This Bites

My mom likes to reenact my preschool days by telling the story of when I was bitten at Joan’s house.  To hear her tell it, I informed her 10 times a day for the first 10 years of my life that “Matt bit me on the finner.”  (finger)  Apparently I was “mothering” him.  I do remember Matt, and I do remember that he was adorable and had a blond bowl cut.  I’m sure he was as irresistible as a doll baby.  How could someone not mother him?  In any case, that was my first experience with biting.

Over the years, I’ve had a few additional run-ins with biting including a “time out” inflicted by my grandmother, Sweetie, for latching onto my brother’s face.  This is probably most memorable because I didn’t grow-up with time-outs… I grew up with The Wooden Spoon.  Then there was the incident in fourth or fifth grade when my then best friend, shockingly, bit me while we were playing Nintendo.  I still have no idea why.  I was like, “WTF?!”  Only in more G-rated fourth grade language.  And I clearly remember my mom wrestling with my little brother as she attempted to put hot sauce on his tongue for biting.

Now… this entire preamble is leading up to, unfortunately, my present-day experience with biting.  It all began during Jake’s Sanibel week o’ meltdowns.  He was just so off-kilter being in a new place with no clear routine and spotty naps.  He bit my clothes two or three times that week and I had flashbacks of holding my little brother’s forehead while he snapped at me like a two-year-old pirahna, trying to bite my arm…  I think Jacob knew that biting skin is completely unacceptable and so he took his anger out on my apparel.

Then, that first week back from Florida, the unthinkable happened.  We were told he had “tried” to bite another child at school, but only bit their clothes… a daycare desperate working parent’s worst nightmare.  Fortunately he never got written up because no damage was actually done, but those weeks were pretty touch and go.  When asked, Jake was quite forthright, “I bite.”  “I bite Jhad.”  Emphatic nodding.  The teachers won’t tell you who bites who, but the kids sure will.

It’s been several weeks since the daily nail-biting conversations, “Jakey, did you have good manners at school today?”  It seems the negative reinforcement of “no Handy Manny if there’s been biting or hitting” has done its job.  Hopefully this was just a short two-week phase… and wouldn’t you know it, Jake actually likes hot sauce.