One of my kids dabbled in biting for a few weeks.
Of course, he was a little toddler, not one of the 20 most talented soccer players in the world. I don't mean to sell my son short - he may have been one of the 20 best toddler soccer players in the world at the time he went through his biting phase. I mean, he could do this pretty cool thing where he'd pick up a ball and drop kick it pretty high, like, almost over a very small fence. But it wasn't even a real soccer ball, just one of those superlight plastic jobs. And other parts of his game were sorely lacking. His headers were just crap, and don't even get me started on his trouble with the offside trap. I don't think he even understood the rule!
Once again though, he was just two years old.
Luis Suarez, on the other hand, is a grown up man with intricate knowledge of the offside rule and a remarkable knack for scoring goals. In 2013 he finished 19th in FIFA's Player of the Year voting, and his performances this year had some people suggesting that he could shoot into the top three for 2014, maybe even up to No. 1. He scored 31 goals in 33 British Premier League games this season with Liverpool to win the Golden Boot as well as the league's Player of the Year award.
So yeah, he's better at soccer at age 27 than my kid was at age two. But get this - he also bites people.
As you probably know, Suarez, playing for Uruguay in the World Cup on Tuesday, inexplicably bit Italian Giorgio Chiellini on the shoulder during an otherwise benign play.
To mark this bizarre occasion I've carried on the World Cup tradition of writing a terrible song that will be sung by someone famous who is wearing really short pants. Here it is, sung to the tune of the smash 1963 hit "Then He Kissed Me" performed by The Crystals:
He walked up to me and he asked me if I wanted to play He played for the two-time world champions from Uruguay When he played, he was a sight And when he shot, he scored all night So I tried to defend him tight And then he bit me.
And then he bit me.
Amazingly it's not the first time he's taken a bite out of someone in a game. He's done it three times now in the last four years. He just doesn't seem to grasp that the rest of the world finds human-on-human biting to be (bad pun alert! bad pun alert!) in very bad taste.
I want to help Luis Suarez. Biting is not a good thing to do - apparently the human mouth is full of more questionable toxins than the
pool at the Playboy Mansion.
And this isn't helping his career either. On Thursday FIFA banned Suarez from all soccer for the next four months as well as Uruguay's next nine matches.
Parenting books tell you that many kids go through a biting phase between the ages of one and three. The best thing to do, they tell you, is simply, clearly and sternly say to the child: "No, please don't bite. It hurts."
I'm guessing that's what the referee, practicing good parenting, did with Suarez, because he didn't offer any more traditional punishments such as a red card.
It's also important to reduce the likelihood of an angry biting encounter by ensuring that the child gets enough sleep and - this one comes from The Book Of Obvious - gets enough to eat.
Those things didn't work right away on my kid, who was too young to realize that the biting inflicted real pain. What ultimately got him to stop was when he bit someone he truly respected. Not his mom or dad, of course, but his beloved Grampa. Grampa and my son were wrestling around one day when the little guy got caught up in the fun and bit down on the back of Grampa's leg.
"Ow! He bit me!" Grampa understandably said in a slightly shocked tone. Seeing his Grampa react like that really freaked out my son and he has never bitten anyone since.
Recalling that incident has helped me make my plan for Suarez. All we
have to do is to trick him into biting someone that he really respects - a beloved Grampa or uncle or maybe one of his sponsors from Cannibal's Anonymous - and he'll learn how
much pain he's causing.
It shouldn't be that hard to set up - all we'd need to do is to tell the person to innocuously come in contact with Suarez during a soccer game and voila - bite, cry, repent, reform.
If he doesn't have a beloved Grampa I guess he can borrow my dad. That cool with you Gramps? Hello? Grampa?
