From: glm@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (georgia.l.madden)
Subject: Re: Help! - comforting bitee...
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: il
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 15:54:35 GMT
Summary: Biting

In article <C1FI8K.9z5@SSD.intel.com>, wang@ssd.intel.com (Wen-Lin Wang) writes:
> My email bounced, so here it is...
> 
> I know that quite a few people will assure you that biting is common and will
> go away eventually.  Well, it will go away and maybe it's common too, but I
> don't think it's acceptable.  It creates heartache for parents, not 
> mentioning possible infections if skin breaks.
> 
> My daughter was bitten once with small skin breaks.  At the time the teachers
> payed a lot of attention on her so she didn't think much about it.  Later on
> she would tell me who bit her.  I taught her that if any kid was about to bite
> her, she should "push that child away and say loudly 'NO BITING', and call the
> teacher for help".  We practiced this couple of times and she appeared happy
> with some confidence that she can control the situation.  
> 
> Since I knew the biter had a biting history, we talked to the head teacher
> and heard about their policy of dealing with this situation.  Her teacher
> even guaranteed that this won't happen again.  Since then, my daughter
> advanced to the next group and we haven't heard any more such incident, yet.
> 
> I don't know talking to the director will help that much.  I think you need to
> work with the teacher(s) who are directly responsible with these children.
> Often the biting episode happens when the teachers are too busy and the 
> children are left unattended.  How did the teachers handle these situation? 
> How was the biter and bitee treated?  
> 
> If the teachers are really out of means of handling this biter, then find
> out if there is a policy of removing the 'uncurable biter' from the school.
> I believe that as a parent and paying customer, I have the right to air my
> concern about the safety and wellbeing of my own child.  Of course, I am
> always willing to work with the school to find an acceptable solution for 
> all who are concerned.
> 
> In my child's daycare, 1 year old and two year olds are sub-grouped in a large
> classroom with partitions.  1 year old stay in one partition, 2 - 2.5 stay in
> another and 2.5+ stay in one.  They are segregated but can observe each
> other.  When my child got bitten, she was in the middle partition.  A month
> later she advanced to the 2.5+ group, and the biter stayed in the middle group.
> If your child's daycare has similar arrangement, they may be willing to 
> adjust his environment.  It turned out the biter in my child's daycare bit
> quite a few other kids too, the other kids all since 'advanced'.
> 
> Good luck.
> 
> Wen-lin
> 
> 
> -- 

I have been reading these biting articles with much interest.  I have a 9
year old daughter who was bitten many times and a 2 year old son who was a
biter.  I, too, was very smug when my daughter was being biten (what kind of
parents could be raising a child to bite, how horrible, etc.).  Well, I am
not smug anymore, as I now realize ANYONE's child can be a biter.  It is
not as if the parents are at home teaching the child to bite.  It is that
particular child's form of frustration -- no different than kicking, hitting,
etc. (none of these behaviors are acceptable!)

Perhaps you could be a little more understanding to the parents of the biter
as well.  We tried everything we could to stop him (including my pediatrician's
sure fire method -- tabasco sauce --).  Alot of kids bite just before they 
are getting ready to verbalize their frustrations, and basically no matter
what we tried, he did not stop biting until he was able to talk.  Luckily,
he never bit hard enough to break any skin, but because of parents much like
yourself he was kicked out of his daycare.  It was no more his fault that
he was biting than it was your fault as parents that your kid would let
him bite!  Neither child was at an age where they yet understood all of
their actions.   I hope that your next child is a biter; please let us
know how your perfect parenting techniques fare.        

I'm sorry if this sounds nasty; but believe me NOBODY is understanding
about this situation (although every health professional I talked to 
was quick to say how rampant this actually is).  The only difference is
that in this day and age our children have to be in daycares, when I was
growing up I could very well have been biting my sibling, but no one was
going to kick me out!  In my opinion, it is the daycare personnel that
is to blame (if they were really watching the children properly, this
would not happen).  Even though he has grown out of this phase, it still
makes me angry when people who have no first-hand experience with biters
seem to think their perfect children could never do this.  For what is
is worth, even when my daughter was the bitee, I never was unreasonable
enough to get the biter kicked out of daycare.  You cannot fight all
of your kid's battles for them.