No rabid mommy monsters here.

Yesterday, the little one who practically calls my house home (or the child I babysit - same thing) told me this: "My mommy bit my hand."

Yeah. A little on the strange side, don't you think? So I was there talking with him, and frantically trying to figure out how it came to be that his mommy bit him. "Did you feed her some food and she bit your finger?," I asked. "No, she bit my hand," he said "and it hurt." Well, all I could think of was that, indeed, she accidentally bit his finger or something. Like he was giving her a bite of something, and he didn't let go with his fingers. I mean, that could happen, right?

So I asked him to show me where she bit his hand, thinking that this would shed a little more light on his statement. He showed me the side of his hand. The meaty part. The part you would bite if you were some rabid mommy monster trying to eat your child. But I was still sure this was not the case with this particular mommy. Pretty sure, anyway.

After he told me, over and over again, how his mommy bit him and it hurt, I decided we needed to change the subject. So of course, I changed it with, "Who wants a snack?" (A little bit of Goldfish can make a child forget about his woes with the quickness.)

It wasn't until later that his statement made more sense. It wasn't until he was being lectured on the merits of not hitting, pushing or grabbing his friends (ie my kids) that he added the one thing to the list of things he shouldn't do that revealed the reason his mommy bit him. He said, "No biting your friends, it hurts them. My mommy bit me, and it hurt. I put her in time out."

Aha!


(Those of you who have kids that were 'biters' know that some will resort to biting their own child to show them that it hurts others. I didn't have 'biters' so I didn't know. But now it all makes sense.)