My 2.5 year old bitten at nursery

[bananashoes]

Hi all.

I am not a first time mom. I actually have four children, but this is the first time I’ve ever encountered my child being bitten at nursery. My husband collected our son and was told he had been bitten today. It’s a brand new nursery. I have no idea how to respond and what questions and processes I need to take, but I want to ensure this never happens to him again. Please can anyone direct me or guide me? I’m feeling so sad for my son. .

Well youve done well to get this far with no bites!
So long as nursery have filled out an incident report there very little else uou can do, small children do sometimes bite.

I think I would need more information to respond fully, however, realistically young children do bite other people. If the child is a serial biter then the nursery should try and minimise the risk.

This used to happen every week with our son!

It happens unfortunately.

I'm amazed you're on child 4 with no previous bites (received or given out).

The nursery have informed you. They should now be keeping a close eye on the biter. Unfortunately it only takes 1 second to happen sometimes. Let them deal with it.

Two years old is prone biting time. It's not malicious, but of course it's no fun for the bitten child.

Talk to the nursery about whether it was a one off or if there's a child who's particularly bitey at the moment, and ask them what strategies they have in place to manage it.

I wouldn't think less of the nursery for it. It's very common and and happens very quickly, so it's very unlikely to be a reflection on the staff, unless they have a known rampant biter that they're not monitoring at all.

Gosh my son’s younger than yours and he’s been bitten a few times! The kids are learning about behaviour and boundaries, as long as it wasn’t a staff member who bit him, he will be fine.

My son was bitten a few times at nursery. I was just glad he wasn’t the biter. Young children will bite, they’ll also grow out of it. I really wouldn’t give it a second thought. The nursery will already be doing what they can to prevent known biters from biting other children.

It happens. As long as the nursery have dealt with it there is nothing for you to do.
One day your child might be the 'biter'!

As a one off, this wouldn’t really bother me. I was once sitting on the floor next to both of my children, and my 2 year old (who had never bitten before and never did again) suddenly bit my 5 year old. I was right there and it happened before I could stop it.

If a child is known to bite, I’d expect the nursery to supervise them more closely. So if the biting became a regular thing I would want to know why more wasn’t being done (I could probably have stopped my 2 year old if I’d known she might bite but really, I can’t guarantee that). But one off bites can happen.

My child is the same age and got bitten in nursery twice ! The second time it happened I asked if it's the same child that bit him and if it was, then to keep them separate but realistically the nursery should tell you they are managing this.

It happens unfortunately. Both my boys have been bitten at nursery, they were both fine, it’s unfortunate but it is what it is. The nursery reassured me they were keeping an extra eye on the biter until they’d outgrown this phase and that was it, it never happened again.

2-3 is prime biting age, some kids do it, some don’t. Both my boys went through a phase. Eldest would only bite me or his dad and youngest would only bite his brother 🙈. They both grew out of it quickly and luckily didn’t bite anyone at nursery (although I did warn the staff to keep an extra eye on them when they started doing it at home).

Thank you all for reassuring me. I do feel lucky to have never dealt with bitters before, but we’ve definitely had other incidents with my older children- but biting is a new one. Apparently it’s not the first time, but the parents were called in and they are tackling the situation in a few different ways. So hopefully it doesn’t happen again. Thank you all again x

Oh it happens! I remember my DS was bitten hard by a girl in preschool, he had a full set of tooth marks on his arm. They are half way through primary school now and she’s a lovely girl who is close friends with DS.

It's just a phase some children go through and while nurseries should make efforts to minimise the amount it happens? none can guarantee it won’t happen sometimes.

Does your son go to nursery with Bambi Fury by any chance? (Sorry, possibly niche reference, if you know you know 😆)