To think that this mother is wrong?

[CharliePurple]

A 3 year old in nursery was biting and hitting other children and ended up being excluded. The mother says that the nursery shouldn't have excluded him because they should have understood that he was a boisterous and active boy and not a naughty one.

Is she right and he's not naughty or are the nursery right to have excluded him?

^This. Exclusion at age 3 is very, very extreme. It doesn't work as a punishment because a 3 year old is to young to understand it as such - it is basically the nursery saying "we can't cope" and generally only happens in cases of significant special/educational need. Before saying "we can't cope" I would hope that a whole host of interventions - including 1:1 supervision - had been tried (this should be the case if it is a preschool).

Boisterous and active? Oh, that's all right then. Sounds like a little shit to me

I agree with your post too Trifleorbust I think a lot of people take the idea that the behaviour is wrong and not the child to mean that children can be excused for their behaviour or that they shouldn't have to deal with it, face it, own it or even understand it. That is the complete opposite of what labelling behaviour aims to achieve. One of the key factors in labelling behaviour is that you teach children that they can make active choices, that they have some control over how they interact with the world and how it interacts with them. You can teach them to make choices, that all their actions have re-actions and that they are part of a social structure.
It is crucial for children SEN or otherwise to understand, accept and deal with their behaviour. The problem I think is like DanceMeToTheEndOfLove is saying that often a child is labelled as "naughty" which will cause a series of interactions and perpetuate the problem rather than dealing with each event as it comes.

I think that saying he's just boisterous and active rather than admiting that there's a problem and finding a way to deal with it is actually more damaging than anyone potentially labelling him as "That child". But unfortunatly unless the mother faces up to the problem now and tries to work with the schools he is likely to be labelled as "that child" and the experiences DanceMeToTheEndOfLove describes are sadly very real and rife in education.

Jabuticaba: Totally agree!

My DS has always been very active and can be boisterous on occasion. Not once has he hit or bitten another child so that's a crap excuse by a crap parent who can't be bothered to try and control their child's violence. If my child was at the nursery and was getting hit and bitten by another child, I'd be glad they were not there now. The safety of the other children who don't bite and hit is more important.

Just as an aside, my dh was a biter. His parents failed to get him to stop. One day he bit his cousin, who is the same age and his aunt bit him back. He never did it again. It's a family joke.

I'm not advocating doing this by any means. All I'm saying is that it isn't always that easy to stop a very small child from doing something from impulse when they're determined to do it without going to extreme measures. I'm not giving answers either. Dd went through a stage of taking dummies out of her friend's mouths. She was very little. I told her it isn't kind and made her give them back. She grew out of the behaviour.

And I think there is a world of difference between labelling a child and a behaviour. I was and still am labelled by a mother, who called me cruel names. She started when I was little by telling me when I did something unacceptable to her I was naughty. The name calling and other emotional abuse escalated as I got older. I suffered greatly. I think it's a slippery slope best left alone. And whether adults are taking amongst themselves or to others, these terms are best avoided because of how the child will be viewed by other adults and by association their children.

HarryPotter but what if your child does go through a hitting or biting stage in future? Will you suddenly switch to becoming a crap parent at that point?

My DC1 and DC2 were active but never laid a finger on another child and I was smug like you. Then my DC3 went through a hitting phase when he was 2yo and I realised that some children go through this despite their parents' best attempts to nip it in the bud.

DC3 is now a very well behaved 7yo btw. It really was just a toddler phase.

It depends how bad and frequent the biting etc was. My ds has been bitten at nursery, it was hurtful for me to hear that but ds was fine, I didn't know who did it and nor did I feel the need to. Likewise, although ds has never bitten anyone, when he was 1-2 he went through a hitting phase of me and dh, that I often worried would overspill into other children. Luckily we got through the phase without that happening.

I think what I'm trying to say is I have a lot of patience with children that hit and bite, I have experience of a lovely child going through that phase. But I don't have that patience if it is repeatedly done, unchecked. If the nursery has genuinely tried other safeguarding measures prior to exclusion, then yes I can understand that being their final resort. You can't have one child terrorising everyone else (if that was indeed the case).