This is the face of an angel, isn't it? Looking at his angelic face, happy smile, and beautiful curls makes me just smile. It makes me think "this beautiful boy could not possibly ever do anything mean to someone else".-
Boy am I wrong! I got a lovely call from Joshua's school this morning. Not a call us mommy's like to get. I was advised that Joshua bit another kid. For no reason. Not over a toy that they both wanted or anything that would spark a kid to bite someone. I'm not saying biting is right, but one would think that something would need to happen to make a kid be so upset to bite someone else.
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I was speechless and embarrassed when the teacher told me. I kept thinking "not my kid!". He has definitely hit his sister. I think he bit her a long time ago, but only once that I am aware of. I have heard of kids with biting problems getting kicked out of their school, so that was also running around in my thoughts. The teacher I spoke to was there and saw the whole thing happen. She said he just reached over at his friend and bit him on the arm. I couldn't even bring myself to find out if he drew blood. I was literally speechless. A first for me. I finally mustered up some words and told her how sorry I was, I appreciated her letting me know, and how embarrassed I was. She was so nice and told me that it happens to many kids. But not my angel!
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After we talked, I promptly called Jason to let him know. I can't type what he said, as he wasn't as speechless as I was. :) Then I emailed my mom to see if she had any advice...she sent me something online about biting. I now have new reading material for my train ride home.
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If anyone has had their child (or know someone that has) bite, let me know how you handled it. I might seem like I am over-reacting, but I really want to nip this immediately so it doesn't happen again. I don't' want to be known at Harvest Christian as "the mom with the son who bites", thank you very much.
5 comments:
Bless you heart...not a good way to start out the week. He is such a cutie! Maybe he just didn't have the words to say what he wanted. Good luck...I haven't experienced biting yet. I may call you in the future~I hope not.
Hey, I know this isn't the way... but I tried everything with Aidan, finally I bit him back. Not horribly hard but enough to shock him and let him know it hurt. Since then nothing... well mostly nothing, more of play biting but he always seems to know that isn't ok. Good luck!
Awww...neither of my kiddos did the biting thing, so I am worthless. One time J did bite, I bite him back as well. That stopped it- never again.
Good luck!
~Rebecca
That stinks! I have no advice as my four year old bit his sister yesterday. So if you get some good advice you might want to share it with us all!
btw...love the pics of your kids that your friend took for you! They are unbelievable!!!
Lily and Clementine are both biters. And honestly, prevention is the best thing to help. Meaning that you are close by and can intervene quickly when they are "going for it". For them it's been their defense mechanism, for whatever reason. Some kids hit, they bite. Well, Lily doesn't anymore! lol
Since it's something that Joshua has never done and wasn't obviously (to the adults) provoked, it is probably something he was just experimenting. He's probably seen other kids do it or thought of it or whatever. And for whatever reason he decided to try it out. He's definitely getting a negative reaction from it, so maybe that will be enough for him to learn that it's not a cool thing to do again! And hopefully his teachers will take this as a note that he might be needing some more positive attention. He may have done it just b/c he wanted to get some attention. Kids are weird! I was taught in school that the best thing to do when a kid hurts another kid is to react strongly to the kid who got hurt, give them lots of attention first. Then move on to the aggressor so they don't see what they did as a good way to get attention, even though it is negative attention. Of course, this is really hard to do!! But I try to remember it and think of it when I'm dealing w/ things in the moment.
I worked in the toddler room at a day care in AR for a while and it was brutal! those 18-30m kids were bruisers!!! We only had 2 adults to 17 kids, so it wasn't the best environment to be "proactive". I'm just saying toddlers/preschoolers are what they are and the teachers expect things like this to happen as a normal part of development. I'm sure your baby boy will be just fine!! Clementine is already figuring it out. She's biting waaaay less than she was when our friends first moved in w/ us. It was bad. But she was getting hit and shoved constantly so........
(((hugs))) didn't mean to write a novel!!! It really isn't any fun and there's not magic answer.
Emily
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