Boo Boo Busted
I was initiated to the world of Boo Boo Reports during Alexis' very first week of daycare. She was a chunky little 6-month old with thighs like turkey legs. Apparently, one of the other kids thought she really was a turkey because he or she tried to take a chunk out of that thigh. A perfect purple ring of baby teeth was left behind.
When the teacher handed me the Boo Boo Report, I had to laugh. I mean, it sucked that somebody bit my kid, but "Boo Boo Report?" That's ONE way of saying, "We have a tiny cannibal on our hands. SO SORRY." I found it interesting that the teacher didn't tell me who the cannibal was, but rather just reported that it had been mentioned to the appropriate parent.
When we got our second and third and fourth Boo Boo Reports, I started to wonder. Was there one cannibal? A pair? A whole tribe? I got the impression from talking to the teacher that if I really tried, I could get her to spill the name(s). But then I got the other sort of Boo Boo Report a few weeks later. I got the Your Kid Just Joined the Cannibals note.
Meh. Babies bite. It is what it is.
Eventually the cannibals got kicked out of the baby prison (aka nursery) and sent to the wild kingdom that is the Toddler Room. By then they had all figured out that it didn't make much sense to beat the crap out of each other. The Boo Boo Reports came to an end as the little monsters focused on being as loud and as rowdy as possibly. It was more of a mental sort of anguish that they liked to dole out, rather than physical pain.
It was during that phase that I started comparing notes with other parents. When we crossed paths, we would gossip about teachers, whine about the crazy expense of daycare, and speculate as to who we thought the punk parents might be. It took about twenty seconds for us to piece together that there was one primary biter back in the Cannibal Days. I fully admit that the only reason we even tried to figure it out was so that we could get that sweet little moment of thinking, "BOOYAH! I may be clueless, but at least my kid isn't a biter like so-and-so's kid!"
(Everybody likes to have a moment of thinking you're a better parent than someone else. If you say you don't, you're totally a liar. I think it's a necessary little strategy that helps to balance out those moments when you feel like a complete failure.)
We parents thought we were pretty slick. We stayed within the system, but totally found out who the beast referred to as "Other Child" on Boo Boo Reports was. It was like we were a bunch of grown-up Nancy Drews conspiring with adult Hardy Boys to solve the best-kept mystery of all time. We so smart!
Fast forward a few years to today . . . the very second I opened the door to pick Alexis' up at school (which also happens to be the daycare she's been at her entire life), she came running over, all sorts of excited to tell me something. Her mailbox is literally two steps inside the door, so as she clamored for my attention, I grabbed the notes out of her box.
The Boo Boo Report caught my attention instantly.
As I read the words, Alexis verbalized their meaning. She had been scratched on the face. She very accurately reported what had gone down--an epic battle over a Barbie had turned ugly. But, where the Boo Boo Report said, "Other child," Alexis just flat-out tattled on her friend. A teacher chuckled as the kid threw the other little girl under a bus then added, "We're not supposed to tell you who did it, but there you go, I guess."
Who needs Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys when you've got a 4-year old?
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Reader Comments (12)
Yeah, it kinda changes everything when they can TALK! ha!
We had a chronic biter when my son was in daycare and he finally got kicked out of the school. We all knew who it was and there was no controlling that little cannibal.
Also, dippin' dots. Yum.
Oh, this brought back memories of my days teaching in a daycare. The parents got together and decided who the "Other Child" was, but in this case they decided it was twins. Then one of the idiots made an "anonymous" phone call to the grandmother of the twin boys, saying "No one wants them there anymore". She came in the next morning crying. All of this could have been solved if they had just ASKED their children who was beating on the other kids (I worked in the 3 and 4 year old room). The poor twins were innocent.
I always loved finding out who the biter was so I could give them the stink eye on the sly (hey, that rhymed!). Unless of course the biter was Caroline. Which it was a couple of times. Kind of gives you a whole new perspective when your kids goes from being the bitee to the biter!
Ai...back in the days of infancy it was MY kid who was the biter, but we knew it. He bit us. He bit the dogs. He bit the furniture. He bit the walls... (and he drew blood regularly). But when you do the bite aversion training and it doesn't work, then all thats left is to wait out the phase.
If we had gone to a regular daycare, I'm sure we would have had the "other child" and probably would have been kicked out. Well...we were kicked out, but because he cried. Due to not being fed by the daycare. Not exactly the reason we expected.
Kids will rat out each other every chance they get if you only ask them. As they get older, they're more selective in their tattling, but will still tell dad 'that word' that mommy said in the car today.
Hello, my name is Amanda and I am the mother of a recovering biter. they had to let her use her binky all day in class to keep her from biting her friends. I almost dressed her as a vampire for halloween, but I figured that would be insensitive to the victims.
When Youngest Boy was in Pre-K I got a full report every day as to who did what to whom and who ended up on which color (green, yellow or RED). He had a "that kid" in his class, too. He just started Kindergarten and he doesn't know the other kids' names yet so the report goes, "There were A LOT of kids on yellow and THREE on red." I always feel bad for the teachers on those days.
Ha ha - so true, all of it, from the I'm-a-better-parent-nyah-nyah moments to the local chapters of Nancy-Drew-R-Us.
(And oh those EYES! How has she not managed to finagle herself a horse yet?)
haha that's awesome.
Maggie totally tattles on all the kids at school, no matter what they do. "Boy X didn't take a nap today!" or "Girl Y hit Girl Z on the swings!" Hilarious. It's like free reality television!
One of my greatest days as a parent was the day my kids learned to narc-out their father and informed me that he had taken them through the drive-thru for lunch!
Like The Mommy's kids, C.ooper is in a kindergarten class that utilizes the Red, Yellow, and Green system for monitoring behavior. We had a playdate with another kid and his mom a couple weeks ago and she informed me that she had requested the playdate to make sure C.ooper was an okay kid because her son was reporting that he was constantly having to go to Red. So much for thinking I had escaped being the parent of 'That Kid'!
So I originally read this post on my i-phone and couldn't leave a comment that way, but just wanted to share the very first boo boo report that I ever got OUT of the baby room, in the toddler room. It read "Maggie fell forward and bumped her nose LOOKING AT HERSELF IN THE MIRROR" oh yeah, that's MY daughter, lol!!!
Yep, I THOUGHT I was clever and figured out who the biter is, but then my son decided that that child was his best friend, and eventually he ratted out another kid as the perp. We were getting bi-weeklly bite reports for quite a stretch - someone apparently found my son either quite annoying or tasty...