Thankfully we’ve gotten past the stage that I talk about in this next Friday Flashback! I don’t believe Abby ever got into the biting phase, though she did like to chew on her own arm there for a while… what can I say… the girl likes to eat, and will eat almost anything… thankfully she never broke skin, all I ever saw on her arm were her own little tooth marks.
When Your Toddler Bites
Noah loves his sister. Before she was born, we had our doubts as to how he would react to her, but they were washed away within minutes of her birth. He showers her with kisses many, many, many times a day. He kisses her as soon as he wakes up, then when she wakes up. He kisses her hands while she’s sleeping and her feet when she’s in her car seat. He loves to give her kisses… and yet…
One day a few weeks ago while I was nursing Abby, Noah came up to us and I thought he was going to kiss her little toes again… like he had just a few minutes earlier. Before I knew it, Abby unlatched and started screaming… big crocodile tears started welling up in her eyes. I look down at my son who looked up so very innocently and noticed that her foot was very close to his mouth and wet. Noah doesn’t give wet kisses. I looked at her foot again and there they were… his teeth marks just above her toes on both the top and bottom of her foot! I scolded him… I let him know that we DO NOT bite. I let him know that he hurt his sister and that he made her cry… and I warned him that if her ever bit her again, that I would bite him back.
I hoped that would take care of the problem.
I was wrong. The next day, as Abby was laying peacefully on the couch, he came up to her again. This time he started by giving her kisses… and it ended with him biting her hand. My husband and I were both right there and we both scolded him… Ray told him the same thing I had the day before and me… well, I followed through with my threat…
I bit my son.
Yeah, yeah, yeah… what kind of mother does that? Well this one did. I didn’t bite long and it wasn’t hard enough to leave a mark or break the skin, but it was a bite and it was done to show him that biting hurts.
Since then Noah hasn’t bitten again… he’s acted like he would a few times, but he never actually did. We constantly ask him if it’s okay to bite people, and his immediate reply is “Nope!” (with a firm shake of the head).
It may not have been the most conventional method, but it worked.
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I’m so happy we are past the biting phase… now if we could get them out of the habit of hitting each other, I would be a very happy Mama!