Being a parent is hard; being a psychologist and parent comes with its own pressures. Your kid is walking around like metaphor of your resume – all out there for people to judge your qualifications as a parent as well as your abilities as a psychologist. Of course, I do not know exactly what others are thinking of my therapeutic abilities- I cannot read minds (despite what others might think it means to be a therapist). But I do know my mind and it can get very judgmental of me. As for my being a parent, again it is very hard to communicate to others just how much I love my two daughters.
That guise of knowledge and capability that comes with having a PhD was upended quickly when my then 6-month-old daughter was in daycare. When I picked her up one day, I as very gently informed: "Your child bit another kid." Now kids bite – this is a very normal thing. They are teething, and biting is a way of soothing gums and making sense of the world. And, in the words of my psychologist friend Rachel, "Sometimes you just like the texture of human flesh."
So, my kid was a biter. My first thought (and I am not proud of this) was – did the other kid have it coming? That's what I thought. But what I said to her teacher was “Can you talk to me about the context of this behavior?” Apparently, a kid had taken the toy she was playing with, so she ran him down, tackled him and bit him on the arm. I can respect that. It was a reaction to an injustice (my kid). On the other hand, biting is not ok – biting hurts. Teeth are not for biting other people (read that book; it spells things out clearly). So, there was some behavioral modification to do and my husband and I talked to her a lot about not biting. We sang songs about it; I did puppet shows. I was very desperate to curb this behavior, because not only does biting hurts and that is not ok, but also, I really did not want my kid to get kicked out of daycare. Six months seemed very early for academic expulsion and I certainly did not want to set a tone.
A few weeks later, while giving our daughter a bath, I reiterated to her that we do not bite. We do not bite our mom, we do not bite our dad, we do not bite our friends, we only bite our enemies. – At this point her father interrupted my lesson with a very dramatic – “NO we do not bite ANYONE” – and a stern look at me. Right – we do not bite anyone. Sure. For now.
She did stop biting mostly. There was one more incident when, again at daycare, she bit the kid in the highchair next to her and took his Goldfish crackers from off his tray, shoved a fistful into her mouth and then promptly threw them up all over herself. To my knowledge this was the last time that she bit another human. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what was the key to stopping her chomp response. For my own piece of mind, I’m going to assume it was the puppet shows, as they were the most entertaining for me, but it also might have been that human flesh just didn’t do it for her anymore. Not after she discovered Goldfish.
When our younger daughter, (then age 13 months) bit her friend, it was not in response to any type of provocation. The kid just liked arms. Chomping on arms. To be fair, when she was an infant, she also like biting my boob, which was a horrible thing and gave me a panic response when nursing that kept us both a little on edge. I didn’t know when she would bite, she didn’t know when I would throw her away from her food source with a yelp and an “Ouch biting hurts!” This biting was going to take a different approach to quell as it was internally driven, and not triggered by an external prompt. How do we make her not want to bite.
My Ph.D. education assured me that it is very difficult to appeal to a 13-month old’s moral compass. So, I tried the puppet shows (as I believe they were very successful with our eldest) with a slightly different narrative. Instead of the “ouch- biting hurts” narrative, it was more “yuck- biting-tastes icky” narrative. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, this really wasn’t effective. What was? Now this is going to be controversial and I would not recommend this tactic to anyone else. She stopped biting when her friend bit her back. I mean really gnashed her arm. Daycare does this wonderful thing where they send you pictures of your children in their activities – as well as the injuries they inflict or receive. The photos showed this was a full mouth chomp on her arm. I could see every tooth’s indentation. Apparently, this experience was a painful surprise and a turning point in my daughter’s understanding of biting. Turns out ‘Ouch Biting Hurts” did work for her, when she was the one saying "Ouch."
It was through the experience of having two biters that I came to take a step back from the expectations I was putting on myself to have beautifully behaved children all the time, through every developmental stage and in every situation. That somehow, because of my knowledge of child development and behavioral modification techniques, I would be able to create these perfect little children. That expectation completely disregarded the possibility that I would have a child that just liked to bite. Or a child that was going to be more "physical" in her pursuit of justice and sustenance. Turns out, I was going to have HUMAN children. Unpredictable, inconsistent, impulsive, reactive, loving, kind, hilarious, human children. My educational knowledge gave me strategies to understand them, but it was love that was going to have to lead the way in how I parent them. Love and puppet shows with a side of Goldfish.
