When Your Kid is the Perp

When toddlers hurt other toddlers, parents get embarrassed. Last year, there was a rash of aggressive behavior at my daughter's daycare. And when I say "rash of aggressive behavior," I mean my daughter was biting and scratching kids left, right and center. One terrible day, which I now refer to as "Black Monday," I got a call at work that Nora had bitten five children. The center director told me that if she bit again that day, I would need to take her home.

My daughter had bitten before, and sometimes she scratched. Every incident generated an "incident report" which I would find taped upside down to her sign-out sheet at the end of the day. When I would see that tell-tale slip of paper, I would make a silent wish as I flipped it over that Nora had been the day's victim, not the perpetrator. No one wants to wish ill on their child, but having your child be the perp can feel even worse. The names of her victims were always withheld, but as soon as I walked in her classroom and saw a little face with a scratch across a cheek, or a forearm with teeth marks, my heart would sink. Did other parents know it was my little girl roughing up their kids? As much as I would have liked to pretend that nothing was wrong, shame and denial wouldn't have accomplished anything. Here's what I learned about pushing through embarrassment and helping a tiny perp and her victims.

Get the Details
Knowing the circumstances of what leads to aggressive behavior can help determine your child's triggers. Does the biting always happen close to naptime, or when your child is hungry? Is it always a fight over a toy? For Nora, her biting and scratching was usually the result of an invasion of her personal space. Once you know the trigger, you can strategize ways of dealing with, or preventing, the behavior.

Ask for Insight
Swallow hard and ask your child's care provider for his or her take or the situation. It was very helpful for me to hear her teachers say that Nora was not a bad kid. They felt that part of the issue was that she spoke too quietly when she didn't like something a kid was doing -- so the soon to be victim did not take her warning seriously.

Offer Suggestions Based on Your Unique Child
Your child is unique and no one knows her better than you do. Speak with her care providers to offer approaches you feel will work best. Also, make sure the approach of the daycare is in line with your parenting philosophy. For example, we do not use "time-outs" in our family, as we want our daughter to develop skills to deal with a situation and not create a climate where she feels she is "bad" and needs to be separated from the group.

Talk to Your Child
You can't really sit a 2-year-old down and lecture them about an incident that happened six hours ago. What you can do is remind your child about treating friends gently. When I dropped my daughter off in the morning, I would kiss her and tell her I hoped she'd have a fun day and remember to use gentle touches with her friends. I also coached her on using her loud voice if she didn't like something, and to bunch up her fists when she was mad (you can't scratch someone if your hand is clenched in a fist!). I also read her the book No Biting by Karen Katz.

Look at Your Family Stress Level
Though it's natural for toddlers to bite, scratch or push from time to time, if you notice an uptick in aggressive behavior, it's important to take a look at your family stress level. Are you following routines? Does your toddler need more rest? Is your stress through the roof and leaking onto your child? Make any necessary adjustments.

Take it Seriously, but Not Too Seriously
The evening of "Black Monday," Nora was fussy and tired. She pointed to her mouth and said "owie." I looked in her mouth and saw three erupting molars. No wonder she was cranky and prone to bite! The next day, a tube of Orajel accompanied her to school and my little perp was an angel once more. It's normal to feel embarrassed and want to over-react to show that you're "doing something about" the situation. But try to keep it in perspective. Your child is not destined to a juvenile detention center or a life of crime. One of the most helpful things a teacher told me was "Don't worry, this is nothing we haven't seen before."

Shout Out to Male Child Care Providers

With Nora moving to a Waldorf school in the fall, we'll be saying good-bye to her current teachers. She is lucky enough to have two fantastic male teachers: Mr. Ian and Mr. Jason. They know exactly what all the kids are doing at any given moment and are fair arbitrators of toddler disputes. They are endlessly patient, engaged and have just the right touch, not too heavy, not too light. They are caring, nurturing and fun. Also, they do not get PMS, and are therefore more even-keel than I'll ever be.

Indulge me while I gender stereotype for a moment: I think men are better at supporting a child's autonomy. For example, I observed the following on the playground one afternoon: There was a young toddler I'll call Lila who was not willing to go down the slide. Miss T. kept pressuring Lila to go down slide, and commented to Mr. Jason. how much she wanted to see Lila go down the slide. Mr. Jason matter of factly told Miss T, "It's really her decision." In other words, stop putting your wishes ahead of Lila's. She's her own person and she'll know when she's ready.

For about a year now, Mr. Ian and Mr. Jason have supplied my husband and I with insight into Nora's social interactions, support of her emotional and cognitive development, and stories of her aversion to spicy foods (apparently, she remarks on it on a weekly basis). Best of all, they have given our daughter two great models (in addition to her daddy, of course) of how nurturing men can be.

