Tales of a misunderstood mother: Chapter 1 (in what I'm sure will become a long saga)

Chapter 1: Biting; or Another reason Bindi must go on hiatus

Matthew was removed from his church class yesterday and brought to me. Never a good sign. One of the primary leaders met me in the hall with him and explained he was having "kind of a rough day." Another bad sign. She told me he bit his teacher. The third bad sign. "Matthew," I said in a somewhat stern voice, "Did you bite Sister O'Dell," as I roll my eyes a bit. You see, dear readers, Matthew is not a biter. He has never been a biter. He is, however, a pretender, and lately he has been pretending to be a cheetah (because of our dear Bindi the Jungle Girl). So I was not taking the biting very seriously. I assumed he sort of put his mouth on his teacher's arm and maybe licked her or something (nasty enough in itself) and in general caused enough distraction and disturbance to be taken out. This was not the case. The leader who brought him to me could see I wasn't grasping the gravity of the situation so she explained further. He really bit her. Bit her enough she cried. Yes, he bit her that hard. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what to do. I was of course upset with Matthew but as I stood there the realization fell on me--this was one of those situations. The situations I try my hardest to avoid but that follow me around like a dragging shoe lace. The responsibility, the fault, the embarrassment of this situation does not ultimately land on Matthew, the four year old perpetrator . . . it lands on me, the Mother. I now bear the shame of being the mother of a biter. "Look, there goes Emily. Watch out, her kid bites." "Oh, there's the biter. You'd think his mother could control him." I will be told everyone's cure for biting. The biting back, the hot sauce, the naughty chair. I will watch as parents whisper to their children to be sure not to sit next to Matthew, "he bites." But as with all problems one must look at the root. Biting is not Matthew's problem. He does not have some weird Freudian issue with being nursed too long or not long enough, or having a pacifier till he was almost four. He does not have some oral fixation. No, Matthew's problem is not with his mouth. Matthew's problem is his imagination. He was not "Matthew" hiding under the pew during class. He was "Cheetah." And desperately trying to get away from the hands hunting for him under the bench. So, where does one draw the line? He had his time in the corner, he was denied his "after church" nachos to tumultuous tears, and there will be no "Bindi" for this week until we work out how to foster his love of animals and unbridled imagination without creating the predator of primary. As for now he is relegated to calmer creatures and spent the afternoon rolling and unrolling himself in a blanket while he transformed from a caterpillar to a butterfly.

What have I learned in all this: the embarrassment a child feels at being dragged over to an adult's house to apologize and the resentment directed at the parents for this embarrassment is nothing compared to the embarrassment the parent feels at having to apologize to the offended adult before the child, after the child, and every time the parent runs into said adult forever after!