Biting
There's a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald called "The Baby Party." Set during a toddler's birthday and its aftermath, the story centers on an act of kid-on-kid violence and parents behaving badly: the protagonist's daughter pushes the birthday boy to the floor, then laughs, and both toddlers' fathers end up in a fistfight on the front lawn. It ends with a father clutching his now-sleeping daughter, a vivid and naughty child, and realizing what it was he had fought for so savagely that evening. He had it now, he possessed it forever, and for some time he sat there rocking very slowly to and fro in the darkness.
I've been there. So has every parent whose kid has ever been "that kid": the hitter, the biter, the scratcher, the one the other parents use as a counter-example to get their kids to shape up. My children, a toddler and a teen, while generally charming and lovable people, have recently made me that kind of parent. Although it hasn't come to that, I can see myself in a suburban fistfight to defend their honor...Read more from Kate Tuttle's "Bad Parent: The Biter"
