To remove my 3 year old from nursery?

[Gladdenme]

My DS is 3 later this month and I’m getting bad reports from nursery. This was a problem when he was younger but it bas settled. However I had a baby in the summer and he’s been struggling since then.

I feel he probably feels pushed out. I am wondering what to do as it isn’t improving. My options are to pull him out completely or try him in another setting or to carry on as we are but that option is really not working. Feeling a bit rubbish.

I’m considering asking for a meeting but I don’t really know what can be said / done that hasn’t already. Feeling really rubbish about it.

I know it's hard to feel rubbish about parenting but you do care and you want your son to be happy during this huge change. Ask for a meeting to discuss your child's behaviour and put a plan in place to help him. If they are not interested in supporting you and your son it's time to look else where x

I’m not sure what can be said that hasn’t already been said, though. There probably aren’t any magic solutions.

I would just change settings. I did with one of mine. It was an excellent setting, I’d seen it on the settling in sessions, great staff, lovely resources and my eldest hated it. Went to a different one, also excellent and dc loved it.

Most daycare have a biting policy. Have they given you a copy?
Do you see any issues around speech or development?

No issues I’m aware of but I’m no expert.

No idea about biting policy but I would imagine they notify the parents of the child. DS has been bitten as well as biting and I’ve always been informed of both.

I’d trust your instincts and how your little boy is feeling, he isn’t happy there, and you don’t feel they like him. So I’d move him to a different nursery and see if a fresh start helps.

If he’s 3 he’ll be starting school soon so I’d look at moving him to the preschool attached to the school to get him ready for that transition. Hopefully they will be better at helping his behaviour and toilet training.
My daughter hated nursery but absolutely thrived at preschool.
I think he needs some sort of structural setting, one to prepare him for school but also to give you a break from him and to spend time with the baby

I took my 3 year old out of nursery when he was being 'challenging' - I'd just had his brother and he was acting up! Behaviour was fine at nursery but he was a nightmare at home.
I took him out and went back to basics with him. Solid routine, lots of activities, and zero tolerance for hitting etc. After about 3 months he was a different child. Back to his normal lovely self. He just needed to feel like he was an integral part of the family I think.

@Gymmum82 - the problem is the preschool won’t work with my working hours. Hell have to do some time at a private nursery even if only a couple of days.

@Spookymormonhelldream - I think I’ll keep him home with me the rest of the week and see how we go.

I’d start by asking nursery about his overall speech and development, OP. Behaviour is communication, and behaviour like biting is usually from frustration.

Just to pick up on this, have they told you in the past what they thought the triggers were? And what was their advice last time it was an issue, and did whatever they put in place seem to work?

Has he gone up a room, yet, or is that still to come?

All I can say is what they’ve told me in the past which is that there are no developmental concerns 🤷🏻‍♀️

Started in the preschool room September, but we’ve always had issues with aggression towards other kids.

Maybe if you keep him home for a bit then you could find out what is going on? Sometimes it all becomes clear if you can just give some concentated time to listening and watching. Might be good to keep the place open in nursery though just in case it turns out to be really hard having him at home with a baby too.

yeah … it will be hard. I’m not really looking forward to it but I can’t keep sending him if he’s unhappy.

I’d need to give six weeks notice for any changes anyway.

My first thought was that the child needs familiarity and routine more than anything, so leave him be. But if the behaviour was already there before baby but now escalated, there could be a different root cause. 3 is quite old for this type of behaviour. For some kids its a sensory overload and a noisy busy nursery is not the right place for them, they would be better with a childminder. So I think you need to do a bit more investigation. Is he difficult with you, with random kids at play centres, does he have any other issues etc relating to toileting, sleeping, emotional regulation etc. Does he struggle with communication?

I think you probably need to start with a proper sit down meeting with nursery staff or management to come up with strategies to deal with this. The more open you both are the better. Show them you are listening and willing to work on this and hopefully they will show the same respect to you.

Its absolutely not a reflection on you, so please don't beat yourself up. I had a child like this and I wish I could go back in time and give myself a big hug and tell myself that it is not my fault and I'm a good mum. With all the issues we've had with DS and all the books, webinars, videos etc, the big game changer for me was 123 Magic technique by Tom Phelan.

Another thing OP, maybe give him more jobs and responsibilities at home with lots of praise. He may have lost his place in the family and feel not as needed anymore. I work with kids this age and they absolutely thrive on doing jobs and feeling important and valued.

Have you been through the list I suggested above?

No developmental concerns doesn't mean that there are definitely no flags at all - it could be that there are low level things across the board that individually aren't triggering anything but when taken all together are just enough to say yeah OK, something is going on here, let's take a closer look.

It does sound like you're unhappy with the nursery, so it might be worth seeing if there are vacancies anywhere else but you keep saying "I don't know what they can do" when people have suggested lots of things that they can do.

Basically with behaviour you can look for potential causes, which include sensory/attention/development/dysregulation, you can adjust the environment, you can adjust the demands, sometimes temporarily while you teach skills, and you can respond directly to the behaviour (which includes everything from reasoning to redirection to emotion coaching to rewarding alternative behaviour to punishment).

So there's loads which can be done but it does need a discussion between as many of the adults involved as possible and a plan of action.

I know some nurseries can be a bit crap on this front - ours were and we did end up moving DS, but there were other (multiple) issues with the nursery, they were interested in trying to explore it with me and we had come up with some ideas for things to try.

I will add that I do know how you feel because I also went through this and had quite a long thread on it and then by the time they eventually did come up with this meeting date it was so late it was ludicrous and the situation had moved on, but I also felt a bit like what good will a meeting do? And felt a bit silly going into it.

This is what I've learned since then - the meeting is for you each to share information so that you can try and find any potential causes for the behaviour and agree on any joint strategies to try and tackle it.

I’d need to have him with me for the 36 month questionnaire @BertieBotts but I would answer yes to almost all the questions. I’m not sure he could thread beads onto a string (I’m not going to lose any sleep over that personally ) and not totally sure he knows his surname either but that’s probably my fault!

However I do have concerns about his behaviour so hard to know, really.

And I think I’m feeling disheartened as it’s been going on so long now. I keep thinking it has stopped or only in extreme cases then starts again. It does upset me quite a lot.

I can see from his point of view he probably feels horribly pushed out and I think I really need to make an effort to bring him closer.

Do you have a partner? You keep saying we/us but haven't mentioned his dad or a partner at all other than that. Are they involved and could facilitate some one on one time perhaps?

Yes and no. I am married but when DH is around DS gravitates to him. I do read stories at bedtime bur even that’s tricky as hell often demand DH reads stories then request me and I don’t ever want to be saying no to reading with him bur I do feel it’s playing us up a bit. It’s tricky.

I think moving him to another setting is potentially the worst thing you can do.
He has just had a huge change to his life, do you think another big transition if going to make him feel better?

I’d say with that just inform him what’s happening, whilst making sure his needs are met. He doesn’t need all the choice and control, he just needs security and routine. So mummy will do a cuddle after daddy reads, or alternate nights doing bedtime. He doesn’t need double bedtime stories, but a cuddle is great.