Another toddler attacked and bit my child's face

[nova99]

Dd attends a local nursery and she came home today with a huge dark red bite mark covering half her cheek. Nursery called me in the afternoon to tell me this had happened. However when I went to collect her she had a the huge (very swollen) bite mark, a scratch on her head, a bloody scratch on her chin and a deep scratch that looks like it had been bleeding in the other side of her face with lots of little scratches around it.
She looks like she's been mauled and I'm absolutely horrified.
Nursery staff told me that another child had done this to her. However they said they could hear her crying and went to find her hiding in her sleep area and saw the marks. They were apologetic, said the child in question had bitten other children that day and they will be talking to the child's parents.
It just doesn't feel like enough. She's only just turned 2. She's a quiet, delicate little thing which makes this all the more heartbreaking.

I'm so angry. It's not like a few little scratches. I'll need to take her to the doctor for the scratch and the bite alone. She complained of pain in her cheek so I gave her calpol.

What can I even do? Who can I even complain to? I know kids rough and tumble but honestly this is something else

Definitely take her to see a doctor about the bite. I’ve been bitten by my son when he was having a meltdown and I needed antibiotics. Hopefully your daughter won’t need them but should be checked out anyway.

I’m so sorry this has happened I don’t blame you for feeling the way you do, whether there was/is anything more that could be done.

I’m sure the nursery are taking it seriously and will be putting in measures to keep a closer eye in the child that’s biting others. I’m not sure what else you expect them to do? Sadly some kids do go through a stage of biting and there’s not much else you can do other than keep a closer eye on them.

My dd is at a SEN school where there a high ratio of adults to kids but she has still been assaulted by another child (shoved against a desk), the school dealt with it and there wasn’t anything else I could do other than check dd was ok.

Take your dd to the doctors to make sure she’s ok, she will probably forget all about it sooner than you will.

So sorry to hear about your poor DD OP, I hope she's feeling much better soon

I've got a fair bit of early years experience. Biting is reasonably developmentally normal at 2, in my experience there is quite a wide variance in how much children understand about other people's feelings at this age. Even with lots of input to help them develop empathy, which can definitely help, children will get it at different times.

However, just because it's developmentally normal doesn't mean that it's acceptable for other children to just put up with it. Early years settings know that children hurting each other is relatively common and something they're going to have to deal with sometimes, so they ought to have plans for how to deal with it IMO. And how to prevent it as much as possible in the first place. I'd be most concerned about the fact that no one saw it happen, the child had bitten more than once that day, and your poor DD was found cowering and hiding. I'd want them to explain to me exactly when they were putting in place to keep your DD safe in future. Even if they can't tell you exactly what steps they're taking with the other child, I would want to know what their policy is in general for dealing with biting.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

Out of interest, for parents of 'forceful' biters: how would you feel if YOUR child was the one to get hurt, whether through being bitten, scratched, hit, pushed by another child, or in another way where adult supervisors 'losing' (i.e. actually 'having to find them') and not constantly watching them resulted in misadventure?

Would you genuinely brush it off as 'just a risk that babies and toddlers face', or would you be furious too?

I've been both ends. I felt far worse as the parent of a biter-even though he didn't bite often, than as the parent of the one bitten. The times I brushed it off as "a normal risk" was when I had the bitten one, not the biter. In my dc's case it turned out he had very low hearing, and he tended to bite if someone came up behind him and scared him because he hadn't heard them.

Ime that is generally true.

Speaking to the other child’s parents is PART of the appropriate action plan, but more is needed.

The extras are what you need to follow-up.

Try not to become emotional in your description of the injury or your feelings about it. Instead, focus calmly on asking for (in writing) a copy of the incident report, details of their supervision policy and also their new plan for managing this child, so there is less risk if it happening again. That plan needs more than speaking to the parents, but actions from the staff in the nursery. Without these things, the nursery is negligent. The fact the biting incident occurred in itself isn’t a sign of negligence.

If you feel that when you address these issues with them, they are defensive or not willing to engage with you, I’d remove your child. You need to have confidence that they manage the place and incidents properly. I wouldn’t give another thought to the individual 2 year olds who did it…to be honest, any 2 year old can do this kind of thing and there will always be some of it going on…but if it’s managed properly it should be less and less severe, and that’s the key.

Staff work to a 4-1 ratio at that age.

We also have a lot of duties and activities that we are expected to carry out (nappies, nappy chart paperwork, snack prep, getting activities ready, doing activities, key worker observations, temperature checks, lunch prep, lunch feeding, lunch paperwork, replying to parents emails and phone calls, helping children wash their hand, helping children locate and put on coat, scarf and gloves, making the children's beds, patting the children to sleep, dealing with spills and tidying up the mess as we go along, training apprentices, hand overs twice a day, planning for the following week and linking everything to the EYFS, the morning staff leaving. I'm sure there's more, not to mention we also need to use the toilet and have our lunch break too).

Biting children can be so quick. We cannot provide 1-1 for a biter.

