So, our precious Aaron is now two and a half. He’s a good kid, for the most part, but he has two bad habits.
He hits and he bites. Usually, these happen when he’s tired, frustrated, or agitated, but it’s still unacceptable behavior.
The biting is fairly recent, but for the hitting, I’ve tried making it a “game”, ignoring him, and grabbing his wrists and holding on to them for a few moments. Nothing has worked.
How can I get him to stop?
Robin
Supernanny would put him in a naughty corner - effectively a time-out where he isn’t allowed to do anything but sit there. She would tell him that biting / hitting is not acceptable and after 2 1/2 minutes (I think she does a minute per year of age but I could be off) she would retrieve him and ask for an apology and then let him try to play again.
I have no kids (yet) but I enjoy her show and like her ideas …
I’m sure other Dopers will be along shortly with their opinions! 
S.
Well this might be a very unpopular choice as I’m sure some will see it as child abuse, but for biting, I would flick my son’s mouth. I told him if he was going to hurt people with his mouth, then his mouth would have to hurt as well. I only had to do it twice, and he never bit another child again.
For hitting, we usually just removed him from the area, took away any toys he was playing with, and put him in a very boring place for several minutes. Afterward, he had to say sorry to the person he hit. If he wouldn’t say sorry, he was back on time out for another couple minutes. This seemed to work well for our son who hated to separated from whatever was going on.
Good luck.
I had this problem with my son as well. We did the time out minute pre year thing but I am pretty sure he just sat there and meditated. My daughter started doing it as well. One day I was sitting with Andrew and he just bit me out of the blue while Claire was sitting there.
I bit him right back! I know I know, what the hell was I thinking but you know what? Neither one of them ever bit me or anyone else ever again. I didn’t bite hard, it was a reflex and the second I did it, we all just looked at each other in shock; Me thinking " No way I just bit my own kid" and the kids thinking ( I assume form the looks on their faces) " Holy Flurking Schnitt! Daddy just bit Andrew!"
I’m not telling you to do that but it stopped the behaviour instantly and to this day the kids will joke that I will retaliate in kind if they do something Bad “Remember the time Daddy bit you back? Maybe he’ll _______ if you ______ too!”
I came here to say that when my brother and another little boy had a problem with biting in the church nursery, my mom told the workers to bite him back, because he probably didn’t understand that it hurt. IIRC, that went a long way toward fixing him of it.