Another child bit my baby in playgroup... Advice please!

[littletree]

I've finally gotten around to bringing my nearly one year old to a playgroup. It was all going swimmingly until the end when they brought out bikes and scooters for the little ones to push around/ride. My little guy was sitting on a horsey and a little boy who was 3 came along smiling and pinched my sons cheek rather hard. I took his hand away and said that wasn't nice and stroked my babys cheek and said 'gently'. The other boy then copied me and stroked my son. No harm done. About 15 minutes later he charged over to my son and I thought was nuzzling my son playfully. But then I noticed to my horror that his jaws were clamped on his shoulder in a bite. I was horrified and yanked my boy away. There was a general uproar and much sympathy from the other mums and the boy's mum finally came over and reprimanded him. I understand that this little boy is something of a bully and it was absolutely awful watching my baby get hurt like that. There is no violence in my home and I don't want him learning these things from other children. Help! Is this just a fact of life that I will have to accept? What should I do when this happens? Any advice and shared experiences would be greatly appreciated.

The thing I don't understand about this (and I'm not stirring - I generally don't understand) is that if your child is very very upset by being bitten then how is the other parent's response going to make any difference- surely whatever it is its shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. I can understand why you would be pissed off if your child was continually singled out by another child who's mother never did anything about it- and I can of course understand a child becoming wary of that particular child if they are always on the receiving end. But if its a one off for your child (although the biter may be biting everyone in sight) what difference will the mother's response make to your child?

When my son pinched children he tended to pinch their face- and believe me if hurt- a lot- and it often left a deep scratch, one of ds2's took weeks and weeks to clear up (probably about 6 to 8 weeks I'd say). NOw I can understand why a child would want to avoid my son if that had happened to them, (although none appeared to) but how could my response had made any difference at all?

The other thing is when ds2 gets hurt I find he does tend to lay it on thick a bit (noticed becuase I have an autistic child and believe me the difference between autistic children's responses to being bitten/attacked/being ill and an NT's are quite amusing- something my friend has noticed- she calls her NT ds a ham- and something that Charlotte Moore spent half a chapter on) but anyway unless his leg is hanging off or something - so in other words assuming the pain is transient I tend to find that downplaying it "ooh dear I don't think it's that bad" means he gets over it much quicker, than if I cuddle him a lot and say "there there that must be really sore". I suppose its a case of mummy's not woried so I'm not. I do recognise that that isn't going to work if a child is constantly hurt by the same child over and over again.

Agree with Jimjams' last point -- I'm constantly amazed by how much fuss people make of their child when it eg. falls over or bangs its head, never mind getting thumped by another kid.

I tend to be very low-key about it and say 'Oh whoops, you fell over.' and unless they're really badly hurt, they just pick themselves up and carry on. I have noticed that people who go rushing up to cuddle and kiss it better and make a big fuss tend to have children who play up to that and create a big tearful scene over the smallest bump.

Of course I could just be an evil mother entirely lacking in empathy for her children's pain...

well I'm probably not the best role model frogs as in the 60's I would have ben classed a refrigirator mother and held responsible for my chaild's autism.

Seriously though Charlotte Moore's book is an excellent read on this sunject and something my friend and I had noticed before reading it.

Mmm, well I downplay all the bumps and fortunately DD seems to have a head made of concrete BUT I can see why some of the bitees' mums are upset by this thread. I think if your child is genuinely hurt by another(and when DD was 16 months she was bitten several times by a similar age child who drew blood!) i would think it socially appropriate, if nothing else, to have the biter's parent acknowledge that maybe your child has suffered. Similarly I don't think it's fair for other parents to make judgements on whether or not something "really" hurt, you are unlikley to know taht child really well so it's not your call. also, the sort of fear STF has described is very different to the dramatic howling that most kids will go in for. If a 2y old can't understand taht biting is wrong (and if I'm honest I'm not wholly convinced they can't) I don't see whay they would have enough understanding to play-act fear.

