I took my kids to visit their great grandmother and in the two minutes I left them alone in the living room, so I could kiss grandma hello, my daughter (age four and a half) managed to rip out of her brother’s hands the singing monkey he’d just found on the window ledge. He is two and a half. She is bigger and quite often just takes what she wants from him. We tell her that he is going to catch-up — and when he does she won’t be able to get away with stuff like that. Well, since he can’t match her physically yet he’s found a way to deter her.
After he tried unsuccessfully to take back the monkey with force, he bit her. And I mean, he really bit her. By the time I heard my daughter screaming and ran into the living room (which was all of three steps) he’d already moved away, with monkey in hand, victorious.
Being the youngest of three kids I can understand where he is coming from. In fact, part of me thought my daughter deserved the bite, but I couldn’t condone the behavior, by either of them. Plus, there is an anger that kind of takes over when you see your kid hurting, even if maybe they had it coming (a little).
So my son got a time-out and seemed to really feel bad that his sister had a full set of his teeth marks on her bicep (which, by the way, was just short of breaking skin.) They hugged and made-up and there were promises from both sides that there would be no more “taking” and no more biting. All was good in the world — and they were once again best friends. That is, they were best friends until the next night when my daughter wanted to ride the rocking horse my son was on… she got her way and ended up on the horse and then he stood up for himself the only way he knew how. At least this time the teeth marks weren’t so bad.
Tags: family & parenting by Amy Boshnack
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