sensory integration difficulties (quite common in adopted children) and needs to chew/bite for oral input. Once she had something that was ok to bite, a chewy gem worn around her neck, she got much better. Perhaps you could ask for an assessment of her sensory needs? I hope things improve, biting is hard to cope with, A xx