To be worried preschool staff are hurting my son?

[MyKidsDontGoToBed]

How worried would you be in this situation?

DS is 3. Speech delay. He has quite a good vocab but struggles to answer questions or make himself understood.

New preschool. Went to nursery before. He's settled in pretty well. It's attached to a private school and feels far more traditional and the staff seem more formal. But DS seems happy ish to go in the morning

End of last week DH saw the key worker do that thing where you pick the kid up by his arm and the kid kinda twists around. Basically dragging DS to where he was supposed to be.

DH said "if you saw a parent do it in a supermarket you'd think that was a parent having a rough day and it definitely wasnt completely ok but you wouldn't call social services"

DH didn't say anything

Today DS has a bruise on his arm. Roughly in the shape of a finger on his inner arm

When he came home from nursery with scraped knees I never questioned it. Kids fall over. But it's a really odd bruise in terms of shape and position.

The thing is DS is running in every morning. I have asked DS but he just ignores me, giggles etc

I will obviously ask them tomorrow but they are going to say they don't know or he fell over or whatever and I don't know if whatever they say I'll feel like taking him out.

But am I being a crazy mum?"

On what planet is it acceptable for a person responsible for a vulnerable person to break a bone just because they aren't doing what they are told?

I would lose trust in any setting that manhandled my child in that way, I would be raising a concern now. Is the bruise on the arm he was lifted by?

There is no excuse to man-handle a child, adding in the fact your DS is speech-delayed would be a concern for me. I’m afraid I’d pull him out and report it, if that’s a small snippet of his day what else goes on behind closed doors.

I would pull him out immediately.

I am fuming on your behalf.

Fwiw, when my DS was little (and had similar qualities to your DS), I visited 4 preschools (for about an hour each) so that I could get a feel for them and make an informed decision as to which one would be the best environment for him.

Two of them that were coincidentally also attached to private schools were absolutely awful (understatement) and I was so surprised how they mis-treated little ones in my presence as a prospective customer!!

I do wonder if you are in the same county as me and you are talking about one of the schools that I visited.

Protect your little one is my advice because no one else will.

Yes the 2000's were the Victorian era

@Sunnyqueen

Nope

But parents accepted it was an accident

He wasn't listening, refused to move, teacher still works for that school

She is very well liked too

The point of their post has gone totally over your head. Which doubly makes me question your intelligence.

Yes this
If you report this to nursery and show them the bruise...they willvery likely refer youth chdrens services as per their standard procedure on bruising of unknown origin ...I mean a bruise to shin is easily explained...but one to the inner arm is different

I'd not send him there again, for a start. And I'd be calling the local safeguarding board.

Ask for a meeting with the nursery manager and address the concerns. Wait to see what they say. If you are still unhappy report to your local LADO (local authority designated officer- deals with position of trust issues).
Take a photo of the bruise.

It happened on Thursday but no bruise until this evening? That seems a long time for a bruise to appear and could have happened at another time/place.
The sraff member shouldn't have dragged your son like that, no excuse. However is your DH absolutely sure that's what happened? Seems strange your son was being dragged so hard it left a bruise but came out all happy seconds later
You can of course talk to the manager but really your DH should have said something at the time. Going to be hard to prove anything now.
Take him out, you've lost trust and whatever they respond with you are still not going to trust them (because they will either deny it or admit it and neither is going to reassure you).

No the logic of man-handling a child in this way is a Victorian -era logic and accepted way of dealing with it.

it wouldn’t be acceptable to break anyones bones! Much less a teacher in charge of the child, no matter how much of a “shit” they are being! You’d have to use some real brute force to break an arm!

op I’m with the majority here you have to report it and remove him, things like bruises are actually things they should flag and report to you on pick up if they occur on company grounds to ensure this sort of thing is registered as an accident not a safe guarding matter

Report to the LADO.

So what was it that happened? If I read it correctly a nursery teacher grabbed your son by the arm and dragged him somewhere? If so that’s bizarre and frightening - I’ve worked in nurseries good and bad and in none of them did we drag children around violently. Was it in anger or did she try to lift him by the arm? What was the situation?

To be honest I would be removing him and letting them know why. In my experience raising things with nurseries makes them more careful but not better. Not in terms of violence, but when parents have complained about their child being wet/dirty/not having juice in their cup etc it doesn’t usually result in those things being remedied throughout the child’s care - it usually results in staff remembering to fill them up/change the clothes 5 minutes before the parent arrives. I’d worry that raising it would simply give them a heads up not to manhandle your child when you might see. And your child has language delays, so possibly can’t tell you if it’s going on.

Sadly this sort of behaviour from nursery nurses is not uncommon to me having worked in many nurseries.
I would ask to see CCTV (I know your DH has seen but the manager needs to see it). Sorry this happened to your son x

OP you need to ask the nursery about this. If the nursery spot it first they would write an incident report stating a bruise found in a grab mark place has been found and are you aware it is there or how it got there. It’s a flagged area in any safeguarding training. Make it clear it did not happen at home and you want to find out how or why it happened at the setting.

Doesn't sound right - my nursery call every time he hurt himself

This is the pic of the bruise

And no I'm not suggesting the incident on Thursday caused this bruise to come up on Tuesday evening. I'm worried there is something going on where they're grabbing kids routinely.

I’m your shoes I would accept I could never get to the bottom of the bruise incident.

I would also not tolerate any nursery staff member pulling my child along, unless it was out of harm’s way (Eg crossing a road and a car’s coming). I’m the most forgiving parent of school aged children simply because I think there can’t be a more difficult job than handling that many small children, day in and day out. But, only a few days or weeks into the school year and this staff member can’t control their temper or frustration. Not acceptable. What’s it going to be like by the winter break??

Sorry OP. I wouldn’t accept this, and would remove him without a backwards glance (and let it be known to whoever wants to know exactly why).

That bruise does look like finger marks and consistent with being grabbed.
I'm so sorry. I think you need to remove him and alert ofsted.
I'm also sorry to say that kids can still love those who abuse them. I know because I have seen it with my own eyes at the nurseries I have been in.

You'll never know about the bruise.

But you do know they manhandle children. It's not good enough and I couldn't trust my child in their care.

I would start looking for an alternative and I would put a complaint in about what you saw.

This.
please speak to the manager tomorrow. Hopefully they’ll be open, response and do something about your concern.

Professionals can’t be judged on the same scale as parents. Anyone working with children should know man handling them like this, unless it’s to prevent imminent harm, is an absolute no no.

He wasn't even being naughty. He was just being slow at getting his bag and she didn't realise my husband was right there. He was the first to arrive at pick up and she hadn't clocked him. I'm baffled why he didn't say anything but he's pissed off now and being defensive with me too - he keeps saying that you could get that mark from bashing your arm on a toy or something but i don't think so. I'm so angry. And don't know what to do. I can't know for sure but wtf.

You need to raise this with the school management. I agree that the bruise is a worrying shape.

It can be a fantastic school but also have one ‘bad apple’ helper in the preschool. Schools, even private schools, been desperate for staff lately, as so many quit during the pandemic, and it sounds like the school has made a bad hire of someone who shouldn’t be working with young children.

I agree @NurseryNurse10 to me it looks like he's been grabbed. My DS is quite easily distracted (he's 3 FFS) and they've said a number of times "he's starting to understand the rules" and it's making me think everything feels a bit off. DH thinks I'm going off on one

Can it be a ‘fantastic school’ with ‘one bad apple’ though? In my experience a fantastic school simply wouldn’t allow members of staff to manhandle the children. If they were a fantastic school this would be noted by the other staff and that staff member would be dealt with to ensure the safety and comfort of all the children.