Chewing on this Stage

Our house has entered full gerbil stage. No, we don’t have any pet gerbils. And no, wild gerbils aren’t suddenly running around the place. However, they might as well be with the way these kids are chewing on things.

I’m familiar with the stage when a kid wants to put everything in their mouth. The 6-month-old is certainly in that stage now. She can’t crawl yet but still rolls her way around a room so we have to be extra vigilant about what’s on the floor. With six older brothers who all love building with Legos it feels kind of like being a lifeguard for Lego pieces. 

As we walk through a room, like a Coastguard helicopter passing over the sea, we’re keeping an eye out for stranded Lego pieces and then swooping down and picking them up before she does.

Having a baby in the I-want-to-taste-everything stage doesn’t qualify a house as gerbil city though. The 3-year-old is in the stage where way too many times a day someone is telling him something doesn’t go in his mouth. It’s also a familiar stage. It’s worse than the baby chewing stage because the 3-year-old is definitely old enough to know better but he does it anyway.

Compared to his brothers I don’t think he’s putting more non-food things in his mouth than average, but he’s at that peak point so it seems like a lot. Adding in the baby it starts to feel like, “taste your way through the day,” is our motto. It is not.

The one who really makes the comparison to gerbils valid is the 5-year-old. There are some late molars that can come in around this time and perhaps that’s driving the chewing habit, but whatever the cause he’s chewing on everything. He had an older brother (who shall remain nameless) who did this until he was almost twice as old.

It seems the 5-year-old can’t go even a few minutes without haphazardly chewing on the collar of his shirt, or his sleeve, or the book he’s reading. It’s almost like a cow chewing cud it seems so natural and unintentional. Squirrels and other rodents whose teeth don’t stop growing will often be found chewing on all sorts of objects; power lines, house siding, and chimney grating all become chew toys to them. Maybe the 5-year-old thinks he needs to gnaw his teeth down too?  

Thankfully, as annoying as these chewing stages can be, we don’t have a biter kid. Or at least we haven’t had one in a while. There are certainly occasional accusations of, “he bit me” and some of them are true, but if you really have a biter running around you’ll know it. Because of the bite marks on your hand.

In time, like all stages of childhood, the chewing stage too shall pass. Let’s just hope it’s over before half our belongings are gnawed up.