Fortunately DD's episodes as victim and then agressor (incidentally to the child who had started out by biting her) all took place at nursery, before the age of 18m, so I never had to deal with them. Can't understand why on earth anyone wuld want to spend time at a playgroup though, my idea of hell on earth!

Thanks for this marialuisa, you've kind of hit on what the problem is here, a weird kind of mis-balancing of what affects kids and what doesn't / who it's ok to criticise and who it isn't, which is still baffling me and to be honest leaving me feeling surprised and isolated.

My dd has never been a rabid howler, neither do I follow her around making sure nothing happens to her. I try to keep an eye out but from a distance and anyway she'd hate me hanging onto her, she's very independent. She's small but she's not an attention-seeker. The time when she was pushed into the slide steps (after our having waited very patiently at the bottom for the bigger kids to have their go) she didn't really make a noise at all, she just suddenly refused to go on the slide. It was only later when I gave her a bath that I noticed she had a huge horizontal bruise across the bottom of her ribs where the bar had hit her. And the reason I think these kinds of events have had a more lasting effect on her than merely the presence of a physical wound is because her confidence around other kids has totally changed. Before she was very sociable, and she still is with adults, but now she shrinks away and asks me to pick her up. This may be coincidence and have been a phase she'd go through anyway but I don't think so as it happened so suddenly and she's actually fine with kids she knows and sees regularly.

STF, I suspect my feelings about this are close to yours! I honestly don't think that whether or not something "hurts" is that important and I know i'm very strict about things like hitting/shoving/throwing toys and was from a very young age. To me, those are anti-social behaviours that i will not tolerate in my own DD and dislike in other kids. TBH I've been intrigued that so many MNers seem to think that it's ok/understandable for an NT 3 year old to behave like this. personally I would be mortified if DD did those sort of things at the age of 3, and that's not being smug because she has behaved like this when he was younger, but now she would know very well that it's wrong!

You will now all have realised that i'm the prison officer mum from wife-swao

STF UI'm not trying to criticise you on this thread- I think there's actually a lot that people from both sides agree on. I certainly wouldn't say that biting/ etc doesn't hurt- I know from my own case that my son's pinches bloody hurt (he kind of had a twist and would then hang on) and I wouldn't blame any child for screaming their head off and then giving him a wide berth. My question was genuine because right back at the beginning of the thread the idea seemed to be that if parents responded correctly then other chidren wouldn't get traumatised. That will be true in cases where a child is simply a spoiled brat out of control, but in terms of toddler biting incidents those are almost certainly in the minority. So all I'm saying is that if a child is the sort of chid who will get very upset by one bite then the response of the parent won't make much difference to them (although it might to the mother).

It seems as if your dd is nervous of other kids rough and tumble. Unfortunately it is part of toddler socialising so from your dd's point of view she either has to learn to cope with it, or be kept away from places until everyone's an age when its all a bit calmer (girls anyway I don't think boys do stop). And I'm not saying that in any way unsympathetically. It is the situation I find myself in with my eldest son. There is almpost no-where we can go with crowds of children as he just can't handle it. (For example last Sunday we arrived at the swimming pool at 9.30am rather than 9.00 and had to bail out after 5 minutes- too crowded as there were about 6 other children in the pool). I try to desensitise him by taking him to places with other children at times that are less crowded but I wouldn't say it has worked at all. On the other hand he does go to school and he is in the classroom probably 50% of the time in a normal week (although hasn't been in at all this week).

No-one has said its acceptable marialuisa- they've just said that it isn't always as easy to stop as being victorian mum. But now we seem to have come full circle to "if your NT 3 year old (although most of this thread was about 2 year olds) is biting then you must be doing something wrong".

A point on the 'it isn't the way you raise them' line of discussion.

When I had dd I was keen to intoduce her to a wide range of foods when she was weaned. So I did the full Anabelle Karmel number. Dd at the age of 4 would wolf down stilton, prawns, orives and would fight me for the last sprout. She would eat anything with great enjoyment. What a smug little muumy I was, right up to the point I was blessed with ds.

