AIBU to keep my two-year-old at nursery when displaying increasing aggressive behaviour?

I agree, I had to tell DH to stop with the tough and tumble a while ago - the kids try to do it but don’t understand the limits or how to tell if another child is ok with it.

You can meet the same sensory and physical needs in other ways - look at heavy work and deep pressure sensory play for ideas.

This is a great point and excellent advice.

@ThePoisedOpalBird
please stop the rough play. Yes I know your child probably loves it, and it's great to see your child happy.

IMO (25+ years working with children) they are trying to emulate the rough play with other children but they don't understand how to do it. They think by knocking another child over that will lead to some really fun rough and tumble.

That's why they're smiling when it happens. To them it's the start of a fun game.I had a child like this and it became unbearable, I couldn't even leave the room to go for a wee and they'd be on the floor with another child. They became so aggressive with trying to initiate rough play I had to take them everywhere with me.

As soon as your baby is old enough to lay on the floor and play or sit on their own, he will be trying to do the same with them. Not in a malicious way, but to try and have fun with them.

That is often a very quick and effective lesson to learn from.

You should do what feels right for your family, but personally I would mention that there is a family history of ADHD (this is the one with at least one diagnosis, right?) and I might mention that there are also autistic traits, because that does not suggest self-diagnosis, which I appreciate is a more tricky area. They may or may not be aware but you could let them know that when someone is diagnosed with ADHD or autism, family members are more likely than average to display some autistic traits for example sensory sensitivities, communication difficulties, need for routine/predictability etc. And so it is possible that some strategies which help autistic children might help him, if they know of anything to suggest.

I would assume nursery have experienced ND children and be able to identify if he has any signs.

This is highly unlikely in my experience, although I am outside the UK, so it might be different in the UK, but I have seen no end of threads on MN where people have later-diagnosed ND children and nursery/school have dismissed concerns or not mentioned any concerns, so I think this is probably more widespread.

ND presentations can vary a lot and staff will not have a detailed knowledge of all possible things which could affect a child's development or behaviour. They may not have any ND-specific training or experience at all. Most children who are diagnosed with autism before the age of 2 have significant global developmental delay, and are unlikely to be at mainstream nurseries. There are autistic children in nurseries, certainly, but many of them will be diagnosed later, after they have started school, so nursery staff may never know about the diagnosis, meaning they will not have the chance to put that child's behaviour or presentation into the context of ah, that could have been autism related. ADHD is not usually diagnosed until school age either. I also personally encountered quite a lot of "Really? That's odd because I knew this other child who was [autistic/ADHD] and they were not like X at all..." (which is highly frustrating because not every single child will present the same!)

The nursery will be aware of developmental markers because of EYFS, and will flag up if he is very behind according to this, but it is very possible for children to meet these markers but still be struggling overall. The EYFS guidance cautions childcare/education staff not to mention or speculate about any particular diagnosis or condition, though they should be telling you if they think it's worth consulting a GP/health visitor. However, if you have your own concerns, I would definitely not wait for nursery to flag it up. EYFS is not a tailored screening for ADHD/ASD. There are screeners for those conditions which are much better at catching them (the ADHD one does need the child to be older, though).

Where is your partner in all of this. He works 6 days a week but he can’t be at work every hour on those days. He needs to pay masses of attention to your eldest and he needs to look after the baby when you take DS1 to nursery or to the park or watch TV together - just the two of you.

He will need to learn to comfort the baby so you can leave them with him. BF doesn’t mean you can’t leave the baby. The baby is also going to need to take second place sometimes.

The idea of "gentle hands" is based in evidential practice, but it has become a bit distorted. Essentially it comes from the idea where someone was saying (I think it was on this thread) above about how young toddlers struggle to understand sentences/instructions which have negation (e.g. no hitting) so it is likely to be more effective, in general, to give toddlers positive instructions/tell them what you WANT them to do, rather than what you don't want them to do. Instead of "Don't run off!" "Come and hold my hand", etc. In fact this is also true for anyone of any age - you get more effective results (most of the time) if you tell people what TO do rather than what NOT to do. There are some exceptions where it might be unclear (e.g. I think "No Smoking" is clearer than "Thank you for keeping this area smoke free!")

