There is a biter at our daughter’s daycare.
Not a biter in the “OMG, that’s totally my outfit stop copying me” kind of sense. A biter in the “last summer’s Piranha 3D was adapted from your life” sense.
The biter is not my daughter. My daughter is the bite-e.
A recent daytime daycare call broke the biting news. Thankfully, the biter didn’t break the skin, the daycare assured us. If a toddler bite breaks the skin, you have to suck out the venom. Or else you become a were-toddler.
It was shocking news, another toddler nom nom nom-ing on my daughter. It broke my picturesque view of daycare. I had always pictured the toddlers existing in perfect harmony. My mental image of daycare was the show Teletubbies starring my daughter and eleven other toddlers.
That quaint view of daycare was shattered when my wife and me were provided with an “accident report” of the incident. Not that biting is ever accidental.
My daughter was playing peek-a-boo with another toddler, when the little Edward Cullen crawled over and sunk his fangs into my daughter. It was a drive-by biting, totally unprovoked. My poor daughter came home with toddler teeth marks on her thigh.
Seriously, there was no doubt it was a bite. There were visible upper and lower teeth. You could practically make out the molars.
My poor little baby. Toddler bites hurt. I know from personal experience.
My daughter bit me once. It was a random incident. She walked over and clamped down on my thigh. Wow, did it hurt. It was an intense searing pain. She didn’t break the skin but left a nasty bruise.
We don’t even know who the daycare biter is. The biter is anonymous. It could be Banksy. Daycare won’t reveal the biter’s identity. That’s the official policy. They’re probably afraid you’ll confront the biter’s parents or that you’ll go bite for bite with the little Lestat.
I don’t know if daycare tells the biter’s parents about their child’s propensity for leaving molar marks on his/her classmates? I certainly hope so. At least so they can start saving for the eventual orthodontist bills.
Here’s the thing about the anonymous biter. We know who it is.
When we arrived home with our wounded daughter, we asked her about her day.
“Did someone bite you?” we said.
She immediately responded with the biter’s name. Pardon me, alleged biter. Then she pointed to her wound.
Daycare must have never told her about the policy.
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