That guise of knowledge and capability that comes with having a PhD was upended quickly when my then 6-month-old daughter was in daycare. When I picked her up one day, I as very gently informed: "Your child bit another kid." Now kids bite – this is a very normal thing. They are teething, and biting is a way of soothing gums and making sense of the world. And, in the words of my psychologist friend Rachel, "Sometimes you just like the texture of human flesh."
So, my kid was a biter. My first thought (and I am not proud of this) was – did the other kid have it coming? That's what I thought. But what I said to her teacher was “Can you talk to me about the context of this behavior?” Apparently, a kid had taken the toy she was playing with, so she ran him down, tackled him and bit him on the arm. I can respect that. It was a reaction to an injustice (my kid). On the other hand, biting is not ok – biting hurts. Teeth are not for biting other people (read that book; it spells things out clearly). So, there was some behavioral modification to do and my husband and I talked to her a lot about not biting. We sang songs about it; I did puppet shows. I was very desperate to curb this behavior, because not only does biting hurts and that is not ok, but also, I really did not want my kid to get kicked out of daycare. Six months seemed very early for academic expulsion and I certainly did not want to set a tone.
A few weeks later, while giving our daughter a bath, I reiterated to her that we do not bite. We do not bite our mom, we do not bite our dad, we do not bite our friends, we only bite our enemies. – At this point her father interrupted my lesson with a very dramatic – “NO we do not bite ANYONE” – and a stern look at me. Right – we do not bite anyone. Sure. For now.
She did stop biting mostly. There was one more incident when, again at daycare, she bit the kid in the highchair next to her and took his Goldfish crackers from off his tray, shoved a fistful into her mouth and then promptly threw them up all over herself. To my knowledge this was the last time that she bit another human. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what was the key to stopping her chomp response. For my own piece of mind, I’m going to assume it was the puppet shows, as they were the most entertaining for me, but it also might have been that human flesh just didn’t do it for her anymore. Not after she discovered Goldfish.
When our younger daughter, (then age 13 months) bit her friend, it was not in response to any type of provocation. The kid just liked arms. Chomping on arms. To be fair, when she was an infant, she also like biting my boob, which was a horrible thing and gave me a panic response when nursing that kept us both a little on edge. I didn’t know when she would bite, she didn’t know when I would throw her away from her food source with a yelp and an “Ouch biting hurts!” This biting was going to take a different approach to quell as it was internally driven, and not triggered by an external prompt. How do we make her not want to bite.
My Ph.D. education assured me that it is very difficult to appeal to a 13-month old’s moral compass. So, I tried the puppet shows (as I believe they were very successful with our eldest) with a slightly different narrative. Instead of the “ouch- biting hurts” narrative, it was more “yuck- biting-tastes icky” narrative. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, this really wasn’t effective. What was? Now this is going to be controversial and I would not recommend this tactic to anyone else. She stopped biting when her friend bit her back. I mean really gnashed her arm. Daycare does this wonderful thing where they send you pictures of your children in their activities – as well as the injuries they inflict or receive. The photos showed this was a full mouth chomp on her arm. I could see every tooth’s indentation. Apparently, this experience was a painful surprise and a turning point in my daughter’s understanding of biting. Turns out ‘Ouch Biting Hurts” did work for her, when she was the one saying "Ouch."
It was through the experience of having two biters that I came to take a step back from the expectations I was putting on myself to have beautifully behaved children all the time, through every developmental stage and in every situation. That somehow, because of my knowledge of child development and behavioral modification techniques, I would be able to create these perfect little children. That expectation completely disregarded the possibility that I would have a child that just liked to bite. Or a child that was going to be more "physical" in her pursuit of justice and sustenance. Turns out, I was going to have HUMAN children. Unpredictable, inconsistent, impulsive, reactive, loving, kind, hilarious, human children. My educational knowledge gave me strategies to understand them, but it was love that was going to have to lead the way in how I parent them. Love and puppet shows with a side of Goldfish.
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