All we can do is act when we see the child start to lunge forwards and look out for their trigger.

An 'extra eye' means nothing, as we are already at max awareness as much as we can.

Out of interest, for parents of 'forceful' biters: how would you feel if YOUR child was the one to get hurt, whether through being bitten, scratched, hit, pushed by another child, or in another way where adult supervisors 'losing' (i.e. actually 'having to find them') and not constantly watching them resulted in misadventure?

My child has been bitten (and has never bitten) and I managed to not be as totally deranged about it as half the posters on this thread. It is possible to love your child and want to protect them but to also be able to retain a bit of common sense and empathy for other children.

@Notimeforaname
"I hope your daughters face clears up soon. She womt remember this."

Can you point me in the direction of the peer reviewed, scientific research to back up that ludicrous statement?

I agree with you OP 2 year olds shouldn't be able to inflict that much damage without anyone noticing.

[quote DevilWaresPrada]@Notimeforaname
"I hope your daughters face clears up soon. She womt remember this."

Can you point me in the direction of the peer reviewed, scientific research to back up that ludicrous statement?[/quote]
Eh? It's extremely likely that she won't remember. She's two.

The child is 2 and this thread is insane at how a very very young child is being spoken about. The nursery need to ensure the biter is within Arms reach at all times.

Parents who have been both sides it in my experience are far more understanding.

I've not been seeing people blaming the child - just saying that his behaviour needs to be carefully monitored, the same way as you wouldn't blame him at his age for wanting to run into the road, but an adult would prevent him from doing so.

I don't think it's at all fair to blame OP for not being very 'understanding' - just because her DD is not a biter herself. Whatever the cause of somebody's harmful behaviour towards others, it's never an excuse or reason to just accept and minimise it - and especially not reasonable to tell their victims that they should not make a fuss about it.

Eh? It's extremely likely that she won't remember. She's two.

Somebody upthread had a DD who was severely bitten as a toddler and still has the scars, nearly a decade later. SHE certainly remembers it.

Anyway, none of us know what long-term detrimental latent effects can remain, even for a very small child. We don't excuse any kind of abuse of the under 3s by adults as 'fine', purely because 'ah, they're so you g and will never remember it'.

Before anybody leaps on me, I am NOT calling the biting toddler an abuser or in any way juxtaposing the seriousness of his biting with adult abuse of children - I am purely focusing on the suggestion that young children cannot be long-term affected by harm, owing to their immature cognitive processing abilities.

I'm certainly not suggesting it's fine!

I had a similar with DS being repeatedly bitten over months by the same kid at nursery. The nursery staff kept telling me they were working with his parents, who were doing everything they could to stop it but the kid keep bitting others, but as any phase it would stop at some point.

I didn’t realise how the bitting, that was relatively minor, upset my kid until I arrived to pick him up and found him with a full ring of teeth marks on his arm and totally beyond himself.

So, yeah, I am not ashamed of it, I don’t believe in “phases”, bad behaviour doesn’t simply go away, it stops when someone puts a stop to it, whoever that person is, so looking at the useless “efforts” of parents and nursery I told my son that next time it happened to bite him back and not to let go until the other child stopped attacking him.

3 days later they called me to the nursery as DS had been biting again, but in reality they wanted to show me what DS had done to the face of the bitter. It was totally covered in scratches and apparently the kid was very upset. Did he bit my child or any other child again? No, the “phase” stopped right there.

I understand there are more civilised ways to make a child understand how their behaviour is impacting on others but it came to the point that I thought it wasn’t fair for my child and others to be constantly attacked by a violent kid who was never going to learn how painful a bite is until he got a good dose of his own medicine.

It's not all that long since babies and toddlers weren't offered anaesthesia since it was figured that they wouldn't remember the pain anyway. Interesting to see similar views expressed here. My daughter who was severely bitten ten years ago when she was 3 certainly remembers it and has questioned how unsympathetic the staff were in the aftermath, calling her a baby for crying etc.

All those saying the child who bit needs 1:1 are you going to pay for the extra member of staff?
It's horrible but it happens. Lots of children bite. If you're that worried either keep them at home or get a nanny, although your child can still get bitten at soft play, toddler group etc.
My older children were both bitten my eldest had a massive mark on her arm for weeks but I accept these things happen in a nursery with young children.
I expect my youngest will get bitten at some point but ratios for under 2s are 1 adult to 3 children and then 1 adult to 4 children. They can't physically split themselves into 3.
Horrible but it happens.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

Eh? It's extremely likely that she won't remember. She's two.

Somebody upthread had a DD who was severely bitten as a toddler and still has the scars, nearly a decade later. SHE certainly remembers it.

Anyway, none of us know what long-term detrimental latent effects can remain, even for a very small child. We don't excuse any kind of abuse of the under 3s by adults as 'fine', purely because 'ah, they're so you g and will never remember it'.

