Biting...hitting...lying...these behaviors are totally normal, and also, socially inappropriate. In early childhood, we take a developmental approach to such concerns.

So for a while, my assistant teacher and I have been working with our class of 3 and 4 year olds to find ways to solve problems, and to be kind to each other. As is very typical for three and four year olds, however, many children have been experimenting with inclusion and exclusion and what it means to be friends. It seemed like we had been handling the incidents on a case by case basis, often stepping in as adults to resolve the problem. As the teachers thought about this, and how it was affecting the mood of the classroom, we decided to take a new and different approach. We decided to bring the problem to the children, and see if we could investigate the problem. We are calling it: The Meanness Problem. Like many of our projects, this undertaking is not one that we have done before, so we do not have a concrete map of where we are going. Rather we have guiding research questions that we have presented to the children:
What is meanness? How do you know if something is mean? Where is all the meanness coming from? ​

Little people are learning so much about their world, and just like they hammer on play dough to see what will happen, just like they endlessly build ramps for their cars, just like they swirl paint colors mixing across paper, they are figuring out how to play with each other. They are figuring out what happens when they invite a friend to play, when they tell a friend their idea, when they follow a friend's lead, and, yes, when they tell a friend "You're not my best friend anymore!"