I'm not malicious, just clumsy!

I knocked a child down Friday. Not on purpose!

He had left the toy cars to go play at another center, but when a classmate tried to play with the cars, he just wigged out and flew into a screaming, hitting rage. I pulled him off and told him How We Do Not Behave. It didn't go over well.

The first thing he did was storm off to sulk and cry in the floor across the room, which is fine. But then he built up to another rage and took off his shoe and charged back to club the other kid like a baby seal with it

I intervened, or tried to.

It was my intention to simply get in the way, all secret service style, but I misjudged the distance or the oncoming speed of a selfishness-powered three year old and ended up bowling the poor kid right over. He looked up at me like I was an ogre and I just knew there was no way I could explain that I hadn't meant to knock him flat mid-berserker charge. Then he started to cry, so I tried to help him up.

He was having none of it and he crammed his shoe into his mouth and started screaming at me around it. I recognized this as Too Crazy To Reason With and went straight into authority mode. I said something about if that shoe wasn't out of his mouth and back on his foot and he didn't stop acting that way Right Now, he would be sitting with me for the rest of play time and wouldn't get to play with anything else.

He made an angry face at me and whined and sniveled awhile longer, but he did it. Then I asked if he was ok and said sorry for knocking him over. He made me check his head for owies and I didn't find any so he went back to play, all happy again. Hunh,