Ask Ms. Cacie: Do you have any songs about biting? The parent in question has a 2-year-old who, like many toddlers, has developed a habit of biting. At first I sent her a video of Kate Micucci, performing her adorable song Dont Bite on the TV show Raising Hope, since it was the only on-topic song I could think of: https://youtube/watch?v=8Y-9FuL5FP8 but this issue has been keeping me up at night. Dont hit, dont push, dont bite - these are things we want ALL our toddlers to learn in context, but taken out of context, put in a song when theres no behavior present to discuss, what are we teaching them? So I thought of making it about dont do these things unless its an emergency, then its ok to defend yourself but toddlers are notoriously unskilled emergency identifiers - seriously, a few weeks ago, my neighbors house was on actual fire and I had my toddler wrapped in a blanket with her stuffed unicorn while Im sobbing and terrified and my kid is just singing songs about the rain and how it should come again some other day, but if you were to take the aforementioned unicorn away because shes using it as a percussive tool against the television, THAT IS AN EMERGENCY - so what Im saying is that the unless its an emergency thing either wont work or I havent found a way to make it work yet. Im trying, I really am. I know several kids who could take a lesson about screaming and shrieking and how theyre only for emergencies. So, yeah, ideally, you teach ALL the kids not to hit or push or kick or bite and they ALL listen and learn and stop themselves before the instinct kicks in and train themselves to use self-restraint, and ta-da! Then we have a society where no one hits or pushes or kicks or bites. That isnt how the world works and it certainly isnt how most toddlers work. Toddlers are still going to be rough on each other because theyre learning and communication is hard and emotions are huge, and sometimes, the first thing that comes to mind isnt the best thing, but they have learned that even if its bad, IT WORKS. So what do we do about that? We tell them not to bite. We tell them not to hit or push or kick. Were telling them and we think were teaching them, but learning it is up to the toddler and it takes time and consistency and eventually seeing that their results dont work the way they want them to so they find a different, better way. Hopefully we dont encounter actual emergencies, but if we do, we use our words and our actions to show them what to do. Other than that, Im leaving this one in the hands of Kate Micucci. Dont Bite is a cute song. Sure, its incomplete, but if the lesson you want to teach in song is Dont Bite, this is the song for you.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 15:13:35 +0000
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