It doesn't have anything to do with taste, it's because kids are an inferior species, as every parrot knows. They have to be - they're shorter!

Many individual parrots who are more tolerant of lesser beings may be nice to kids. But remember that for a parrot height is dominance, and most parrot cages are placed higher than a small child's eye level, placing the kid lower than the parrot on the totem pole, too. Of course, children don't behave properly and almost never show proper respect or display submissive behavior to the parrot, so the "brat" must be punished and reminded of its proper place in the pecking order. After all, the flock will fall apart if proper structure is not maintained by discipline!

The parrot doesn't mean to actually *hurt* the child, just reprimand it and persuade proper behavior, but a parrot has no concept of the fragility of a child's skin. A baby parrot, amply protected by feathers, would not be injured by an identical bite, but would feel about like a human child given a mild swat on the bottom.

One would think the easy remedy for this is to put the parrot's cage on the floor, but by doing this you will change the parrot's perception of its position in the flock, and the bottom bird in the pecking order is NOT a happy camper. A self-confident, aggressive, feisty bird may be adequately toned down by this type of "fix," but the average bird would become very quiet and unhappy, and may in any case continue to "fight" with the child, attempting to secure a higher position in the flock structure.

If the parrot realized that the child is a "baby," this would solve the problem, as birds are pretty tolerant of babies in the flock, but current theory is that parrots view children as a separate species because they are so much more different from adults than baby parrots are from adult parrots.

So, what's the solution? There really isn't one, other than trying to teach the bird that biting the child is not acceptable, or teaching the child to behave submissively to the parrot (ha, ha!). If you have a parrot that is not inclined to be tolerant of inferiors, you will probably have to keep it and your kids separated. Parrots that were heavily exposed to kids as babies don't usually have this problem, but an adolescent or adult bird that wasn't raised around kids may. Good tip if you have kids: try to buy your parrots from a breeder that has kids, and most preferably kids that "help" and interact with the babies.

Mind you, not all parrots, and not even most parrots, will have this problem. Bear behaves just as well with kids as with adults, even though she seldom sees one. Lulu, now - whole different story. One who is not understanding of parrot psychology might think she HATES kids, but she doesn't - she just wants them to behave properly, and of course they never do from her point of view. An older, taller child can probably, with help, work with the parrot and overcome the problem, but if you have a bird like this your best bet with small children is to keep them away from it, in my opinion.

{And from a 2nd post…}

Dogs are easier to train in this respect because in canine pack structure there is a precedent - the mate and cubs of the alpha or #1 male are dominant over the rest of the pack even if they can't "whip" the #2 male, or even #3. Young parrots are kept separate from the flock until they fledge, at which time they must make their own place - they can't fly on Dad's status. So, a dog will accept a pack member as "dominant" if the pack leader protects it - a parrot has no such pattern of behavior.

Another point is that height dominance in parrots is so intrinsic, it's really tough to convince a parrot that a short kid is "alpha" over it. When a flock of birds settles in a tree, the top birds get the top perches and the bottom of the pecking order gets the lowest branches. Perhaps this has evolved so that if a predator climbs the tree to get at the birds, it will reach the least successful members of the flock first - hence the most successful will almost always survive to reproduce - natural selection in action.

Anyway, the point is, even if you get the kid to an acceptable height in some fashion - stepstool or lowering the parrot - the child will still have to work with and attain dominance over the bird itself - parental protection doesn't fly well with parrots - and small children are usually not capable of doing it.