Bad day

[bright sparks]

I remember biting a friend in high school. A bunch of us were hanging out, he thought it would be funny to sit on me and reach back and tickle me. I don't like to be tickled, I voiced this, told him to stop, but had no way to stop him as he was on top of me. I bit him in the back. Boy did he go flying across the room...never tried to sit on me or tickle me again...nor did anyone else!

Sometimes when you have no other means to protect yourself (or your favorite toy or what ever) you resort to what you can do. A one off biting incident from a frazzled 4 year old would not be a huge red flag. But it would lead to serious consequences and follow up and if it happens often then would require a solid plan to end it. But again, if it was a crappy day all around and your son was just really at a loss for what to do then he may have just bitten because he didn't know what else to do. Help him know of what else he can do and make sure he doesn't resort to biting just to get what he wants.

I love your example and logic and agree with you Lee-Bee. Biting is bad but also considerably normal even still at 4 for a child who just struggles managing their emotions or has a momentary crappy incident. It doesn't raise red flags to me so much as makes me think about how I can help the child. It just requires some extra support and attention from caregivers to help the child work through it and obviously extra attention to help prevent the other children from potentially being hurt. Rather than blowing things up to be worse, it's best to just deal with it...No alarm bells going off for me. I swear my son was going to sprout horns at 2 1/2 and not just because of terrible twos. He wasn't just a biter but would punch, throw chairs, headbutt. To put him on a time out was risky business. Full extended arms because if he could reach you he was gonna tear into you. Now thats a red flag issue foe sure. I was very worried. It turns out that under stimulated children are the ones who are most likely to act out beyond age 3 regardless of how we entertain them or the opportunities we give them at this age. When my son was assessed at age 8 and diagnosed as gifted, the child psychologist said that his behaviour at age 2-3 was one of the initial indicators that he was gifted. Gifted children are notorious for having problems managing emotions. Thank goodness my son's behaviour all but disappeared the day he started JK but it just goes to show that some children need to be dealt with differently versus being labeled with red flags.

[Fun&care]

I just want to add in that I think all of us at some point have something embarrassing happen to us by our own kids during pickup or drop off. It really SUCKS in the moment because as caregivers I think we and our kids are held up to a higher standard. I think so long as you discipline your child when an incident happens and handle it appropriately (which I think you did) then parents should not be concerned as these things are normal and you don't need to beat yourself up over it. The truth is kids are kids, they have lots of growing and learning to do yet so there is for sure going to be bumps along the road.