"...the biting with the teeth and the hurting and shoving"
Abbie bit me yesterday, hard, and I have a mark to prove it. She bites things a lot, but this is the first time in a long time that she’s actually bitten me, not counting times when she’s trying to give me a kiss* or when I stick my finger in her mouth to remove something foreign like shredded paper or dog food. I don’t believe there was any malicious intent involved when she bit me, she just tried to chew on my shirt and got a little overzealous, kind of like how a baseball player can get overzealous carrying groceries and wind up breaking a bone. After she bit me, we had a screaming contest with me screaming over the searing pain of having baby teeth pierce my shoulder and her screaming over the traumatic pain of being sat on the floor. She won.
Abbie chews on everything that goes in her mouth. When I say, “chew,” I don’t just mean the “open mouth, insert everything” mentality that every young child, especially Abbie, has where all objects must be tested on multiple occasions for ingestibility. I mean everything that goes in her mouth gets chomped hard, and she puts just about anything in her mouth: Loose papers, burp clothes, doorknobs. The malleable targets like paper ends up in moist tatters on the floor. Abbie is dismantling her burp clothes a few threads at a time. Harder prey made from materials like plastic, rubber, steel, or adamantium, wind up deeply gouged. The mouthpieces on her sippy cups look like we left them in the chinchilla cage for a few weeks.
I wish I knew why she insists on grinding everything into slimy grist. A friend says that children who lose the pacifier early bite longer. This applies to Abbie since the only time she ever took a pacifier is if we put it in her mouth and held it in place. I don’t know what difference a pacifier would make, though. Maybe all babies have a finite amount of biting they need to do, and if they don’t get their biting done on a pacifier at an early age, they have to make up the difference later in life on whatever they can: Clothes, furniture, or their own teeth**. Maybe the reason is as simple as children who already have pacifiers in their mouths can’t bite other things. Or maybe that’s just a myth cooked up by the pacifier industry to guilt parents into buying more pacifiers. Regardless of the reason, the point is moot since Abbie wouldn’t take a pacifier, unless it was flavored with something she really likes, but where would I find a dog food flavored pacifier, anyway?
The solution to not getting bit is to just watch her closely since she’s a bit young for reason. When I see her doing something naughty and tell her to stop, she looks at me with an expression that says she’s trying to understand what I’m saying, or maybe the expression is just meant to distract me with her cuteness, and then she goes back to whatever naughty action she was doing. I’ll have to warn other people that she’s a biter. If they don’t believe me, I’ve got the bruise to prove it.
* She’s still working on the concept of puckering.
** Abbie is also very fond of grinding her teeth.
Abbie chews on everything that goes in her mouth. When I say, “chew,” I don’t just mean the “open mouth, insert everything” mentality that every young child, especially Abbie, has where all objects must be tested on multiple occasions for ingestibility. I mean everything that goes in her mouth gets chomped hard, and she puts just about anything in her mouth: Loose papers, burp clothes, doorknobs. The malleable targets like paper ends up in moist tatters on the floor. Abbie is dismantling her burp clothes a few threads at a time. Harder prey made from materials like plastic, rubber, steel, or adamantium, wind up deeply gouged. The mouthpieces on her sippy cups look like we left them in the chinchilla cage for a few weeks.
I wish I knew why she insists on grinding everything into slimy grist. A friend says that children who lose the pacifier early bite longer. This applies to Abbie since the only time she ever took a pacifier is if we put it in her mouth and held it in place. I don’t know what difference a pacifier would make, though. Maybe all babies have a finite amount of biting they need to do, and if they don’t get their biting done on a pacifier at an early age, they have to make up the difference later in life on whatever they can: Clothes, furniture, or their own teeth**. Maybe the reason is as simple as children who already have pacifiers in their mouths can’t bite other things. Or maybe that’s just a myth cooked up by the pacifier industry to guilt parents into buying more pacifiers. Regardless of the reason, the point is moot since Abbie wouldn’t take a pacifier, unless it was flavored with something she really likes, but where would I find a dog food flavored pacifier, anyway?
The solution to not getting bit is to just watch her closely since she’s a bit young for reason. When I see her doing something naughty and tell her to stop, she looks at me with an expression that says she’s trying to understand what I’m saying, or maybe the expression is just meant to distract me with her cuteness, and then she goes back to whatever naughty action she was doing. I’ll have to warn other people that she’s a biter. If they don’t believe me, I’ve got the bruise to prove it.
* She’s still working on the concept of puckering.
** Abbie is also very fond of grinding her teeth.
posted by Matt at
9:50 PM
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