@StressedToTheMaxxx I find it quite disgusting and disturbing that any so-called adult, much less anyone who actually looks after children for a living, feels it’s reasonable and appropriate to suggest hitting a child or pulling a child’s hair! And a two year old no less!
Really?
This is what childminders advocate to each other?
I have raised 7 children and never ever did I resort to physical violence to punish them. Even way back in the unelightened 1980’s!
Hitting a child, pulling their hair or any other form of physical abuse will only impair a child’s emotional growth and teach that child that hitting/pulling hair/whatever form of abuse you are using is okay! And the child knows that because the person responsible for making that child feel loved and cared for is actually the one abusing them!
Some of the comments on this thread are quite horrendous.
Of course OP’s child shouldn’t be pulling hair but @rzk isn't always present when the undesirable behaviour manifests so cannot deal with it in the moment. And it needs to be dealt with in the moment! Childminder and OP both have a responsibility to teach good behaviour and OP trying to teach child hours after the incident isn’t going to have much impact.
When child engages in undesirable behaviour, child needs to be taken away from other children and to be told firmly that behaviour is wrong, why it’s wrong, impact of behaviour and then given a few (and I mean, a few) minutes of time out in a different area to properly absorb in a quiet way what happened. And this should happen to all misbehaving children. So all the children can see that if they misbehave, they are going to miss out on playing and having fun.
Additionally to those saying childminders have too many other children to look after, I say this - OFSTED (if they’re still a thing and childminders aren’t left as one adult to look after 50 under 5 children the way some posters are making it sound!) mandates how many of each age group a childminder can look after! If that childminder can’t manage to look after all their minded kids appropriately, that’s on them, not on the parents.
When I lived in the UK, I used a childminder and she had only my 2 primary age children and another primary age child and she couldn’t cope. They lived on those ravioli pouches and salad. I didn’t like that so I sent them to the after school club. Childminder was livid because she bought a shiny new Kia 7 seater in the basis of my children. That was a tough titty situation!
Back then, CPD was a thing for childminders as were regular inspections. The childminder that OP uses sounds a bit ineffective, especially if she doesn’t know how to handle challenging behaviour. She also sounds unprofessional and unpleasant. She should not have told OP about another child crying at seeing OP’s child. She should have said, especially if this was in front of OP’s child, that there had been some challenging behaviour, what the behaviour was, how she dealt with it, asked how OP deals with it and asked OP to help her make a plan. She should have mentioned that another child got upset and seeing OP’s child and explained why (was OP’s child singling out this child? Was he always only pulling her hair? Did the childminder play games with the children where they took turns or were the children left to their own devices with toys, whilst the CM drank tea, gossiped with her friends and watched reruns of Jeremy Kyle?).
I find it interesting that OP’s child wants the toys that other children are playing with. Is this because OP’s child finds it hard to play imaginatively so therefore sees how other children may use a toy and thus wants to try it out himself?
It could be that OP’s child is neurodiverse (and I’m not diagnosing, but simply using 3 decades of child rearing, coupled with 40 decades of nursing experience to make an observation based on what I’ve seen many times before).
The (reasonable) suggestions that have been made, such as playing turn taking games, explaining what is good and bad behaviour and modelling good behaviour (so don’t get angry or lose your temper or shout in front of your child. Ever) are really good and also will help OP to determine whether she thinks that the hair pulling is related to not being able to actually wait patiently for a turn or not being able to play imaginatively. Lego or those big Lego style bricks since the child and baby are so young is also a good way to assess how imaginative a child is. Can the child build different types of buildings, or cars, or bikes or whatever? If not, again, there may be some neurodivergence at work.
Bad behaviour doesn’t happen overnight and it can’t be stamped out overnight. it’s also crucial to get down at the child’s level and not loom over him whilst taking to him. Or any child.
Being consistent is key and so is being calm and that can be really hard for parents that may be up at 5 to get the kids and themselves ready and dropped off to CM by 7 to get to work on time, put in their 8 or 8 and a half hours, then travel back to pick up child, get home, cook dinner, baths, bedtime routine etc., etc.
There were so many times (and still are) when I’ve had to deal with the behaviour and then walk away, because it’s the 10th time in an hour and I want to scream. I’ve never physically punished my kids, I’ve only grounded them a handful of times each, but all my children (even the grown ups 😂) say that I’m scary. When their children used to misbehave they would say to me “go on, do that thing you do! What thing? Apparently it’s my face and my tone of voice and even in their 30’s, on Skype or WhatsApp or whatever, I still do it if I think they’ve done something wrong! Being a parent, means parenting. Your children are not your friends, your equals or your partners. They are your children and just like at work, you act a certain way to your bosses, they need to learn how to act in front of you and in front of other people.
When I lived in the UK, and to some extent now, when I would be out and see neighbours children in the shopping mall or wherever and they were misbehaving, I would tell them off. But I am old school and firmly believe in the old adage “it takes a village”. And my immediate neighbour used to ask me to look after her child when she couldn’t take him to nursery because he was ill or something and she used to say it’s because she wanted her child to be like mine! And the neighbour next door to her, used to come and thank me for telling her (teenage) children off because they used to moan about telling her off and there was a fashion of wearing your jeans under your bum and I would creep up behind them and pull their jeans up 😂.
Be nice to your children, respect them, model that behaviour and then go scream in the car and your children will do things because they want to be happy and they want to make you happy.
When I train new nurses, I say to them, no matter how much a patient may goad you or annoy you, never let it show. Once you leave their room, you can silently scream in the pan room or the drug room, but if you treat that patient like they’re your family, you will never go wrong. It’s the same with children.