So the idea is if you have a young baby/toddler who for example is slapping people or animals in an excited manner because they just really like being with them and they don't yet understand that they might hurt someone, you might block or hold their hands, show them a gentle stroking/patting movement and explain "Gently, like this. Kind hands."

But you do have to teach this, it's not innate knowledge for little children. It's also become overused/a sort of automatic phrasing in some circles whereas it is only really appropriate for that specific scenario. When child 1 wants to thump child 2 because child 2 stole their toy, they had no intention of being kind or gentle. Showing them how to gently stroke child 2 instead would probably not be effective in achieving what child 1 intended to achieve. Actually you probably want to teach them how to use verbal strategies either to ask for the toy back or ask an adult for help, or strategies on how to cope with the feeling of being upset/angry about the toy being taken.

Some childcare/education settings are using it as a sort of general policy ie part of a set of rules which everyone is to adhere to, as a replacement for "no violence/hitting". Which can work well with older children, perhaps early primary, because they are better able to make the connection or participate in a longer discussion and therefore understand that a school rule of "kind hands" means that we only use our hands to help each other/play/learn and not to hurt each other. Again for 2 year olds this is a bit too abstract, and 2 year olds also don't learn from being told rules in one context and then expected to apply them independently in another context. They are more likely to learn by doing things and finding out what happens. Most (NT) two year olds are able to pick up on social approval/disapproval, so they can tell when they are being told off, and provided that this isn't either the most reliable way of getting attention, or the only strategy they know, will usually experience this as aversive enough that they will be less likely to repeat the behaviour. Even though the actual wording of "kind hands" is not especially clear, children can tell through adult tone and facial expression that their behaviour is disapproved of. (Autistic children might not understand this, or might be upset by it but not make the connection to their behaviour).

In general the most effective way to change a behaviour is to strengthen the replacement behaviour but in order to do this properly, you have to understand what function the child is trying to achieve with the behaviour (which is not always a conscious aim). But if the nursery are doing ABC charts for this then they may be looking at the function of the behaviour next.

It probably sounds ineffective hearing that a child is being told "Kind hands" and redirected but it's likely there is more context to this which we are not aware of. This could be a temporary strategy while they look at the ABC and FBA. It could be that they are doing work with all of the children to strengthen a policy of "kind hands" (ie, non-violence) generally and teaching all the children what this means - for example, in some behaviour management programs you might teach a replacement for hitting in the moment, which is about doing something else with your hands. DS3's group (3-4yo at the time) did something which explored all different feelings and for anger they were taught that anger gives you energy - but when you feel so angry that you want to hurt someone, that energy needs to go somewhere, so they were supposed to run to the wall where a pair of red handprints was stuck up and "discharge" the energy into the hands, taking a deep breath as they did so, which does tend to help you feel calmer. It's essentially a distraction and an incompatible behaviour, something for children to do with their hands to replace hitting.

Not all behaviour management programs are well designed or evidence based, and it is also quite possible that nurseries will sometimes mix aspects of two or more approaches which are reliant on principles that work against each other rendering it ineffective, or staff may be poorly trained in how to implement ideas, or may have misunderstood aspects of the plan - it's always possible. But I think it is unlikely that there is a whole nursery full of staff speaking to children like the stereotype of an ineffectual wafty parent and then just wondering why it doesn't work. They are childcare professionals - they will have some logic and knowledge behind what they're doing, even if nursery behaviour management is not always perfect.

I would suggest that you do let nursery know about the family background. You may be concerned about preconceived notions but, at the moment, I think that that should be quite a long way down your list of concerns. You have a 2yr3mo who is struggling to express himself. Nursery are monitoring his behaviour and trying to understand it so that they can support him and keep the other children safe. If he is autistic, some things may trigger him which may not trigger a NT child. If they are conscious that he may be autistic, they may identify these triggers sooner. Or he may not be and so there may be no such triggers. Even if you don’t tell them, they will eventually start to consider this so all this is doing is speeding up the process.
One thing I am conscious of is that, at the beginning of the thread, you asked if you should remove your DS from nursery. That would benefit those children who are currently being randomly pushed etc but I think it could be challenging for you to be at home all day every day with a high needs baby and a toddler and may be more challenging for your DC1 to have evidence in front of him all of the time of you having to split your time between him and DC2. Or he would have to go to another childcare provider and deal with that transition. So if he can stay where he is, that seems to have real benefits. But for that to happen, his behaviour needs to change and that won’t happen until the triggers have been identified.

