When they bite
This is not an easy conversation for any parent to have and it will probably never be, especially when the information comes to light at the beginning of a well deserved weekend.
On that faithful Friday afternoon at 12:15 I left the house to go pick August up from school not expecting to hear the phrase "August bit ............ on the arm today" wait what???? hold up, are you shitting me????!!!!, was honestly the only response I could give to his teacher who tried to reassure me over and over again that some kids go through this phase, my "reaction" to August biting was somehow justified by the fact that we have never had this problem at home, it's not like the kid is nibbling on humans and his dinner on a daily basis.
As first time parents, extensive research is the norm in our house when we are dealing with something like this and so our search engines were working over time trying to come up with solutions for our little "Hannibal Lecter"
According to handinhandparenting.org , kids bite because they feel frustrated or afraid or when they haven't had enough time with their parents or caregivers and they cannot express these feelings through natural outlets like crying or tantrums. Now crying and tantrums I know, I can deal with that I am a pro at dealing with that and August is a master at throwing them. other reasons involve over-stimulation, teething, hungry or showing love, and so we addressed every single possible reason there might be for him retorting to chomping down on an arm. The following Monday I was hopeful as I dropped August off at school seeing as there was no incidents over the weekend how could there be with overly vigilant parents lurking around the corners and having their creepy eye on him all the damn time?. As 12:15 rolled around I left the house hoping for some good news only to hear that this time the little monster bit down on someone else, luckily the mom and I arrived at the school at the exact same time and my profuse apologies did not stop until she left the school ground, this time we had a meeting with his teacher to figure out exactly in what situation our son was when he saw that biting was the ony solution and came to the conclusion that even though his vocabulary has grown a lot in the last couple of months, he still struggling to explain when he has had enough.
As the week went by, we had 2 successful days where he did not bite anyone and a full week of explaining that biting is bad with sufficient amount of time outs given when needed, but it definitely did not help the other kids giving back what he's been shelling out and by Friday night when it was time for his bath I realised that there's a suspiciously large bruise on Augusts shoulder that kind of looks like a bite mark. My hope now is when August goes back to school he would have learned his lesson and keep those pearly whites uses for food only.
"take a bite of an apple take a bite of a take a bite of the cookie that you left over there but here's one thing you should never do. don't bite Taylor or Brandon or Sue because people aren't food, people aren't food. your friends will run away if they're scared of being chewed"
- Cameron tucker Modern family
At times like this I wish I had Cameron Tucker's (modern family) parenting wisdom and will probably make the "people aren't food" song our new mantra.
