Jeez, with all the nanny articles and then this one, is Salon prepping us for a Terrible Parent Confessional Column?

I get the feeling Elijah likes receiving attention -- and I wonder how much of it he gets when he's not biting people.

His parents both spend most of the time at home but have a hard time finding time to spend with him. His behavior is so bad that his parents ship him off to a preschool where they expect the teacher to handle him with the patience they admit they lack. Then they're outraged that Elijah has been kicked out of preschool for the same reasons that the parents want to kick him out of their home for the summer.

The parents have gotten exactly what they deserve. Hopefully they'll give Elijah what he deserves: a spank when he's biting children until they bleed, and attention even when he is not.

-- Mike Baugh

As a former public school teacher, I can say with confidence that Pollack is wrong when he wrote that the reason that "expulsion rates are far higher in 'faith-based' and for-profit programs than they are in Head Start schools and preschools located in public-school classrooms" is because "publicly funded schools have easier access to behavioral consultants, often as paid staff, who can step in to help teachers with difficult cases." That is not the issue. Public programs cannot legally expel easily. That is the issue. And it doesn't mean they "deal with it." Often, the lack of ability to expel just means kids like Sophie, described by Pollack, keep getting bitten and teachers have little ability to stop it. Much as Pollack likes to think he has it the toughest (and he certainly makes it clear he thinks that), he doesn't.

-- A.M.

My 2-year-old daughter was a biter. When I finally made the behavior compulsory after reading some of Karen Pryor's advice on changing behaviors, she stopped for good after two weeks of working on it. During the day I'd pull out a teether or something else that was satisfying to bite, and make her bite it. At first she seemed to think it was a fun game, but after a while it was clear that having Mommy order her to bite, and having to bite for long enough that it became boring, made biting a real drag. It may not work for everyone, but some of you might find it works for your kid. Give it a try.

-- Carol Maltby

I am the mother of three kids born within four years, the last about to graduate from high school. Yes, it is tough to deal with preschoolers, but guess what, it gets worse, and believe me, if you have problems now, you are going to hate adolescence. So fish or cut bait. Take some of your prized reading time and read some child psychology. Your kid is crying out for attention; any attention will do at this point.

So you and your wife need to sit down and develop some parenting strategies. The good news is there are two of you. One can take the little guy out on excursions while the other has the precious alone time to work. And the other has to make it precious child time. Your child is dying to be cherished, not warehoused or schooled, but completely adored. There must be libraries, zoos, beaches, parks where you live. Take him there. Don't use the time to run errands. Do stuff he loves. And get this: Listen to him. Deeply, with compassion. You just may learn something. Number one lesson of parenting: Put yourself second. It will free you of some major horror later in life.

Don't blame the professionals. Get yourself a copy of Penelope Leach or Dr. Brazelton.

Parenting well is the best thing you can do with your life. The rewards are worth more than any dollar amount.

-- Beth Widmayer

In the wake of Enron and Tyco we demand accountability from corporations, yet society demands little from parents who bring children into this world. Mr. Pollack feigns sympathy to overworked and underpaid preschool workers, yet makes no effort to explain why he created yet another child to shoehorn into their classrooms. How can he expect them to summon love and acceptance for a fee when he cannot at any price? Why are institutions made to answer when the people who brought these unruly children into the world are not made to answer?

People have remarked to my wife and me how well our children are behaved, as if some miracle of genetics programmed them to observe a modicum of civility and adherence to society's norms. Yet what they don't see are the difficult day-to-day trials, enforcement of rules, and the desperate measures employed to teach a child that he cannot bite, that he must say "please," that writing on walls is not an acceptable form of self-expression, and that tantrums will not be tolerated. I have personally seen mothers use dramatic but effective measures to teach their child not to bite, some of which no preschool teacher would ever do for fear of being sued or fired. These lessons seem lost on Mr. Pollack, yet are the very things that assure a child that they are indeed loved and that help them channel their enormous energies to more productive ends. In my estimation what successful parents seem to instinctively know is that to raise a child well requires occasional sacrifice along the way, something Mr. Pollack and his wife have explicitly stated they are unwilling or unable to do.

I think Elijah is the smart one: He appears more lucid and aware than his own parents; he seems to already know there can be no price set on a parent's love and attention, despite his parent's stubborn attempts to do so.

-- J. Wilmarth

I'm not sure where to begin. I guess I'll start with the fact that the sense of entitlement voiced by these parents is amazing.

I have a "difficult" child myself -- not behaviorally, but he suffers from multiple severe food allergies and asthma. I have had to make major accommodations to allow him to participate in his preschool class -- not the least of which involved changing jobs to allow me the flexibility to take him to multiple doctor's appointments, drive to his school everyday at lunch to give him breathing treatments when his asthma flares up, keep him home or arrange alternative activities for times when there are things like "Ice Cream Sundae" days, where it would be too difficult for his teachers to ensure his safety around dairy products -- and too heartbreaking for a 4-year-old to deal with. It's difficult. But you know what? It's what you do.

I didn't "sign up" for a child whose health would require me to become proficient with the use of an Epi-pen, or whom I would have to rush to the emergency room on a sadly regular basis. What I did do, once we recognized the problem, was take it upon myself to become as informed as possible and do everything I could to give my son as "normal" a life as I could. I don't think my child's issues are anyone's responsibility but my own and frankly, I'm not comfortable depending on others to be responsible for his health -- though his teachers have been wonderful in regard to working with me. I made it my job to educate them and do everything in my power to facilitate my son's fitting in, rather than expect them to deal with it for me.

I'm sorry for this entire family, I really am. Unless these parents step up to the plate and actually deal with their child's problems, things are going to get worse. They might start by exploring their options, instead of feeling sorry for themselves -- if there are any universities nearby, they might find child-development programs their son can participate in at low or negligible cost. The same might be true of local hospitals. Or -- maybe, just maybe, they'll have to suck it up for a few months and trade off days or something. A little undivided attention might work wonders.

-- Carol

You are trying to reason with a 2-year-old? Two-year-olds recognize and are motivated by the following things: food, pain and pleasure. Giving him attention gives him pleasure. You gave him attention when he bit someone, so he thought in order to get more attention he should bite people. He should be immediately punished in a way that he does not like rather then a way that the parent finds palatable. He has to sit in the chair? Big deal. You took his picture away? Big deal.

Let's go on to a punishment that he'll recognize immediately: he bites a child, he gets an immediate spanking, no waiting in line, no delays. If you want him to stop misbehaving, he needs to be disciplined in a manner that he finds to be uncomfortable. Since you didn't previously discipline him (which starts at day one when he is born), you have to pay the penalty of breaking him now of bad habits he's learned in the meantime.

-- Doug

Recent Stories