Feeling shamefaced – when one child bites the other

You know how sometimes, you are out and about and you see a parent whose children are misbehaving in a cringingly bad fashion?

Well, today that parent was me.

I think I’ve done pretty well to get to 3 years of parenting without experiencing any major cause of public embarassment (other than those I’ve caused myself due to terrible hair / head / wearing-yesterday’s-clothes days) but today I really felt the heat of those hostile stares from all the other parents – and their children – who looked at me clearly thinking what a terrible parent I am.*

Bubby D was in the swimming pool changing area playpen, playing happily with another small girl. The Wee Man was doing his ‘slippery eel that doesn’t want to get dressed’ impression. Two seconds later, he slipped from my grasp, ran to the playpen, grabbed Bubby D’s hand and bit it. Hard. And then kept on biting, even though I told him firmly not to.

That is what caused the looks of horror and open mouthed amazement.

Clearly, with Bubby D screaming hysterically, my first action was to try and comfort her. But with her being pretty inconsolable and not in any mood to be put down again, and the Wee Man in a state of undress, we were left to suffer the volatile stares.

Obviously I needed to make it clear to the Wee Man that this was unacceptable behaviour. But how do you successfully admonish one child whilst devoting attention to comforting the other?

Eventually I got Bubby D calmed enough to sit in the pushchair, and dragged the Wee Man, still shoeless, into the lobby outside. Away from the withering looks of the parents who clearly have never had their child do something nasty to their sibling, we had a bit of a discussion about why it is not nice to hurt your sister. Followed by the withdrawal of the smarties which had been promised as a treat after swimming.

I’m not sure the discussion had much impact but the smarties withdrawal certainly did, and finally my face returned to being red simply from the fact that it was absolutely boiling in the sports centre, and not because I was blushing horribly from embarassment.

Bubby D had a nice feed to distract her from her painful fingers, the Wee Man sat in silence and reflected on the loss of his smarties, and slowly the whole incident was forgotten.

Hopefully, though, the lesson will be remembered. We’ll see what happens next week…

*they might not have been thinking that, but that’s definitely how it felt.