BAM!

So it's 6 o'clock PM on Friday, a week ago to this very day, and my phone rings. My caller ID says it's Edith's school. I double check the house - yep, there she is over there playing. So it's not that I forgot to pick her up! This cannot be good. I answer, and it's the director, Jasmine, and she's upset. I can hear it in her voice. She informs me that a very upset male parent whose name she cannot disclose just left her office and he was extremely upset about my Edith biting his child, whose name she also could not disclose. It took about all of two nanoseconds for what were before isolated chunks of miscellaneous information to quickly conglomerate into a story complete with introduction, plot and character development, climax, and conclusion. BAM! It just about knocked the wind out of me - my brain was reeling with the exploration of this new revelation, my eyes and heart were crying from the blow, and Jasmine was filling me in on how the parent was so upset that she wanted to give me a heads up.

So Jasmine tells me how she doesn't think Edith's biting is that abnormal and she's not all that concerned about it. She tells me how she knows we follow up with her and that there are consequences at home for behavior at school, and how many of her parents act like they could care less when their kid acts out. She thinks we are dealing with it but since this parent was so upset she had to call me. Well, I was upset, too! I was pretty hurt. I kept thinking how I read somewhere once that it is much more difficult for the parent of the child who is biting than it is for the parent of the child is getting bit. I was defensive. I was hurt. I was....pissed. The whole conversation we danced around the fact that I knew who she was talking about and that she knew that I knew who she was talking about but neither of us could say that we knew that the other one knew. Funny games we play. The end result of the conversation was we decided to separate Edith and Sweet Pea as much as possible within the classroom they are in. You see, there are two sections.

After hanging up I lost it on the tear gig. Edith was looking at me funny. I told her what had happened on the phone, and wanted to her to see how sad her behavior makes Mommy. I told her that she and Sweet Pea couldn't play together anymore. Anyway, to make a story short, I then continued to obsess about this for three days straight. It was all I could think of. New emotions slowly but surely started creeping into my heart - sadness, embarrassment, shame, and remorse. But don't let me fool you - I was still pissed too!!!! I decided to confide in my brother. Can you say big mistake? He let me know that his two children had never, ever bit anyone and that this behavior was not normal and that I needed to take Edith over my knee and whop the spoiled brat. He claims she thinks she is in control of the household and everywhere else, and someone else needs to show her who is the boss, and physically. I hold that combating physical aggression with aggression is senseless. I also felt he wasn't making a fair comparison with his children because they never even went to daycare - they stayed home with mommy. But all in all, the conversation made me feel no better, only worse. Now I had serious self doubt on my parenting abilities. Was I raising a spoiled brat? SHOULD I be spanking my child? Yep, pretty much, I was a complete and utterly miserable human being.