@VickyEadie They don’t. It’s totally modern crap. Direct, simple to understand language is so much better. It’s all this gentle parenting stuff. Most schools see the results and many dc haven’t understood a word. No idea why mums have become so afraid of being clear about no meaning no.

I'm glad you've said that - I've spent the last few years wondering how a toddler understands the word "gentle".

Ah this is useful to know. I was picking up bits of what you were saying about struggling with baby groups and not wanting him to struggle with social skills and I wondered if there was something there, but didn't want to suggest if it wasn't already on your radar, as it sounds like you have a lot to think about already.

FWIW, IME (where the family history is more ADHD leaning) schools/nurseries have actually been much better able to support where I've been upfront about this. Although I was a bit alarmed when I first switched to this approach and they were asking me questions like whether my (then 6yo) could speak, and worried I had done the wrong thing, it was actually so much the right thing. There is a massive difference for DS where he is perceived as having difficulty and supported vs where he has been perceived as troublemaking, wilful or aloof. He went to 3 different settings before he started school at 7 (not in UK) and I did this exact thing with the second one, even though we had moved him from the first (large, busy, long commute) setting due to overwhelm, I chose not to mention concerns in order to give him a fresh start. The only thing I told them was that he could be "sensitive". The staff at this place were absolutely lovely, very experienced and so kind and I don't think they did anything wrong, but it was a bit of a disaster because they made assumptions about what he would be able to manage due to his age, and then misinterpreted his cues of stress/overwhelm as him not wanting to engage with them or just being naughty/disruptive. And because they thought he was just having settling in issues they didn't mention it to me straight away. I also didn't know as much then, so I didn't pick up on cues I would probably notice now in hindsight. I think really I was worried they would think if I mentioned ADHD (which is what we thought at that point, he is now diagnosed ADHD, with a question mark over AuDHD) that I was looking for a label to excuse his behaviour rather than dealing with it, which was absolutely not the case.

The other thing I have learnt for DS is that he doesn't always pick up on things in the way other children would. He didn't especially have issues with violent behaviour, at least not at nursery/school, though he could be boisterous/disruptive, but telling him "kind hands" would not have made any sense to him or helped him understand what was expected instead. He needed really clear guidance both to show him when behaviour was unacceptable but also how to approach other children to ask them to play, for example. And I'm now wondering whether the random pushing while looking happy is possibly your DS' way of trying to initiate a game - something which has been helpful for my DS has been teaching him very formulaic games that other children will understand, such as catch/tig, hide and seek, or a particular favourite activity at nursery e.g. doll's house, ice cream stand, train track, and a simple phrase for asking for it. When he was feeling self conscious or anxious it was like he would lose a lot of his verbal capacity so for example at pick up, (at age 4) rather than say "DS3 has an apple, I want an apple as well, can I have one?" he would just make a whining noise and point at the apple and if pushed just say "Apple". If I had known then what I know now, I probably would have looked into whether he could use something like a set of PECS symbols on a keyring to support him in those moments, but this kind of thing wasn't on our radar at that point. I was trying to encourage him to speak to staff members and use full sentences, which he could do when he was feeling more together, but at that point of the day I do think it was genuinely beyond him at that age. And that is not typical, but he was very very overwhelmed and distressed by that setting, again despite kind, caring and knowledgable staff who really wanted to support him.

I wonder if at home you can try something like thinking up a gesture and short phrase, like putting a hand on his shoulder and asking "Want to play?" in order to initiate the more physical games that he likes, prime all the family members so they start doing it too, and then let nursery know that you've started this at home in order to show him an acceptable way of asking someone to play, in case it's helpful (or in case he tries it and they didn't understand the intention).

