White Fang

May 7, 2009

This morning while I was having my coffee I was thinking about motherhood and the trials and triumphs and I relived the last very quick 10 ½ years in my mind. What made me cringe? My biting kids. Yes, if any of you have children that bite, or have ever bitten, you will feel my pain. That is tough. I have said it over and over again, I would rather be the mom of the kid who has been bitten than the mom of the biter. So bear that in mind if you ever pick your kid up from the babysitter and your kid has bite marks. Here are some of my tales…

All three of my children have been biters. Riley used to mostly bite his Papaw because there were no other children around to bite. That was pretty easy to handle--Papaw is a big boy, he doesn’t cry to much. Ha! I even caught Riley gnawing on my van tires in the driveway one time.

Natalie was also a biter. She bit Riley for the most part. As long as you can “keep it in the family” so to speak, it’s not that mortifying. I started babysitting Erin Hancock Stone’s little boy when Natalie was 2 and she and Luke would bite each other from time to time, but because turn about is fair play, Erin and I had a mutual understanding that it was no big deal.

Then Wyatt came along. Boy oh Boy. To say he was a biter is quite the understatement. I started babysitting Tina Dressler’s kids when Wyatt was almost two years old. Her little boy, Levi was three. Wyatt bit him nearly everyday. I would punish him, but it really never did any good…I always dreaded poor Tina coming to pick up Levi, because he would more than likely have bite marks on his arm. Easter Sunday of that year, I had nursery duty at the church. Easter always welcomes the “semi-annual” church visitors (the ones who come on Christmas and Easter), so the church was full. I had a ton of kids in the nursery. We were playing and reading stories and I looked over and Wyatt was hugging this sweet little girl. It was so cute. Then he bit her. On her face. OMG! It was horrible! I was mortified! She was screaming, I wanted to kill Wyatt, and before I could get the little girl calm, I looked over and another kid was crying because he had bit him! I just broke down right there in the nursery and literally cried my eyes out. I was just at my breaking point. I was embarrassed and felt like a complete failure. We have pictures of Easter dinner at my mom’s that year--those are lovely with my swollen eyes from crying. I wrote letters of apology to the victims’ families and I literally did not go back to church for 6 months after that. I was completely shaken and mortified, despite everyone’s understanding and my dad’s insight that he is just a baby and people understand and that it’s just something babies do.

That same year, we were down at the Covington Pizza Hut for a soccer fund raiser. Wyatt was playing in the little play corner and out of nowhere a kid starts screaming…you guessed it…Wyatt had the fangs out again. He bit Monica Tilley’s little boy for taking the truck he was playing with. I apologized over and over to her and left in tears.

This June Wyatt will be four years old. He hasn’t bitten anyone in quite sometime. I no longer worry when we are in groups of children that he will bite someone. My dad was right…as he most of the time is. It was a phase and I made it through.
So young moms, if something consumes your every thought and you worry relentlessly about it and wonder if it will ever be remedied, it will. Just hang in there. You’re doing great!