Name changed, as you may expect. I could really do with some advice as to what to do next, if anything. In general I leave parenting to the parents as I know full well that all children are different and all parents are different, but this has really thrown me.
When I was collecting my ds from his childminder this week, I could hear voices from another room but not what was said, I was with the cm doing handover for my child. Then a loud scream and crying, and another child came running from the back room followed by their mother. Child crying and upset, I asked the mum if everything was ok (thinking maybe something had fallen, I don’t know) and the child said ‘mummy bit me’ and held out her arm where I could see bite marks. No blood, just marks. The mum then said ‘it’s the only way they’ll learn’, got their things and left. I could see the cm was shocked and tbh I was too, she asked me to leave and not say anything, she would deal with it. She is a great cm and I am sure she will do whatever is appropriate. But it’s stayed with me. The child is preschool aged, I know has bitten my child before but not often, possibly others looked after there have had the same and that is what I presume happened earlier in the day. I can understand snapping in anger but cannot see the sense in biting a child back, surely that just makes them think it’s ok? To add another concern, the other mum is a member of staff in a school and I believe is in an early years class (not entirely sure, it’s not the school my older ones are in) and I can’t help thinking that if anyone should be familiar with a range of ways to handle biting, it should be someone like a teacher or TA? I don’t know what to make of this whole thing. Is it something I should report? To who? Or trust the cm to do the right thing? Something about the whole thing is making me uneasy.