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Advice wanted: What to do r.e: 3.5 year old DD being aggressive

1 reply

Beepa · 07/04/2025 14:56

Details altered slightly as outing.

So my DD attends nursery 5 days a week, 3 days at one Nursery (A) and 2 days at the other (B). She's been attending both settings for a year.

DD has recently moved up to the oldest kids/'preschool' room in Nursery A. Lots of her friends have gone off to school nursery, so there has been an influx of new children. Nursery A reported that, since term started back in September, DD had been more tearful and clingy at their setting. About a month ago, DD finally told us that a pair of the new children have been consistently hitting DD and telling her that they are not her friend. We have spoken to the nursery about this, and as far as we can tell they spoken to the children and stopped this behaviour. DD is the sort of child who will generally tell you nothing about her day, so it's hard to know for sure.

The other 2 days a week, DD goes to Nursery B, which is tiny and nurturing. They have a long waiting list and no availability for her to attend any more than the two days she is already doing.

Nursery B have started expressing concerns that DD has become disobedient and aggressive. On one occasion she was pushing other children over, and on another a child had a toy she wanted, so she started shaking him to try and get the toy from him.

Naturally we're really worried. DD has a happy, boring, calm home life, and these episodes of behaviour seem to occur infrequently at Nursery B (maybe once every couple of weeks). However prior to this DD has always been very caring and affectionate with other children, so this isn't like her. She seems a lot angrier and cries easily nowadays. I would welcome any advice on getting to the root of this aggression and stopping it, as I love DD, and for her own sake and the sake of the other children, I cannot tolerate her behaving like this.

OP posts:
PennyPolo · 07/04/2025 21:20

I can't give much advice but acknowledge this must be worrying and upsetting for you. Sounds like DD has had a lot of change lately which I know can be unsettling for little ones. Just a theory but maybe with all the change that she can't control she's trying to take control of things where she can? From what I've read all behaviour has a reason. Even the less desirable behaviours that we label as 'naughty' have a reason. I found Kate Silvertons book helpful for trying to understand reasons behind behaviours. She says about reanacting things with our children to help them understand why they're doing things, the impact it has and how to do things differently. Hope that helps.

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