My child choked at nursery

[Meerkat33]

Told that she put an acorn in her mouth and they had to back pat it out. I am really scared of sending her back. What do I do?

Toys to her mouth when she's nervous but never anything like this

Be grateful you have staff who are highly trained in first aid and saved your child's life! What do you suggest? Sending her somewhere else where the staff may not be as good?
At 4 your child is way old enough to be taught not to put things in her mouth. If she was a crawling baby it would be different.

When my eldest was 5 she swallowed a 20c coin. Which is actually quite a big coin! She wanted to do a magic trick for her younger sister! I knee she was ok because she was talking to me and not coughing or turning blue but we went to A&E where it showed up on an x-ray. Kids do stupid things.

Good on the nursery staff for getting it out. It’s totally natural you’re feeling shaken up.

I am very old fashioned on this stuff and tend to think the advantage is, your child probably will not mouth small round inedible objects in the future. They got a fright (hopefully - very effective learning tool for hazards, even if fright and fear is not normally effective as a corrective). If you’re lucky, that will be it.

I once had a child under my care in nursery choke on a piece of sausage at lunch time. It was cut up to appropriate size chunks for a pre schooler but these things do happen. I administered back slaps and thank God, it dislodged. He was checked over at hospital and was fine. There are trained first aiders all over nurseries, and in a good nursery these things will be noticed very quickly. It sounds like they did a good job.

Back pat?
How hard?
Was she actually choking on it, as in not getting any air?

If so, I presume you took her to A&E

Surely at four they should not be putting stuff in their mouth, etc etc.

Well, no, they shouldn't.

But they do.

My DD put stuff in her mouth till she was about 6!

Frustrating but she hadn't read the guidelines

Okay, then this is a situation you are aware of and needs to be addressed somehow, neither you and certainly not nursery staff can be hovering around her constantly to making sure she isn't orally sensory seeking or whatever need she has that is causing this risk. Have you alerted nursery to the fact that this is something she habitually does when anxious?

I was just about to say this. I work with children, and I’ve seen 7 year olds put things like beads etc into their mouths

If she's 4, then in few months she will be in school where there are even more potential choking hazards and even fewer staff to deal with them. You have to hope your child learned from this incident.

They saved her life and acted quickly which is great. If this was a baby I’d wonder why she had access to an acorn but age 3+ is the age where children stop doing this so much according to all the small toy packaging! Hopefully this has scared your dd into not doing it again

She was probably just being a curious 4 year old. She can’t be protected from coming across things like acorns but she can be taught about dangers The experience of being unable to breath has probably shocked her into not doing it again, but you could explain to her about breathing, show her a diagram of the lungs and the tube we breath through and show her that things like acorns and grapes are the same size so have a high risk of getting stuck.