Real Biting Versus Fake Biting

The past couple months, Tia has been bitten at daycare.  Of course, as parents it alarms us and I hate seeing her have bitemarks, etc.  My biggest fear is that she would pick up the bad habit.  I think within one month, she was bitten by 'friends' at daycare at least 6 times.  The poor girl, but I talked to several people from moms to parents to daycare workers and all of them said the same thing...it's a phase and most kids grow out of it.  Now if it was one culprit then it can be addressed, but if it is everyone then it is hard to give ramifications to the parents of those who are just trying to soothe their growing teeth.  Every now and then I'll see Tia almost bite my arm when she is trying to pull herself up and it is almost a ditch effort to grab on where she can, but she never bites down.  I was just dreading the day when we'd get the incident report that Tia has bitten someone...and of course, as expected it happened.  We predicted that she'd pick up the habit and luckily it has only been a couple times the past months but I just always pray she doesn't become a true biter and ultimately get herself kicked out of school.  Last night, however, we sat her down and I said 'Tia did you bite someone today' and she actually nodded her head yes.  I think Chris and I were stunned from that alone. Then I said, you know that is wrong, no biting okay. Her eyes saddened and she gave me that look that she knew it was wrong and understood what we were saying.  She leaned over to Chris's arm and kissed it as she does when she sees someone crying or hurt.  It was really sweet. Then a few minutes later, she leaned her head down on my arm with her mouth open wide. She went to bite down and more kissed my arm, then pretended to take a bite out of my arm, chew it up and said 'yummy'.  Chris and I weren't sure what just happened. Then she just kept doing it over and over and laughing at the same time. Yummy as she was pretending to bite on my arm.  And her soft kisses on my arm were just so sweet. We weren't sure whether it was something to be alarmed about or whether it was normal. But at least it wasn't real biting and we hope that will become the norm 'pretend biting'.  She is just getting so big and hard to really know what is going on in that head of hers. One thing is for sure...she  understands what we are saying and repeats everything!