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Our Wanker this Week is a journalist called Tom Sykes, who writes drivel for the Daily Mail (how appropriate). This is his latest piece of drooling idiocy ... Parents of sabre-tooth children everywhere will be unsurprised by the news that three-year-olds can bite with the same force as a dog. But the discovery, by academics at the University of Leeds, will reignite one of the most controversial debates in parenting - when a toddler bites you, should you bite back? Like most modern parents, I utterly deplore all forms of corporal punishment. I would never dream of raising my hand to a child, nor could I be friends with any adult who did. But biting is somehow different. It is a uniquely unacceptable habit for a child to acquire. Milk teeth are razor-sharp and capable of doing great damage - witness the neat imprint of toddler teeth still clearly apparent on my wife's shoulder. Every time you complain to a friend who is already a parent about your child's biting, they always quietly tell you, in a regret-tinged voice: 'The only way to get through to a toddler on this issue is to bite them back.' Lucky parents discover this almost by accident. The child takes a chomp and before the adult knows what he or she has done, some primeval urge has overtaken them and the child gets bitten back. This is what happened to my wife when our toddler Bento bit her - as she, in a tearful state of mortification, told me that evening. Then something odd happened: he never so much as nibbled at her again. Unfortunately, he began sinking his teeth into me instead. I tried everything - even painting foul-tasting anti-nail-biting solution on to my shoulder. But every time I went and checked the various baby forums online, the experts all said one thing ... and the personal accounts all said another. Basically, the parents' view was: 'I tried everything and then finally I bit him back.' So I went for the back of the hand, having tested the power of my own bite on myself there first. Poor Bento burst into tears, not so much from the pain as from the shock - and, worst of all, looked at me through his tears as if I had completely betrayed him. I felt like an utter swine, but guess what? He hasn't bitten me, or anyone else, since. Now, if only I could fix the dog ... So Tom, you are our Wanker of the Week. Goodbye! Why, you plaintively ask? Well, it might be for having the sheer bloody gall to write a sentence like "I would never dream of raising my hand to a child, nor could I be friends with any adult who did". Or it might be for writing a sentence like "I would never dream of raising my hand to a child, nor could I be friends with any adult who did" - and then saying that while you mustn't smack your children, it's quite OK to bite them. Or it might be for writing your article in the Daily Mail, the arch enemy of joined-up thinking. A bit surprising, really: we would have thought a limp-wristed rag like the Grauniad or the Independent would have been more your mark. But no, we are a broad church and we recognise that in our jolly multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-belief-system, left-wing not-authoritarian-at-all utopia, everyone is entitled to their opinion however pathetic it may be, and that they are entitled also to foist it on the rest of us provided it's sufficiently multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-belief-system and left-wing. No, the reason you are our Wanker of the Week is much simpler. It's because you named your son "Bento". Actually, come to think of it, that's probably why he bit you. The GOS says: What amazes me is that this man gets paid to write this drivel. God, I'd do it for nothing! Oh no, wait a minute ... ... ... I already do. either on this site or on the World Wide Web. Copyright © 2009 The GOS |
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