Over the last week, my daughter has been written up twice for biting.  She went to school twice last week, which means both days she went, she bit another kid.

Color me pleased to be a parent.

The thing is that it is it’s the same kid that she bit both times, and if I’m a betting dad, this is the kid that she learned the behavior from in the first place.  Seriously, prior to pre-K she wasn’t a biter at all.  Now she’s biting other kids, my wife and I, and worse, her little sister who can’t defend herself.  

The first incident, we were told that the other kid first took a toy away from my daughter, and she retaliated with her teeth.  Not any less acceptable, but she was provoked.

The second time, I was told that there was no provocation and that my kid bit the other kid without any good reason.  This was more disappointing under this context, I don’t want to be raising any bullies or troublemakers.

Whenever these incidents occur, there’s literally a bite report, specific to biting incidents that parents have to sign.  I imagine that these infractions are recorded and that if too frequent and too problematic, children will be subject to whatever phrasing they want to call expulsion these days. 

Either way, I don’t want my child(ren) to ever be on any sort of hot seat, especially for shit behavior they learned from someone else.

Anyway, as I’m driving my kid home after incident number 2, she’s complaining of a bug bite she has.  Bug bite?  The kids haven’t been playing outside because it’s starting to cool down, and we’re past the time of year in which mosquitos are still out.

I ask if she has a bug bite or a people bite.  People bite.  I then ask if she has a people bite or a bug bite, since she sometimes automatically responds to the second option of every question. People bite.  I ask both questions again just to make sure.  People bite.  People bite.

Yeah, I know all our own kids are angels and never at fault and all that bullshit, but I’m actually beginning to believe that perhaps my child didn’t bite completely unprovoked, contrary to what I was told.

When we get home, I put my kid on the counter and tell me where she was bitten. She points to her leg. I raise her pant leg, and sure enough, there’s something there.  Most definitely not a bug bite.  A flat line of a mark that looks more like a toddler-sized incisor.

I ask one more time.  People bite.  I ask who bit you?  She spits out a name.  The name of the kid I figured it was going to be.

I am not above shitting on another toddler.  Especially one that isn’t just teaching my child undesirable behavior, but is griefing my child in school. 

From the first time I saw this kid on the classroom’s Facebook page, and my daughter pointed him out by name, I knew this was either her favorite friend or a kid that has given her grief.  Frankly I said to mythical wife that he looked like he was probably an asshole, judging a book by his cover.  Seems like the cover seemed to match the story.

I didn’t want this to go ignored, so I snapped the above pic and sent it to my kid’s teachers.  I explained that her behavior is not something we condoned, but based on the evidence of some biting on mine, I wanted to document that my daughter may not have acted completely unprovoked.

I get teaching, especially toddlers is excruciatingly difficult and I’m never going to discount how hard their jobs are.  But I think they might have missed some of the context in this situation, and I don’t think my kid is the only one who needed to be written up. 

Either way, this is where we are.  I now have to deal with a biter of a child now, to which most other parents explain to me is fairly common and developmentally appropriate.  It just annoys me that she probably learned it by it happening to her, and now she’s exerting the behavior onto others.

Lord only knows what undesirable behavior she’s going to learn in the future, but as far as I’m concerned, any kid that teaches it is a little shitbag, and I’m not above calling out such, regardless if they’re a toddler, teenager or a senior citizen.  Kids are sponges and don’t need to be taught shit things.