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Biting and Fathers

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

A couple of weeks ago, as I was driving to meet with a client, I heard a portion of one of Francene’s talk radio shows, in which the topic was what parents should do about children who bite.  The main question was whether it was alright to bite the child back, to give him a “taste of his own medicine”, or whether that was child abuse.  As I listened, I was reminded of my own childhood.  Despite being a sweet, wonderful, adorable child in almost every other way, I was a biter. My parents struggled to cure me of that habit, and my father finally came up with a cure.  However, I did not hear his cure mentioned on Francene’s show – maybe because it required outstanding courage for him to carry it out. 

Dad made a deal with me.  Whenever I got the urge to bite someone, I could go to him and bite him on the arm, but I was not allowed to bite anyone else.  I remember taking him up on his offer many times, chomping down on his arm as hard as I could!

As I look back from the perspective of being a parent myself, I am amazed at everything Dad did for us kids.  When I was young and lived in Connecticut, he took me hunting and fishing with him and taught me to clean whatever victims we brought home.  He bought us a pony, fenced in a pasture for it, and would shovel a long path from our house to reach the pony in the snow.  He built nesting boxes, bought some hens, and had them sit on the eggs of pheasants and quail so we could see the baby birds grow.  We got some laughs courtesy of nature as the “mother” hens tried to teach their baby pheasants to roost in the trees, and the babies, who did not have feet designed for roosting in trees, kept falling out!  He built us a bee hive with a glass side so we could watch the bees working.  He taught me to shoot a gun. 

As both a chemical engineer a tinkerer, Dad taught us a lot about how things worked.  He explained scientifically why my drink didn’t fall out the bottom of my straw when I used my finger to seal the top.  He taught me to fetch the right tools and hold the light to help him when he was working on the car, so, by the age of 5, I could successfully fetch the half-inch box-end wrench, the needle-nose pliers, and a variety of other tools on command. 

My brother and I had been competitive swimmers in Connecticut.  When we moved to Texas and could not find a swim team nearby, he became our coach – which took up every evening after a long day at work.  Then, on weekends, he drove us all over the state of Texas for swim meets.  How relaxing that must have been for my parents!

Dad was a strict disciplinarian and had high expectations for us.  “Only a 99 on that test?  Why not 100?”  He taught us the importance of honesty.  “I have no use for people I can’t trust.”  And, by his example in the way he treated other people, and his stories of growing up with a father who had little formal education, he taught us that every person, regardless of education or income level, has talents and wisdom and deserves to be treated with respect.  Not a bad legacy.

And, by the way, I haven’t bitten anyone for years, so I guess Dad’s cure did work!

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