There is nothing wrong with being ND but it does help if people understand that it's possible he has a different approach or a different timescale rather than trying to coax him into a neurotypical one or waiting for him to pick things up by inference. IME, there is quite a lot of wanting to reassure you that your child is not autistic or "it's too early to say" (esp for ADHD) if you raise the possibility, rather than being mentally put into a box, but a lack of sharing this info mostly leads people to assume behaviour rather than difficulty, which I didn't appreciate is because a lot of the time children displaying these behaviours have had more lax rules at home and do turn things around when they are shown clear boundaries and settle into the routine of nursery. I guess I didn't recognise how unusual it is when a child does not respond to those methods. I just thought they have seen so many children so they will know what to do, but the majority of children respond very differently to DS, so staff can be a bit thrown if their usual approach isn't helping, and they often don't have enough experience of ND children to be able to recognise profiles, especially as many children are diagnosed later than nursery age, so they may only be aware of how children could present in a very narrow/stereotypical way. It's also arguably correct for them to avoid suggesting concerns in this direction, because they are not trained medical professionals. OTOH, we only know our own child(ren) and what is normal for them, so it can be difficult to know whether they are typical among children their age or not. It took me quite a while to recognise that what is normal for DS is different to other children his age. Even though I have 3 children, the older 2 both have ADHD (DS1 would not have been diagnosed at this age) and I concede I have no sense of where DS3 is in relation to the "norm" any more.

People with ADHD who go undiagnosed are significantly more likely to go on to develop addictions. People with autism who go undiagnosed are significantly likely to experience skill regression or not be able to access support that helps them become independent.

Children with any neurodivergence who go undiagnosed are much more likely to develop significant mental health issues and in their later years go on to self harm, attempt or die by suicide.

Children who are neurodivergent who don't get the support they need in their earlier years won't be labelled autistic. They will be labelled naughty, defiant, disobedient, unreachable, different, weird, nasty, dramatic, overly sensitive, boisterous, oddball, etc. The list goes on. It is really harmful for future outcomes of mental and physical health. They are also significantly more likely to be incarcerated later in life.

There are strong links between autism and ADHD and the MTHFR gene which is linked to other comorbidities such as EDS, HSD, POTS, dysautonomia, and also links to other neurodivergence such as schizophrenia, OCD, dyspraxia, epilepsy.

Chronic stress from unmet and unrecognised needs leads to cPTSD, and inflammatory diseases such as migraines, arthritis, me/cfs...

I'm not saying your child is autistic. I'm not saying your child has ADHD. I recognise a lot of what you've written in my own child though who has an autism diagnosis, is on the pathway to receive and ADHD diagnosis, as well as myself who was a late diagnosed adult who also received all of these additional diagnoses.

If you suspect, even a tiny little hint that your child could be autistic, you need to bring this up with nursery so they can start the early help process. He won't be entitled to an ADHD assessment until he is 6-7, by which point he will already be in a mainstream school and the support he will get might not be the support he is entitled to.

Cautionary tale, but my son was diagnosed at 3 and is still in mainstream, and in September will be resitting reception for the 4th year, because the ehcp process is so brutal and that is with an early diagnosis. Imagine where he'd be if he hadn't had any diagnosis or assessments with feedback reports.

You've given a substantial amount of information on this post alone that shows social communication and interaction struggles as well as mental rigidity. I really think you need to go into this with an open mind. Only professionals can say yes or no, or they need more time, but the sooner you're on the ball, the better chances for positive outcomes later down the line.

They need to stop using gentle hands and use direct communication. No, we do not hit. We do not kick. Gentle hands/feet doesn't mean anything to a child who doesn't understand what gentle is.

Let nursery run their ABC analysis - sometimes that comes up with an incredibly obvious trigger that gets lost in a room of toddlers and trying to get "the day" done. The key one to me is that he's at that age where his communicative expectations exceed his capabilities - so he's probably frustrated anyway (which you'd expect anyone working with children to appreciate and be used to dealing with) - and that element will ease as his language develops - but it might be worth exploring some basic Makaton with him to ease this period of time?

