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| When your child bites mine |
My son is sitting happily in the rocking car thing at the playgroup, smiling and rocking. I'm glad - he's been a bit clingy this morning so it's nice to see him getting into playing.
Your son decides he wants the car. He goes over and pushes my son, who ignores him.
Your son attempts to hit him on the head.
My son, quite reasonably, puts his hand out to stop himself being clonked over the head and your gets his mouth round my son's fingers and bites down. Hard.
I've seen this from where I'm talking to one of the other mums.
I run over, but not in time to stop your son grabbing a handful of my son's rather sparse curls and pulling. The scream is loud enough to be heard over the general hubub of the playgroup.
I run over and kneel down.
"What", I say as I separate my son's fingers carefully from your son's mouth, "is going on here?"
I rub my son's rather dented fingers and I say to your son:
"You do NOT bite people's fingers. It's not nice. How would you feel if someone had bitten your fingers? You wouldn't like it would you?"
I'm quite good at restrained anger when children are involved. Practice with my son suggests getting properly angry has no discernable benefit over responding calmly so why upset yourself and them when you can calm down the situation?
Your son attempts again to push mine out of the toy car.
I've not managed to remove my son from it yet because he tends to make his legs stiff when he's upset and it's nigh on impossible to ger him out.
Besides, he was in the car in the first place and your toddler is trying to bully him out of it. That's not on. I tell him no.
I did not touch him or manhandle him in any way - although frankly the imperative that most mothers feel to get to your own child when they're hurt and screaming is very strong and I had to make a conscious effort not to chuck him out the way to get to mine.
You come rushing over, clutching your precious son to you just as I have with mine as he's now crying from being told no.
You appear to be under the impression that it's my son that's hurt yours when the bite marks are fairly obvious for all to see and frankly quite a lot of people are aware of what's happening.
I explain, in a slightly exasperated manner I explain that no, it's your son that bit mine, and ripped out his hair. All I've done is tell him no when he attempted to do so again and actually I'm quite cross about it.
I remove my son and take him for a cuddle. I rub his fingers for a bit and try to distract him with another activity. He's hurt and upset and frankly who can blame him.
He doesn't have brothers or sisters, so he's not used to toddler-on-toddler violence of that type. Your son is your second child - perhaps that's what they're like together? Certainly that's what the mums who come over to see if Adam's ok say - it's always the second one that bites as firstborns don't need to.
But do you know what's really annoyed and upset me?
You come over to me later. I'm not quite sure what you're expecting.
Are you wanting to see if my son's ok or are you vaguely expecting me to apologise for telling your son not to hurt mine?
I get the impression it's the latter - you say that I should be cross with you not him as he's only one year old and you storm off.
In fact you leave the playgroup before snacktime and no one does that normally.
Actually we've spoken before - your son is almost exactly the same age as mine, he's just twice the size as mine's rather tiddly.
If my child had bitten yours, I'd expect you to tell him not to do it in the same polite manner that I did.
I hope that you left the playgroup today because you had another appointment and not because you are either cross with the way I handled today's toddler situation or because you're embarrassed at your own handling of it. Toddlers do these things.
My point was not to overreact.
But now I'm properly cross about it because of your attitude. May be it'd be a good idea if in future you tell your son that biting is not a nice thing to do rather than winding up the mother of the bite-ee?
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Posted by rose22 on 2009-06-02 08:24:13 | Rating: | Views: 168
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