My son (2) started at nursery a few weeks ago, I'll start by saying the positives. He's settled in really well and has really come out of his shell around other children. I've noticed he's playing differently to how he did before, pre nursery he would just push cars back and forth all day if given the chance. Now he seems to be playing with teddies, figures etc putting them to bed, feeding, making them 'dance'. The other kids seem to love him and always come up and say hi/bye when we arrive or leave which is really nice. The age range goes from 2-4 during the holidays. His key worker gives us enough information at pick up, if he's napped, what he's eaten etc.
In his first week he scratched his leg when they went into the woodland part of the school, they gave us an incident report and my son seemed fine so no issues there. I should say that my son has a disorder which effects his blood sugars, as long as he eats an adequate amount of food then he is fine. It is important that the staff ring me to get him if he doesn't eat or he seems off colour as it can lead to dangerously low sugar levels and require a hospital admission if not sorted quickly. He also has a dairy intolerance, we've done the milk ladder 4 times and he's never got past the first stage. We provide his lunch and snacks for him.
This week the usual staff weren't there when I picked him up but the manager was in and another staff member id never met. The manager said 'it's best we make you aware that ds drank another child's milk at lunch today he said 'yuck' then gave it back to the little girl' then she said 'before ds nap I noticed he had a rash on his forehead which must be from the milk' I asked her how much he had and she said she couldn't be sure, i've never known him get a rash on his forehead from milk or say 'yuck'. When we got home I had a look at ds and the 'rash' was actually a bruise about 2 inches big. We didn't get any kind of accident report about either issue. I'm worried now that they just let the children take each others food, not keeping a close eye on kids with food intolerance or kids who need food like its medication. It must of been quite a knock to his head to cause such a big angry bruise and they had no idea. It's worth noting that this nursery thought dairy allergy included egg and stopped ds from doing numerous activities due to this. They did eventually mention it in passing to me and I told them egg is fine. They said 'so it's not dairy then, just milk?' I'm really struggling now with the lack of competence. I feel that the staff didn't hand over correctly when my son had milk and they are just covering up the fact they gave him it because they didn't get information from his key worker. He isn't a very good eater and I can't imagine him grabbing another child's cup and drinking an unknown substance. Anyway now my ds is not well, has diarrhoea and he is refusing to eat which is probably going to set off his hypoglycaemia.
Sorry I know that's long. I'm just not sure what to expect from this nursery. An apology or something would of nice, maybe a suggestion on how to stop it happening again. Sit him next to a child who drinks water, I don't know. We've had no contact from the nursery since regarding this.