Waldorf & Virus Update

Wooohooo! Nora was accepted into the five-day mixed age kindergarten at our Waldorf school of choice for the 2010-2011 school year. She will also attend aftercare offered through the school. This is great news, as she won't be splitting her week between two places. We are quite sure she'll thrive in her new environment.

Nora's cough is much better, though not gone. She's back at school today, which is good, as we were getting a bit testy with one another. At one point, while I was pretend sleeping in an effort to compel her to nap, she tried to gouge my eyes out. Then she asked for her daddy. Sometimes I wonder if I could handle being a stay-at-home mom. I try to remind myself that being home with a sick child is not the same as being home with a well child. Thanks to my friend and neighbor, Sandi, for giving me a bit of a break yesterday, and to my mother-in-law, Deb, for the pep talk.

The Helicopter Game

Along the lines of games such as "Death is Not an Option" and "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," I invented a game last night. I call it, "The Helicopter Game." Basically, it allows you to fantasize you are the ultimate control freak parent, hovering around your child at every turn forcing them to make the decisions that will land them the career you would choose for them, and that that is somehow a good thing.

I introduced the game to my husband this way, "Honey, if it was good to force your kid into a career, what would you want Nora to be?"

My husband gave me the absurd answer I deserved, "An assassin!"

Then he considered a moment and said, "Something that makes a lot of money."

My answer is almost as vague. I want her to find something that pays decently, but is not corporate or souless. Something that involves using her mind, but not just sitting behind a desk; it must incorporate physical activity and the chance to spend time outside. It should be helpful to society, but not necessarily completely altruistic. Of course, I end up with a list that looks like jobs I might want: Master Gardener, writer, running some kind of program to get kids outside. And, of course, she would become internationally famous for doing it better than anyone else.

What is the point of this silly game? The game is an acknowledgement that I don't get to choose Nora's path. I don't care how selfless you are as a parent, you're going to end up doing a fair bit of wishing success for your child, and your imagination has plenty of suggestions for what that could look like, have fun with it. But, more importantly, asking myself what I want for Nora gives me a chance to reflect on my own choices. Would I want Nora to be sitting behind a desk configuring software for a payroll system? Probably not. Suddenly, it's about my own path, and I do have the power to change that.

Excuses, Excuses

We experienced some technical difficulties over the weekend, and also spent a good deal of time outside in the sunshine. Sorry for the lapsed posting schedule. If you were dying to know what parenting mistakes my husband and I made, there were at least two. I let Nora a skip a nap last Sunday (catastrophe) and, on Tuesday, Ben collected eggs without Nora. I thought she was going to cry herself into a coma.

Nora has a cold, so I'm home with her today watching her cough to the point of vomiting. Poor thing. We now return to your regularly scheduled program...

Garden Calendar: March

Here's a great gardening project for the kids: bean pole hideout! Take a bunch of long branches or bamboo poles and secure them at the top to form a tepee. Then plant pole beans (or any climber) at the base of each pole, so the vines will cover the structure and make a secret hide-out! More detailed instructions here.

While you're picking up your pole beans, here are some more veggies that can be direct seeded in March. God, I love Zone 8!

More peas
Parsely
Cilantro
Broccoli
Radish
Beets
Spinach
Chard
Arugula
Onion sets
Seed potatoes (after the 15th)

Get dirty!

Kill Your Television

It's preachy week here at Mommy's Pen, so sit up straight.

Let's take a quick walk-through of things we know are bad for kids. Junk food. Inactivity. Violent images. Consumerism. Why, then, would any sane parent plop a child in front the TV, a device that does nothing but promote what is bad for them?

"But there are quality programs on TV!" you will protest. Yes, and they are available online as well, without commercials for Lucky Charms and Barbie. Watching things online instead of on TV forces selectivity, you end up watching much less and only the best stuff.

I've seen the recommendations to limit kids to two hours of television per day. Let me see, on weeknights we get home at five and Nora goes to bed at seven. It makes sense to let her watch television for her entire evening at home? Ridiculous. This recommendation is for parents who let their kids watch TV non-stop, to pull them back from the brink, as it were. Two hours is still far too much.

What does Nora do for those two hours instead of TV? Feed the chickens, weed the garden, eat dinner with her family, build Duplo towers, sing songs, play with the dog, read books. She has one of the longest attention spans and largest vocabularies of any toddler I know.

Parents need a break sometimes and TV can be an instant babysitter. It's an easy way to get your kid out of your hair, but the trade offs of using this as a long term strategy are ugly: increased risk of attention problems, sleep problems, weight problems, the list goes on.

We don't have a television in our house for the same reason we don't keep twenty pints of Haagen-Dazs in our freezer. If we had it, we'd consume it -- all of it. TV is a tough thing to enjoy in moderation when it's just sitting right there in the living room. Just like the ice cream in the freezer, your child will beg for TV if a TV is present. Make it easy on yourself: unplug it and haul it away. Do it now.