A good day

I am feeling better tonight for a couple of reasons...

1. I talked to one of Lily's teachers this afternoon and reminded her to keep an extra eye on her since she has had a couple of incidents of biting in the afternoons over the past couple of weeks. She reassured me that they were being extra vigilant but that Lily was doing a great job. Then she said, "You know, Lily is not really an aggressive child". She said that the other children in the class frequently hit or push each other and sometimes even the teachers too, and they can be very defiant, often telling the teachers "no" outright when the teachers ask them to do something. She went on to say that Lily never does things like that, and she is, by and large, very patient with the other children's behaviors. She said that it is unfortunate that the biting leaves a mark and that the other aggressive behaviors don't, so it makes it seem like Lily is more aggressive but the opposite is actually true. She said that if you look at it over time, the other children display aggressive acts much more frequently, often several times a day, while Lily's acts of aggression have occurred probably 10 times total. As a parent, I really needed to hear that. And, I think that I needed to hear that from the teacher. Of course, we are continuing to work on the biting, but the conversation with the teacher helped put things in perspective for me and helped unravel the knots in my stomach a bit.
2. Lily's Tiny Tidbit report today read, "In the gym, Lily was sitting next to Jake with her legs crossed. She put her arm around Jake, leaned over, and told him "In 2 minutes, we go", then kissed him on the cheek." I laughed so hard when I read that, I cried. Honestly.