When a relative bites your child

An adult definitely should know not to bite then.

So should a grown ass adult know not to bite a young child 🤨🙄 Bizzare response…

Tell me , I work in a supermarket in a town that caters for tourists, we’ve at the moment got a 13 / 14 yr old who’s threatened our staff with a knife, another 14 yr old who’ with friends pinches bottles of alcohol , loads more who just come in and cause trouble , parents of the first two thinks the sun shines out of their arses, school couldn’t care less (when I was at said school if we’d not dare to do anything that would bring the schools name into disrepute), parents don’t care , police don’t care either, I’m sure though if one of the kids gets run over by one of our wagons , they all would start caring

that’s not to forget the mums and dads of younger kids, who walk around simpering at the 3-4 yr old “don’t do that darling mummy/daddy won’t be happy, come here and get a magazine instead

I am generally not a massively rock the boat person but in that situation I would be raging, that person would be thrown out of my home before they could run and I would be reporting them to the police for assault and me and my child never seeing them again. Like WTF?!

Was it an actual bite, with teeth marks left? Or the ‘threat’ of a bite where the teeth touched the skin but didn’t actually bite?

A four year old should know not to bite.

Someone did this to me when I was little. I bit their daughter, so they bit me. I was a vicious bugger for biting - it was not effective, as I was happy to bite her back harder than she was me, so I did. I remember it all very clearly (I'd have been about 2.5/3).

My mum went for her with a crowbar. She often did irregular and times abusive things, my mum, but that one seemed fair enough in many ways. Not that I'd do it myself. You shouldn't be biting kids, as an adult. There are better ways to deal with things. You should be defending your kids if some dip shit bites them (though not with a crowbar...). Don't be leaving your DD with them again; definitely tell them why.

Biting a child is disgusting. They'd never see my child again.

My MiL recommended this approach when my child bit. I did not follow her advice.

Where does it say the OP never does anything about it?

just reading between the lines to be fair, could be completely wrong:

I immediately took my child away and acknowledged his pain and told him that what they did to him was wrong, then left with him.

What about the little brothers pain? no mention of a consequence there, maybe the other relative stepping in OP felt there was well over the top and no further action was needed, or maybe she had no intention of correcting it. Who comforted the brother that had been bitten?

My child is incredibly caring towards his little brother, with just some rough moments when he is tired or overstimulated

She mentions here that he is rough with the little brother when he is tired and overstimulated, no mention of what action is normally taken, it seems like saying assaulting the younger child is being excused because he is tired and overstimulated so has no control over his actions.

plus the fact that a family member has suddenly, and seemingly out of the the blue, stepped in in a way they never have before seems to indicate that OP is perhaps not correcting this rough behaviour effectively.

I see a LOT of gentle parenting and I do think it has a place, but when other kids are getting hurt because your parenting method is not an effective enough deterrent it is time to look at it again.

I was raised to be respectful of elders,

Fuck that for a game of soldiers!

This attitude has caused such damage to so many people over the years.

An arsehole is an arsehole whatever their age.

It is only for biting? No one (apart from the DH above who kicked his daughter) seems to be answering whether they would also punch and kick their children.

And should siblings bite each other? Is that also ok?

It was the tradional way to stop a child biting.

It works.

@ACatNamedRobin
The theory is that if you bite the child that bit, that they will understand what the pain is like, sympathise and react by not biting again. But for this understanding to take place, the child has to have something that psychologists call "Theory of Mind" aka TOM. This theory states that a child can understand the thoughts and behaviours of another child ie be able to put themselves in the other's shoes.

The thing is, children learn TOM at different ages and it is unlikely that any at 2 or 3 will understand how to put themselves in another's shoes. So learning by being hurt, doesn't really work in the way we expect. Instead, the child reacts from fear. They learn that if they hurt, they in turn will be hurt. It has nothing to do with understanding why it is wrong or how it makes the other person feel. Just how they, the child who bit, feels. Lots of studies around TOM in young children and Prof Robert Winston did some great programmes showing how this was explored in research.

Parenting, rightly, has moved on. Other studies show that children also learn by copying adult behaviour (it's why some children like having dolls or want to follow their parent in a sport). So if a parent is modelling the behaviour they want their child to copy, then chances are the child will do so. Stands to reason then that if the parent is biting the child, the child may continue to bite others.

Bloody hell. What sort of a family were you raised in.

You were a child and your parents should have known better.

Because baby's brains are sooooooooooooo different from how they were years ago!

When our daughter was about three, she started kicking us if she didn’t get her way. As scoldings were doing nothing to stop this, my husband warned her that this behaviour was not an option and that if she didn’t stop, she would be kicked herself. A few days later, she kicked him, hard, in temper. He immediately kicked her back, not hard obviously, but enough to make her take notice. She was so shocked that her precious ‘can do no wrong’ daddy could do this that she never did it again, and you couldn’t find a closer relationship than his was with her. It lasted 50 or so more years until he died.

This is the hyperbole I was referring to…

Where does it say the OP never does anything about it? Who here is saying this child should face no consequences for their actions? Who here is saying “oh they don’t mean it, they’re tired” is an appropriate response? No one. Literally no one.

People saying it is inappropriate for an adult to bite a child are not therefore declaring lawless parenting where any and all unwanted behaviour goes entirely excused and unattended to. There are a plethora of ways to address this behaviour that doesn’t involve and adult causing physical harm to a child.

There’s a middle ground between abusing your kids and permissive parenting.

obviously I said nothing

Call me radical but I personally think if you aren't going to protect and defend your children then you shouldn't have them. Where's your mama bear? It's not good for children to grow up knowing you won't have their backs when they are assaulted....

I do wonder about all the people shouting this is abuse, this is cruelty, I'd call the police etc.. how they feel about the younger brother in this situation who is the victim of this child when he is 'tired and overstimulated' and the mum doesn't seem to be doing much about it?

I 100% don't agree with what has happened, and think it is up to the parents to decide what form discipline should take if any, but I do feel for the victims of children who's 'gentle parents' don't teach them any consequences for their actions and let them physically assault other children and say, 'oh dear, they didn't mean it they're just tired'.

It’s like one of those really weird old wives tales that get passed around isn’t it? Specifically about biting… everyone just trots out “ah well just bite them back and they won’t do it again” without giving it any thought whatsoever. I kind of find it fascinating that people’s minds are so stunted in this way

Bite them. See how they like it.

This 100%. Let the police decide if it's not serious.

And would do this for kicking, punching, pushing behaviour as well?
Or just biting?

This!!!!! Exactly 👍🏻