Bad Parent: The Biter
My son is "that kid."
by Kate Tuttle
July 17, 2008
When I ask him if he hurt his friend, he usually denies it. His tiny shoulders set in a stubborn stance, he'll rock back on his heels and bellow "noooooooo!" Sometimes he'll admit it, then laugh. These are the times that try a parent's patience. And at times, like when he clocks his father in the temple with my cellphone, à la Naomi Campbell, it almost makes me hate him. And yet these are also the moments I love him the most, a helpless, hapless love. All I want is to protect him, from his own moods and urges as much as from what anyone else would think of him, my little wrongdoer.
Worrying about what others think is a big part of parenting a biter. But the disapproval of others can also serve to cement parental loyalty. In writer Mikal Gilmore's masterful family memoir, Shot Through The Heart, murderer Gary Gilmore's mother recalls saving an infant Gary from drowning when he fell off a houseboat as a child. Years later, her son now a convicted killer, she tells him, "I loved you no more then than I do now." I know just how she feels.
My toddler isn't the only problem child in my house; there's also my teenager. She doesn't bite, scratch or hit. And these days she's pretty together, at least in public: attractive, poised, well-spoken. But here's the thing: she's intense, a drama queen.
All I want is to protect him, my little wrongdoer.
She cries and yells every day. She can't focus on anything, it seems, but Facebook. It takes hours, and dozens of reminders and arguments (and more tears) before she even starts her homework. Sometimes I think with dismay that she's not like me at all. That perfect daughter I imagined when she was a baby, the one who would inherit all my good qualities — the bookworm, the hard worker, the do-gooder — she's not that. Yet we're alike in this way: we share the same weaknesses. This is true of both my kids. More than blond hair and a pointed chin, this is what I've passed on, their inheritance from me.
As a toddler I threw epic tantrums. The tiniest things upset me. In my baby book, my mother writes of me at two as "bold, active and funny" but prone to "tiny angry performances," and predicts that I'll "never be as eager to share and please people" as my older brother. Later, when I was around four, she wrote of my "mean temper" and said that I hated being interrupted and would just go on talking more loudly. "She frowns more than she laughs, and she constantly pretends."
©2008 Kate Tuttle and Babble
About the Author
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Kate Tuttle is a writer and editor raising two children just outside Boston. |
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