SPIT FIT

Say you’re three years old. And you’re playing nicely with your friends when, suddenly, one of your little buddies takes the game in a direction you do not care for. Like, say, they want to be the red truck, but you don’t want them to be the red truck. How would you tackle that challenge?

If you were my oldest daughter, you would spit on them.

This is the information we got from one of Lily’s teachers last week. That Lily had had a bad day and was put in time out for spitting on a schoolmate.

When we got home I sat Lily down and had a talk. It went something like this:

ME: Lily, did you spit on someone today?
LILY: Yeah.
ME: Why did you do that?
LILY: Brendan was playing a scary game and I didn’t like it.
ME: So you spit on him?
LILY: Yeah.
ME: You know spitting is not nice, don’t you?
LILY: But Brendan was the ‘ronnosaurus and it was scaring me and I got up to sit on a different part of the carpet but he came over and was bothering me so I spit on him.
ME: …

I’m split between what the fuck and that’s right, you don’t fuck with my daughter or you’re going to get a face-full but mostly I’m wondering how in the world she decided that spitting was the answer? Hitting I can understand (if not condone) but good Lord, spitting?

Anyway, we had the big talk and she agreed to not spit at her friends if they were bothering her, and that it would be better to just get up and sit somewhere else or tell a teacher.

Then the next day she spit on someone else.

So then we had to have a bigger talk complete with threats (“if you spit on someone again, we’re going to take away your pacifier that night”--a pretty serious threat for our little girl) and more assurances that she wouldn’t do it again.

And the next day she didn’t. Macey did.

Which isn’t surprising at all, since Macey wants to do everything Lily does. But I’m not sure if Macey instigated it, since we were told that the entire toddler class had to have a time out because they were all spitting.

My little darlings. Spitting on their classmates.

And to think that I used to worry about hitting.

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