Published on 12, July, 2020
My daughter has recently started biting her arms over the past few weeks. She has many bruises on her arms which some are swollen. They range from big to small little ones and look very painful. She had to be held because of this yesterday in school. They explained that she was biting with extreme force so they held her to stop her. She's never done this before and I'm lost on what to do. Like, how do I prevent the worst injuries as much as I can without touching her because that makes it worse?
I don't know if it's normal but as child I would experiment making impressions on my my arm with my teeth, often biting hard but never drawing blood. One can draw blood through the skin however, by sucking the skin hard. We know why that happens, capillaries allow blood through to the outer layer of the skin as the vacuum created by sucking is too strong to prevent it. I grew out of it and it was never an issue as I'd discovered all I could about it and I wasn't diagnosed till late in life.
I remember when she was a child, her and her sister would always suck on their arms, not drawing blood but close to it.
Yes, like that. Seems it is a usual thing for kids to experiment with then, but not at a self destructive level.
Is the biting giving her a desired attention? Is she doing it to drive people away?
Thank you. She will play with her sensory toys whenever she feels like it. I know one time she distracted herself in a meltdown when I wasn't home. It was amazing. We've come so far. She was hurting herself, screaming, crying and she managed to take control and put her favorite Netflix Movie on in the middle of it all and used her chew toys aswell. It was great but I still don't know why it happened but its fine.
I know not much will get through in a meltdown, so you're doing your best by keeping her safe instead of making the situation more overwhelming for her. Enough redirection to other things when she's calm will likely make her do it less during meltdowns too, so don't ignore it in those calm moments. I hope you can find something that works for the two of you and she doesn't continue biting herself for too long.
She does have a chewy necklace. She's gone through many and this one is starting to break but we can't find any that are better suited for her. She also has a chewy which is on her wrist which we thought was indestructible but she's chewing through that at the moment. We have tried redirecting her and school have tried but they have found out that when she's in the middle of a meltdown or kicking off, she can't hear us and has no clue what is happening around her so it's hard to redirect her. Just have to keep her safe until she calms down.
We have put her sensory toys next to her bed so they are reachable and I've tried giving them to her but she just either hits them on her head, hurts herself with them or chucks them about so I'm not sure what to do
Sounds to me like it's a stim for her, and they can be hard to get out of. All I can think that might help is that when you catch her doing it you try to distract her with a healthier method of stimming, like a fidget toy. You could also always try and see if a chewable necklace will do the trick, and you can calmly redirect her to that to bite instead if you catch her biting her arms.
She also has a bruise on her legs and upper arm, not from biting but from yesterday's incident at school. Probably from having to be held and because she puts up a fight injuring herself trying to get away or whatever she does.