Fine Young Cannibal

Gabrielle was bitten at church yesterday. She's old enough to be in nursery now, the class for little ones old enough that they don't have to stay with their parents, but still too young for the more organized classes for the older children.

So, halfway through my meeting one of the nursery volunteers came in and told me in hushed tones that one of the other mothers wanted to talk with me. It seems her son had bitten my daughter. Hard. Twice. Once on each arm.

So much for the rest of church. Actually Gabrielle took it rather well. They told me she didn't even cry. I guess that's why they didn't catch it in time to keep it from happening again.

Now, I know small children do things like that sometimes. Actually Gabrielle bit me a couple of times before I managed to convince her that was a bad idea. They bite because they can't talk and they don't have much in the way of skills to communicate. It's not anyone's fault. It's not the child's fault. He's just a little guy and he's still learning. It's not the mom's fault. She's working on teaching him and that takes time (she apologized to me, weeping the whole time. She felt terrible about it.) It's not the nursery workers fault. They do a fantastic job of caring for the kids and stuff like this can happen pretty quickly. (Although, yes, I am a bit peeved that it happened twice. But then, I can't guarantee even my presence would have kept it from happening again.)

It's no-one's fault. Which, unfortunately, leaves me with my protect-my-baby-aggression all revved up and no-one to vent it on.

These were nasty bites, too. On one arm her wrist has several red teethmarks, even more than a day later. On her other arm you can still see a complete circle of red teethmarks. He almost broke the skin with his front teeth. I've been keeping a careful eye on her all day, just in case. Human bites, I have been told, are very prone to infection.

She hasn't complained at all, but if you touch her am where she was bitten you'll get a quiet little, "Ow."

Yeah, that's the sound of my heart breaking.

I've been debating what to do next Sunday. I've pretty much decided that for at least this next week I need to go to nursery with her. We'll see how that goes and I'll decide if I need to keep going. Just because it's nobody's fault doesn't mean I'm going to take a chance on it happening again, after all.