I’m feeling a little better about the whole biting
incident. I mean, not better that it
happened at all, but better in general. It helped tremendously to pick my son up from preschool on Thursday and
find that he HAD NOT launched into a full-on biting assault, that THERE WAS NO
fiendish scene of bleeding teachers and children in various states of
zombification (my worst nightmare), and I WAS NOT escorted to the principal’s
office to have the chat.

Because I was worried. 

And THANK YOU, thank you all for your suggestions!

He did start throwing a tantrum on Friday and chomped my arm
(not hard, but that is beside the point) and I immediately took one of his toys
and told him he could not have it anymore. I put it up on a shelf where he could see it but it was out of reach and
said, “If you bite, you will lose a toy.” Of course, there was the crying and the whimpers but it did seem to sink
in. Later that day he bit me one more
time and lost another toy. Since then I’ve
seen him several times go into tantrum mode, start to do his “bite-y lunge”
and… stop. That losing the toy thing has
an impact.

See, I know
managing a kid’s behavior is all about finding the right motivations but fuck if it isn’t frustrating as all hell
until you figure out what works! (Especially when they are choosing behavior specifically designed to
push your buttons. My mom pointed out
that it’s like when your cat is mad at you and poops in the middle of the
floor. And yeah, pets, two-year-olds,
we’re talking about the same developmental level here.)

In a similar vein, Creative Guy sent me this note along with
the following picture:

“Once they start biting it’s hard to stop.
Biting can become a life choice.
I know it has for me.
Don’t let this happen to Chance.”

Rider3


See who my friends are? This is why I blog!

 – the
weirdgirl