Before anybody leaps on me, I am NOT calling the biting toddler an abuser or in any way juxtaposing the seriousness of his biting with adult abuse of children - I am purely focusing on the suggestion that young children cannot be long-term affected by harm, owing to their immature cognitive processing abilities.

I agree. Children won't necessarily remember the incident itself, or might not remember it in any detail, but early childhood experiences can and do impact them.

Ultimately, sometimes these things do happen despite everyone's best efforts to prevent them. But the nursery should be doing everything possible to keep children safe (and feeling safe and secure), and it's concerning that the OP's nursery have a set up that means that a child can be severely bitten and scratched without anyone even seeing

@Tiddlypompadour

This thread is absolute madness. The biter was two. Two. Two years old. Two year olds bite. Not all of them, maybe not even many of them, but some of them do. It does not mean they’re autistic. The poster who said that also seemed to be labouring under the misapprehension that as soon as a child ticks over into two, they should become reasonable and in control of themselves. 🙄

Anyway, among all the talk of maxillo-facial reconstruction, the ever increasing description of the injuries and police involvement (!), the real issue, that no one at the nursery saw it happen and only found her hiding, has been missed.

^This. I remember that my DSis was a biter at around 2 years old (I’m 2 years older and I remember being the ‘victim’). My DM told me that she bit her and it stopped after that. Not at all the done thing these days obviously.

My DSis is now a fully fledged adult, and certainly not autistic.

One of my DNephews was a biter as well. He used to bite my DDs occasionally. That was years ago; he’s now 11 years old and, again, certainly isn’t autistic.

The issue that would bother me, as others have said, is the shocking lack of supervision, after this boy had bitten other children earlier in the day.

Gosh. What time does the public flogging begin for the biter?

3 days later they called me to the nursery as DS had been biting again, but in reality they wanted to show me what DS had done to the face of the bitter. It was totally covered in scratches and apparently the kid was very upset. Did he bit my child or any other child again? No, the “phase” stopped right there.

Did I understand that right: that they ignored/brushed off all the times that your DS was bitten, but then called you in and made a fuss of it once he retaliated to the biter?

This seems to happen quite a lot, where nurseries and schools will instantly clamp right down on 'good' parents whom they perceive as reasonable and possibly an 'easy win', the moment anything goes wrong; but when they know the parent will be difficult, obstructive and/or deeply unpleasant to deal with, they suddenly raise the bar of what they're willing to overlook significantly.

My autistic child has never bitten anyone at nursery/school. At 2 he avoided other children like the plague he certainly wouldn't have wanted to put any part of them in his mouth

On the other hand my older nt d's went through a biting phase at around 18 months/2 years old. He grew out of it, well As far as I am aware he doesn't bite anyone these days (he's 26) I still remember the embarrassment all these years later though

Gosh. What time does the public flogging begin for the biter?

Maybe read the thread? Nobody is blaming a very young child - we're focusing on adults finding ways of stopping one particular behaviour and protecting the other young children.

All those saying the child who bit needs 1:1 are you going to pay for the extra member of staff?
It's horrible but it happens. Lots of children bite. If you're that worried either keep them at home or get a nanny, although your child can still get bitten at soft play, toddler group etc.

Do you also subscribe to the belief that some men attack women: it's just what they do, so if you're that worried about it, you should just stay at home all the time?

I know it's not exactly the same thing, but I'm talking about the principle of that viewpoint.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

Out of interest, for parents of 'forceful' biters: how would you feel if YOUR child was the one to get hurt, whether through being bitten, scratched, hit, pushed by another child, or in another way where adult supervisors 'losing' (i.e. actually 'having to find them') and not constantly watching them resulted in misadventure?

Would you genuinely brush it off as 'just a risk that babies and toddlers face', or would you be furious too?

One of mine was an incredibly laid back, tolerant child even aged 2. She was bitten a couple of times by one kid, which, as toddlers are essentially at the developmental stage of a puppy, comes with the territory - little humans have to learn acceptable behaviour in the same way that puppies need to learn bite inhibition in order to continue coexisting with other animals.

On the third occasion it happened, they were in the sandpit with a couple of other tots. DD, that laidback, tolerant child, twatted him round the side of the head with her shovel so quickly that the person already moving to separate them hadn't managed to get there from a distance of about 1.5m.

I don't think the other child's Mum was particularly happy about this change in fortunes for her little boy, but DD never got bitten again - whether this was because the staff watched them like hawks afterwards or because he learned in that instant that biting carried consequences he didn't enjoy, I don't know.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

All those saying the child who bit needs 1:1 are you going to pay for the extra member of staff? It's horrible but it happens. Lots of children bite. If you're that worried either keep them at home or get a nanny, although your child can still get bitten at soft play, toddler group etc.

Do you also subscribe to the belief that some men attack women: it's just what they do, so if you're that worried about it, you should just stay at home all the time?

I know it's not exactly the same thing, but I'm talking about the principle of that viewpoint.

Don't be ridiculous. The two things aren't comparable. This is a 2 year old child who doesn't yet have control of their actions. Not a fully grown ass hole. Ffs.