I weaned him in exactly the same way as dd, and he is the chicken nugget king!

Whe I had dd I thought that I had created this mini gastronome. It had nothing to do with me and eveything to do with luck.

These is, at least to my mind a faint whif of 'if you raise them well they don't bite' to some of this thread. It may not be intentional, but it is there.

I would never down play how unpleasent a bit or hit is, I always tried to make a fuss of the victim child, I always appologised to the parent and I always told my son that it was wrong. However there was nothing in the way that he ways raised that made him a biter. Dd was raised the same way and she never bit anyone, not even ds after he had bitten her.

I was so flipping smug about dds eating, makes me quite embarased to think about it now

Oh jesus don't even start me on f annabel Karmel! At 1 ds1 ate everything given to him, he loved his fish in milk cheese and tomato, and he loved all those weird vegetable concotions she suggests. My book still has all the little smily faces ticked off. He ate anything I set in front of him. And I was smug mummy- I admit it- and that's not casting accusations on anyone else- just saying I* was smug mummy.

Now at age 5 he will eat buckwheat pancakes, cheese on toast (gluten free) with jam on top. gluten free cheese and tomato pancakes, toast and jam and toast and honey. And that's it. No fruit, no veg, no meat no fish.

Actually Charlotte Moore has a chapter on that as well. i really think you would enjoy Sam and George hmb- I'd recommend it to any teacher actually, but I think you'd genuinely enjoy it as well.

Just dipping in and out of this thread here to pick up on the 'traumatised by biting' angle.
In my expereince, when DS1 was repeatedly shoved, hit, pinned down and bitten by his best friend, it was us, the parents who felt traumatised. He just took it in his stride. He got to the stage where he would say 'X, don't bite me' but he never refused to play with X. It was us who were worried about his willingness to accept the victime role, but in fact he must have decided that he was getting more out being X's close friend than avoiding him and injury.
However, we don't let X see DS1 anymore as the attacks got more and more out of hand and he started belting him with whatever he had to hand at point blank range full in the face without warning, so we decided, as parents that we couldn't take the risk of DS1 being seriously injured.

The point I want to make is that it is hard, due to the emmotiveness of witnessing your angel get hurt and because of natural protective insticnts, not to be affronted and take umbridge if the other parent doesn't react with an equal level of remorse to your outrage.

But at the end of the day, you have to do what is best for your child.

I forgot scrambled eggs! Which he will eat sometimes (major bloody achievement that) although he's going off pizza......

dd got hit today twice by teh same boy at a play area- and she got really upset and I managed to tell the boy concerned it was not nice console dd and speak nicely to his mum to explain what had happenned - I thought of this thread and found inner strength in the end thery were playing nicely together!!!

glad I wasn't the only smug one hmb

I would agree with that suzywong. There are certain children that I would never place a young baby next to (wouldn't put the baby down whilst I was in their presence - oh god I'm going to have to go through all that again).

Shame about the pizza's being droped from his dies Jimjams. Ds has just started eating them. I was so chuffed I started a thread on it!

And just in case anyone thinks I'm having a go at them, I'm not, I'm just saying that I was smug and for all the wrong reasons.

I'm a mum of a gentle DS1 (now 6) and DS2 a hitter biter (3 yrs) though he rarely does it now. IME it isn't parenting or siblings it just 'is'. I have friends with similar kids and they grow out of it.

I wouldn't mind if someone told DS2 off as long as they aren't over the top. It's the mums who all sit in a clique and whisper about your kid that get on your nerves. I had to stop going to toddlers too even though I helped run one as I got no support. One little girl who was only 3 used to bite too and they went on about her like she was evil even though she obviously has learning difficulties. Mums should stick together and support one another. Tell a mum firmly but tactfully if she isn't doing anything about it. Thankfully I have lovely friends who I turned to that either didn't go to my group or have older kids but some mums go for a break and to make friends yet they feel so left out if their kid misbehaves. They may lack parenting skills but they're still human.