Plus his little world has just been completely turned upside down - HIS human, HIS person who devotes their entire life to HIS happiness and whims and fun... has totally unacceptably (to him) suddenly expected him to enter into a job-share agreement, with him getting (to HIM) the bum end of the deal at present. Even if grandad's around, or dad, or relatives - you are still THE HUMAN and should be there for him at all times when he expects you to be (as a two year old whose brain is still very little). He'll work this one out in time, and they'll probably end up quite close as siblings - but it's still absolutely fucking huge as an adjustment for him, and you, quite naturally as a mum with a narrow age gap and a velcro baby, are having to split yourself as best as you can do (I've got two with an 11.5 month age gap so I get it - it's tough as hell while the baby's still glued to you and relatively "boring" to the older sibling).

I would be willing to bet that the moving at a child to hit is geared towards obtaining attention - he's now made the link that "I start moving, the staff start moving to distract me and give me loads of lovely attention to try to stop me hitting out at Johnny". I'd also expect he plays nicely with older kids because they're older and bigger than him and he's picked his targets quite savvily - and he's going for the kids in his current room at nursery that are not likely to hit him back. If it is attention like this - the ABC charts should show that up fairly clearly - and you might well end up having to spread yourself a bit thinner to pick up some of the slack as well as others chipping in - which is going to suck for you in the short term but that's the juggle with two little people close in age.

There could be sensory processing needs in there - that's something to be explored - try tracking down something like one of those toddler trampolines or similar - see if that helps calm him down, or does it tip him over into being silly - he might love rough and tumble - but too much of it with one of my kids would just escalate them into the stratosphere (they're both now diagnosed as autistic but function well in mainstream settings to give you an idea of the level they're at) and we need to manage it to get that "sweet spot". "Heavy work" was recommended by OT for my more sensory younger child - so she had the job at school to help push the tables to the side for class assemblies - got the school job done, gave her the sensory fix she needed and helped her regulate herself. She also has a couple of weighted cuddly toys she tends to sit with on her lap which help her a lot (TK Maxx have had them in recently). It's something to explore as he gets older if he's still disregulated.

But at the moment he's having a tough time readjusting to being expected to share the centre of the universe spot with a sibling and he's not got the language or executive functioning to express his discontent very well because he's just little himself (although he probably feels like a giant compared to the baby)!

Have you told nursery that there are family members with autism? It is possibly something they are thinking about but to know it is a stronger possibility due to family background may mean that they approach how they manage this behaviour in a different fashion sooner and so your son gets the support he needs sooner and the other children are protected

He is 27 months old.
For pretty much a quarter of his life so far he was probably the most important person in your life, with the safety an security that brings. He was settled in a routine at nursery.

Then a quarter of his lifetime ago, he was moved rooms in nursery, which is a big deal and scary, and then had a massive change at home where he has been usurped by a baby who has taken his place as the biggest priority in mums life.

His behaviour is not unusual. I had 14 months between my first 2 babies, the most important thing we did was put the oldest first. We had a swing seat for the baby (who was called the baby, like the cat, or the chair). Feed time for baby would also include cuddles and/or cuddles for the oldest. I exclusively breast fed as well, you have a spare arm, it's possible. When the baby slept, they would go down and I would be on my hands and knees with the oldest giving yhem undivided attention. Making them feel that nothing had changed.

Give your toddler time to adjust. He's had s lot happen in the last quarter of his life, you can't expect him to deal with such big changes without effect.

It’s probably been said already but it’s likely he’s having all these problems at nursery because at home his needs will be met quickly. At nursery he has to wait and there are other children getting attention as well as him. I think as someone said above, it’s important for you to find out how well they are using ABC. Some staff will not have the experience to be dealing with a child with challenging behaviours like this. I’d want to know what are nursery doing to keep the other children safe and prevent your child from hurting others. You and nursery need to use the same words and same reaction when he bites, a firm no, holding the bitten area, at home saying ‘ow’ and showing that it hurts, no attention after that, keep moving away saying no, holding affected area so he links if I bite then I get ignored and it’s not a nice feeling.