Thoughts on motherhood.

I feel like a protective mother.  The past couple of weeks, M has been incredibly clingy and super affectionate when he's usually kind of aloof.  He has gotten in the habit of saying, "That's my Manda," whenever another kid is sitting in my lap or giving me a hug.  He'll try to push them off my lap or beat them to me if they haven't actually sat down yet.  Whenever he gets sad or scared, he will cry and come to me.  It's gotten to the point where I actually have to hide myself from his vision so that the other teachers can get him to do anything.

So lately he's been hitting.  Today he was especially aggressive on the yard (when I was inside getting ready for lunches).  When the kids came in from lunch, they were in the bathroom getting their diapers changed and  I hear one of my co-teachers scolding M for hitting a friend.  Then I hear this cry/scream and knew it was him.  It hurt my heart so much to hear him cry out of fear and sadness.  My co-teacher said his heart was beating faster than she's ever seen because he rarely gets scolded as sternly as she did.  I wanted to intervene so badly and just tell him it would be okay, but I knew he wouldn't learn.  I didn't want to hinder his learning process that hitting friends is not okay.  When he finally left the bathroom, he came to me and gave me a great big hug.  I reminded him that it makes us sad when he hits friends and that we need to use our words to tell our friends what we need.  I love him so much and I want to see him grow to be a healthy and well adjusted child.  I have to learn to not smother or spoil or save them from discipline, especially if it's necessary and helpful.  But seriously. Hurt so bad to hear my baby so upset. It's one of those days.