Bruiser

If you saw Lauren today, you'd think I'd enrolled her in a baby boxing class. She has cuts by her eye, scratches on her arm, hand and foot and a bruise on her cheek. What's happened is that she's discovered walking. As *the* ultimate form of transportation. She's getting pretty good at it, too, but she still falls a lot. Even on carpeted, completely child-proof areas, she manages to injure herself. She fell in the living room, while tearing across the room to show me a book, and smacked the book against her cheek, causing the welt and a lot of tears.

The funny thing is, the band-aids I wrote about here, she is afraid of! When she cut her arm, I tried to put a Band-Aid on but she screamed and tried to tear it off and became frantic when she couldn't get it off, so I took it off for her. She cried another few minutes and then resumed playing and forgot all about it. Don't most kids love to get Band-Aids? Seriously. I remember from babysitting that kids always felt all better when they had a cute Band-Aid. I'm sure I'd recall if any of them screamed in terror after getting bandaged.

Something I don't quite know what to do about: my kid is becoming a bully. First, she's been bothering Jake a lot more, and gets a kick out of pulling his fur really hard. I am pretty good at keeping her away from him but when I was out and my parents watched her last week, she grabbed a good handful of the skin on his face and he finally snapped at her and growled and not exactly bit her but grazed his tooth on her forehead. A definite "disciplinary nip". My mom said she did not cry but looked absolutely shocked. Anyway, the other day she grabbed a huge hunk of 4-year old Karen's blonde hair and came away with a fistful. This is extremely disturbing to me. I don't know what I can do beyond "NO!". I don't ever want to hit my child, she's too young to reason with so I can't "give her a timeout" , but I don't want people (and dogs!) around her living in fear. Suggestions?