It’s ironic that I’m writing two posts about Fraser in a row when middle children have a reputation as being the ones who are forgotten. Except this post isn’t quite as loved up as the last one. Fraser’s started biting and I’ve no idea whether I’m handling it right as he’s showing no signs of stopping.

Luckily he’s restricted the biting so far to immediate family with his poor sister bearing the brunt of it, and the baby escaping so far. Sometimes he bites because he’s so excited he gets carried away. He’s done this to me and his dad a few times. Mainly though he bites when he and Eleanor are arguing as he’s quickly worked out that biting negates their size difference. The most recent occurrence was today when I picked them up from nursery. They were bickering over who could kiss Nate when Fraser bit Eleanor. She started crying and I felt all eyes on me from the other parents and nursery staff as I tried to calm her down whilst reprimanding Fraser.

I should say at this point that most traits I struggle with in my children are inherited from me and the biting is no exception to this. For a long time, I had a scar from when my brother bit my arm in excitement that we’d found our holiday campsite. My mum was once told by another mum that I was the devil child because I bit her son when he took a toy off me. Bitings in our blood and loads of my family profess to liking the feeling of sinking their teeth into flesh (weird but true).

Now I’m fairly confident in how I handle Fraser biting Eleanor at home. But suddenly dealing with it in front of a watchful crowd made me very aware that I basically don’t know what I’m doing. More than one person has suggested biting him back…I won’t be doing that. I do think part of the problem is that Fraser doesn’t understand how much it hurts though. Fraser has a stubborn streak (also inherited from me) so it’s best to work with him, rather than setting yourself up as opposition. So I gave Eleanor more attention and then explained to Fraser why we don’t bite and asked him to say sorry. At home, he would usually apologise at this point. Obviously he didn’t because we were in public (did I mention his stubborn streak?). I mumbled something about talking about it when we got home in a way which showed I had absolutely zero control of the situation and tried to hurry out of there.

This all triggered a conversation with the nursery staff where I explained that Eleanor was getting bitten quite a lot with a recent incident leaving her with big teeth marks on her bottom. They explained that we need to tell them when we drop her off if she has any injuries like this for safeguarding reasons. So at least we now know that. I think there’s a silver lining in there somewhere.