There are very few playgroups/groups of mums who can cope with children with learning difficulties- especially if behavioural problems go with it. There are some though and the people who run/go to those have hearts of gold. And I could kiss every one of them.....

I am actually a really liberal parent - we don't really do punishment but pretty much do all the stuff on the 'supernanny' thread. But I take a very stern line on violence.
As for the difference it makes if the parent is doing their job, well I do think in many cases adequate supervision, particularly if you know your child is going through an aggressive/biting phase, can prevent other kids from getting hurt. The kid that bit my son was showing signals that I'm sure his mother could have recognised and probably stopped, particularly as she a/knew him better than I did and b/was able to be more assertive with him than I was. I know for sure that when my ds was going through a stage of experimental biting at around 16months I was pretty good at recognising when he was about to bite and could step in. Also, I think an appropriate response by the other parent - ie taking the child away - can make your child feel safer. The kid that bit my son was allowed to go back and take over the 'disputed territory' ie the playhouse - thus neatly teaching him that if you bite, you get what you want, and leaving my child far to frightened to go back in there. If she had taken the boy away he would IMO probably be less likely to do it again (also important for other children's sakes) and would have given me a chance to show ds that it was safe.
As it happens my ds is pretty stoical. He emphatically does not play act upset or overreact to little bumps and scrapes. Biting bloody hurts! It hurts a LOT more than pushes, for example, which is why IMO it needs to be strongly discouraged, even if it can't always be prevented.
I take my son to a playgroup because he's not a very gregarious child by nature so I think it is good for him to mix with other kids. And because he is an only and doesn't go to nursery this is a good place to do it and he normally enjoys it. I don't think it is particularly good for him to get bitten on the face. And I don't think that his getting bitten and thus scared of other kids (yes, I know not all kids get fearful if they've been attacked but take my word for it, some do) is a good way to encourage his developing social awareness. It's not like he will have to get used to being bitten regularly in order to go to university or get a job or anything! And yes, I do know how very, very lucky we are to even be able to contemplate such a future for our son and feel thankful for it every single day.

I could perfectly well be friends with a parent of a child who hit or even bit mine, of course I could. But I couldn't be friends with a parent whose kid hurt mine and she thought it was funny, unimportant or refused to intervene. That's the dividing line for me.

Aloha I don't disagree with anything you have written except the bit about it being possible to stop before it happens. It has happened so many times when I've been stood right next to him- and even when I've been looking out for it. You can sometimes, but in the majority of cases you can't. A 16 month old is easier to stop than a fast 4 year old. I've already written how nursery said even though he had 1:1 there was no way they could get in and stop it before it happened (and in 2 sesions he pinched 3 times- he was being watched like a hawk) I found the same. As did school. Apart from his useless teacher's idea of "explaining to him that it hurts" (yeah right) there was nothing we could do except ensure that he got no reinforcement from each pinching episode. If we could have prevented the pinching in the first place that is exactly what we would have done- as that is my first choice approach to any challening behaviour that he shows (and the reason why we have locks on the door, and stairgates on his room at bedtime and ds2's at bedtime (so he doesn't jump on him)- and why if he goes out near traffoic he wears a harness) Believe me I am a BIG believer in prevention but in his case it just wasn't possible. And that was with one to one- when I had ds2 with me as well- it was absolutely impossible.

Jimjams, I realise you face particular and tough difficulties and challenges and I do sympathise very much. And it is crystal clear that you do take your son's difficulties very seriously indeed. I agree that no supervision is 100% and children being what they are incidents will always occur. I also guess that you must think fretting over whether your child is bitten or not is pretty trivial compared to your worries. Let's face it, most of our worries are ridiculously trivial compared to your concerns. But I think you will agree that if you are trying to get a rather solitary and home-loving child to like group settings after a pretty traumatic time at nursery, in order that you can try again, to have him bitten and become even more wary of other kids is a bit frustrating. I'm sure he will get over it, but it doesn't help.