onenitealone said:

I saw Supernanny too and she turns these kids into angels but having said that alot of kids bite, you hear it all the time its just a way to vent an emotion. The thing is to try to get them to vent their emotion a different way. It's hard at three yrs old but if the kid was older then it would have the knowledge to stop. Hey just keep telling them its wrong. I did know one woman who bit her kid and said " hey this is how it feels" and they never did it again. Not recommended though.

it is "normal" ... even though for alot of people --- when it happens it is barbaric ....

i remember when i first heard about it ... the reaction was tempting to say "see --- see .... thats what happens to parents who send their kids to daycare !!! "

but .... having been there ... i remember when my oldest got bitten ... at daycare ... and then ... when she bit ME !!!! now i have a 18 mo old and she just started doin this ... (she is not in daycare - but when she wrestles with her older sister -- its like a frustrated response --- only way she knows how to beat up her 6 yr old sister !!!)

obviously . discourage it . it doesnt last long ... in my opinion ... i also think it happens in that stage where they get frustrated alot and "may" bang their heads against the floor if they dont get their way , etc ...

Some little girl bit my son yesterday at nursery, twice! On his back! I was livid after I got off the phone with the nurse, because she said it was "Normal" and "happens all the time". What the hell is wrong with parents that they can't teach kids simple rules anymore? Bloody hippies!
[Edited 9/20/06 3:10am]

I have the creepiest stories about some daycare experiences I've had in my life when I was little. One of them is this in a nutshell:

My older sister and I would get dropped off at this daycare place a few blocks from our house in the daytime. It was run from this woman's house, and she had two daughters, one who was about 8 and the other who was around 4.

Anyway, the 4 year old was called "Choppers" because she bit everyone. I was around 3 and a half at the time and my sister was about 7. Well, this woman's oldest daughter had broken her leg in a go-cart accident and was all set up in the living room with her leg hanging up in the air in one of those elevation contraptions. The woman would make us go to the store and buy her oldest daughter candy and then wrap it up at presents and then give it to her. She made us say, "Janine, you're so pretty" and "Janine, here we got these presents for you." and Janine would just lay there and yell at us from the bed.

So Choppers used to bite everyone and one day she bit me on my inner arm so hard that it broke the skin and bled. When I cried, her mom hit me and said it was my fault anyway. "Why do you think we call her Choppers?!" She also slapped me once when I took too long on the toilet and wouldn't open the door for her.

We didn't tell my mom these stories until about 15 years later actually. And then I found out that my older sister hated it there so much that she would just leave and go walk around the neighborhood all day. I always wondered where she went. The daycare woman never even told my mom that my older sister was leaving every day either. People are crazy.
[Edited 9/20/06 4:32am]

minneapolisgenius said:

Oh I am so glad I started this thread

PREDOMINANT said:

That's just ONE story of many of the absolutely crazy people that lived in my neighborhood. I have never seen so many unfit parents in my life, after I took time to talk about it with my family and remember all the weird families that lived around us. We thought WE were the strange ones. I knew people who locked their kids up in wooden cages in the attic, and a mother who starved her kids while she ate all the food in the house and weighed 300 lbs. And a friend's house that was completely covered in dog shit. It was ground into every surface of the carpet and floor so that you couldn't even walk and the stench was unbearable.

Of course, as a kid visiting these houses, I never came home and told my parents about it. I don't know why. It just all came out years later. I wonder what these people are doing nowdays?
[Edited 9/20/06 4:44am]

minneapolisgenius said:

oh man!!

IrresistibleB1tch said:

Like I said, those are just a FEW of the stories I could tell. It was a really crazy neighborhod, and I didn't even realize it until I started talking about it with my sisters one day recently and we started trading stories.

minneapolisgenius said:

you should write a book!

I bite kids all the time

Spookymuffin said:

IrresistibleB1tch said:

Yeah, I could do a collection of true short stories about crazy fucked up people who have kids. It should be pretty heartwarming.

I'm a horrible writer though.

minneapolisgenius said:

You could call it “Compulsory Sterility”

Some little girl bit my son yesterday at nursery, twice! On his back! I was livid after I got off the phone with the nurse, because she said it was "Normal" and "happens all the time". What the hell is wrong with parents that they can't teach kids simple rules anymore? Bloody hippies!
[Edited 9/20/06 3:10am]

PREDOMINANT said:

I know it's awful if your child's been bitten but it may not be the fault of the parents.

One of my friends has an autistic child who bites and has done since he was a toddler. He wasn't diagnosed at the time he was at nursery and my friend used to feel really embarrassed that her child was the only one who seemed to bite other children. Also, he didn't talk. Thankfully all the parents at his nursery school were really understanding otherwise I think she would have felt quite isolated.

Her son is now at a special school in a different area but her old nursery school and pre-natal friends have been very supportive which has been a huge help to her.

All I wanted to say is that all may not be as it appears.

Like others said, it's normal in the sense that it's all a learning process with children. They are just testing out expressing emotions in different ways. It's up to us as parents to teach them what is acceptable and not.

Sorry your little one was hurt.

When my godson was about one he went to a day care that I thought was questionable...and he was bitten by a little 15-month-old brute named Bryce (which my friends and I started calling "big head Bryce" because of the size of his mellon). The daycare workers didn't even tell my friend that my godson had been bitten...she saw the bite on his hand when she picked him up and asked them about it...they told the parents and they said they'd "have a talk with Bryce." How do you reason with a 15-month-old?

it is "normal" yes, with children of that age group

it is however not acceptable

It's very normal but most parents don't correct their kid. My mom used to babysit a handful of children and one of them was the daughter of my cousin lisa and that kid went around biting all the other kids. My baby sister was around 2 1/2 at the time and started to bite her back to protect herself but the younger babies couldn't fight back and my cousin Lisa only became concerned about it when it was her daughter getting bit. She tried to blame my little sister but everyone in the house knew and saw with their own eyes that it was Christina who was doing all the biting.

Anyone who does not correct a child who bites is WRONG!

I have the creepiest stories about some daycare experiences I've had in my life when I was little. One of them is this in a nutshell:

My older sister and I would get dropped off at this daycare place a few blocks from our house in the daytime. It was run from this woman's house, and she had two daughters, one who was about 8 and the other who was around 4.

Anyway, the 4 year old was called "Choppers" because she bit everyone. I was around 3 and a half at the time and my sister was about 7. Well, this woman's oldest daughter had broken her leg in a go-cart accident and was all set up in the living room with her leg hanging up in the air in one of those elevation contraptions. The woman would make us go to the store and buy her oldest daughter candy and then wrap it up at presents and then give it to her. She made us say, "Janine, you're so pretty" and "Janine, here we got these presents for you." and Janine would just lay there and yell at us from the bed.

So Choppers used to bite everyone and one day she bit me on my inner arm so hard that it broke the skin and bled. When I cried, her mom hit me and said it was my fault anyway. "Why do you think we call her Choppers?!" She also slapped me once when I took too long on the toilet and wouldn't open the door for her.

We didn't tell my mom these stories until about 15 years later actually. And then I found out that my older sister hated it there so much that she would just leave and go walk around the neighborhood all day. I always wondered where she went. The daycare woman never even told my mom that my older sister was leaving every day either. People are crazy.
[Edited 9/20/06 4:32am]

IrresistibleB1tch said:

Like I said, those are just a FEW of the stories I could tell. It was a really crazy neighborhod, and I didn't even realize it until I started talking about it with my sisters one day recently and we started trading stories.