Two-year-olds suck

[marydell]

Those frelling piranhas in Charlie's day care class are really PISSING ME OFF.  He got bit this morning for the third time in two months!  The teachers are shadowing the biter for now, but since it's not the same kid doing the biting as last time (that kid having grown out of it) or the time before, they can't predict who might go after my baby next.  They say he's not being singled out, that it's just like this sometimes.  The kids have had two teacher changes in the past two months so they're all a little insecure and riled up.

GDI. This is a boy who will sit quietly when he gets blood taken at the doctor but getting bit or startled makes him SO upset. He's going to be sensitive and angry all weekend.

I suspect the crushing depression and random fear that have been following me around for the past hour or so are related to this.

Comments

[readinggeek451]

*hugs*

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

I was a psych and child development major. I also taught parent education classes for ten years. I know none of what I'm going to say is going to make you feel any better, but it might give you a tiny bit of insight into what is going on at daycare.

Two-year-olds have almost zero impulse control, few verbal skills, fewer social skills and a low frustration level. They also have no sense of what is right and wrong, other than what they learn by adult modeling and being told no repeatedly. Two-year-olds have no moral judgement or compass, and act/react according to their individual personalities.

Did you know that back in the day, parents were told that the way to stop a child from biting was to bite hin/her back? Yeah...that worked really well. [/sarcasm]

Many, many two-year-olds bite, not because they are budding sociopaths, but because of all the factors I listed above. And I know none of that is a comfort when your kid is the one being bitten, especially a calm, non-aggressive sweet child like Charlie, but toss any group of kids together and stuff happens.

The hardest lesson I ever had to learn as a parent was that I couldn't protect or shelter my kids from everything. You do your best to keep them out of harm's way, but you can't wrap them in plastic and you can't be there to save them 24/7. You also can't spend all your time scared or depressed that something might happen to your child. You miss all the good stuff that way.

Sometimes, as I learned this year, there are things you can't fight or save them from no matter how you wish you could. All of the above still applies.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

LOL, I agree with all of what you say here except the part about Charlie being calm and non-aggressive! Fortunately he isn't aggressive with other kids (yet) but he has been smacking the shit out of me since he was 14 months old--he has a really explosive temper and we've had to work a lot with him to help him learn to manage it.

I would be less concerned about him getting bit if he didn't 1. have a skin condition that's easy to send into a flare 2. have insane levels of separation anxiety right now, made somewhat worse by my working a looong day (bad mommy! career-loving women are evil!) when my commute is added in. The last thing I need is for him to feel threatened at school, when he's already going through teacher changes and menu changes and other stuff that's going on. Fortunately he seemed to shake off today's incident and was his normal self this evening, which means he only had 2 tantrums and 2 time-outs, and when he started throwing his trains in frustration, he hit his dad instead of me, which I'm ok with because it ain't my shin (he did get a timeout for that tho).

A dear friend of mine, who is firmly on the spanking side of the fence, told me today that she bit her kids back, and they never did it again. I was croggled. So apparently that's a thing people still do. O_O