My son is so unhappy at nursery - please help

[Lndnmummy]

Hello, please can one of you ladies offer me some advice, I am at my witts end with my son who is 3. A truly amazing, happy, confident and chatty child although "high spirited". He has had a hard time at nursery since he started last year, when he was 2.

Basically he is being permanatley told off and put on the chair. Often he gets told off for things that are not even him ie other children snatching toys off him yet he gets blamed. He is ignores in the mornings even though I have asked staff for more support as he is upset in the mornings. Always the same girls on their laps and when I asked if my son could also have a cuddle and some reassurance from them they said "he isnt a very cuddly person".

He feels left out now, says the teachers are always cross with him and that he never gets any stickers only the chair.

I am heartbroken for him, he tries so hard but they seem to scape goat him. It has knocked his confidence and he says things like "oh dear mummy, im a naughty boy at nursery".
We have repeatedly raised these issues but staff are very defensive there and even though a chat resultsnin temporary improvement we are soon back to where we started.

Please help me, am overreacting?

Hi everyone, thank you so much for all your support and well wishes. We have had another related incident which I can not go into as I am worried that all posts combined would out me and more importantly ds.
We have now gone away to my MIL for a few days to try and get away from all this.
Until next week at least, I can not risk outing myself and so therefor I am unable to comment on what further actions (if any) we have taken. This is following advice me and my family have taken. I can not risk compromising our position so I will be back to update when I can, all is in hand.

Really pleased to hear you're making progress. As the mum of a three year old sensitive soul this was heartbreaking to read. Hope you feel like a fantastic mum, because you are.

Hi Orange, thank you for your lovely words. In all honesty I am crumbling, as the picture becomes clearer on what ds has endured, I struggle immensly with guilt.
We have to move on from this, whilst doing what we can to ensure that no other children are affected. The only thing that makes me feel better is witnessing the immediate change in ds now when he is out of the evil environment.
Thank you every single one of you, I am still here, I just cant comment on certain things for the time being.

I had this too and understand your regret. He's six now and it is all a long forgotten memory but I'm so glad I moved him.

Update:

Hello lovely ladies, just wanted to give you an update. In short, removing my son from this nursery has been the making of him. In just a few weeks his stutter is gone completely, we have managed to get on with potty training without tears and tantrums and he now sleeps through the night. He is a smiley, happy and confident little guy. The change in him is unbelievable.
We have raised a formal complaint with the nursery which did not go down too well and also filed a complaint with ofsted.

Thank you for all your encouragment when I really needed it. It has made the world of difference to my son.

Follow your instincts; look for another nursery.

Sorry; didn't see it was an old post plus update. Glad your son is much happier now.

Me again, so we have had his first settling in session at his new nursery and it was awful. He cried and cried and just looked distraught. The manager and the staff were lovely but I am just so worried he will never settle again. He seems to still associate nursery with being naughty and he was stood there, shaking, with wee running down his leg "mummy, please dont leave me, i love you, i promise i will be a good boy".
Urgh, I need to win the lottery so I can leave work and wrap him up in cotton wool until he is 45. I feel broken.

Have just read through the whole thread and am aghast, your poor little boy . He will recover and will settle again but it will take time. Did you leave him or stay at the settling in session? My ds is a similar age and has had no traumatic experiences but still wails every single time I have ever left him at any child care, EVER! I went back to work when he was 11 months old-I have endured a lot of fraught nursery drop offs! So it may improve as you leave him. Also you are probably showing how stressed you are (understandably under the circumstances as you've had such a distressing time) so maybe try being very bright and breezy about the whole thing in front of him?

It might also be worth getting the bribery out whilst he settles in. 'Mummy's popping to the shops to buy you a kinder egg whilst you wait at nursery, mummy will be 10 minutes' sort of thing?

Wishing you the best of luck!

Woah, a naughty chair? For a 3 year old? All those poor children in that nursery.

OP, I usually prefer nursery over other forms of childcare... but might it be worth considering a childminder? After his experience your son may prefer the family-type environment, until he goes to school.

I know he is only little, but I think I'd try telling him you made a mistake choosing his last nursery, and it was a naughty nursery, not him being naughty. You are going to try a new nursery which is very different.
All the best.

I'd say let's go and get a new toy cause they told me you were such a good boy today..he ll soon get the message that they appreciate how good he is x

Thanks everyone. Abit better today. He cried this morning when I left but it was leas intense. His keyworker was lovely and just picked him up and held it, then called me 10 minutes after ti say that he was happily playing nw (i could hear him on the phone).
I would have hoped that he would have forgot about the other nursery by now.

I told him that we left the other nursey as they were not kind there and as ds name is such a kind boy he needs to go to a kind new nursery.
He says nurseries are not for kind people, only for naughty boys and girls.
Manager at new place is very calm, says he is not aggressive just a frightened little boy so we need to work on his confidence again. She also looked at the previous paperwork and reports and she said it was vile. You shouldnt put aggressive etc in reports for 2 yr olds she said.
We will see how it goes

What a sad thread.

I also sent my DS to the wrong nursery. It was a wonderful setting (pre-school of a prep) with very knowledgeable, professional staff and as such I really listened to them about DS and thought the problems were with him. They told me his social skills were very poor, that he was aggressive and that he was very demanding and was attention seeking in a very negative way. In the end were telling me quite bluntly that he was not a very nice little boy. His end of year report made me cry because it was so negative. He was confused and stressed. He bit his own hands until they bled daily- and was told off for this! I tried very hard to work with them and was seriously considering taking DS for ASD assessment (I work in the field) because he seemed to be having so much difficulty socially at nursery.

Then we moved due to DHs job and DS started at a very different sort of school for Reception. It has been a revelation. DS showed some of the same behaviours for the first couple of weeks because that is how he had learned to behave. The school dealt with him with incredible positivity and love and he is now a different boy. They de-stressed him completely and once his anxiety was resolved he was suddenly able to learn, socially and academically. He LOVES school now, has great friends, has no behavioural issues (no hand biting either) and certainly does not have ASD. His end of year report made me cry because it was so positive and such a true reflection of the lovely boy I know.

Sorry for the ramble- I just wanted to let you know you are not alone. DH and I are both very experienced teachers and we still chose the wrong setting for DS. I also wanted to let you know that it can be undone and will not have 'damaged' your DS.

I really hope he settles soon at his new nursery- they sound much better.

I loathe nursery. My two older children had such a bad time in nursery. School has been a much better experience. My 5 year old daughter was soooo unhappy. The teacher wanted to have her checked out to see if she was on the autism spectrum because she was so withdrawn and sad. All the teacher did was observe and label the kids. No warmth came off her at all. I feel like nursery is just a warehouse, a glorified babysitting service with no structure. It;s all very Lord of the Flies with these kids running around injuring one another and not being called to task. 30 kids under the age of 4 in a small room under fluorescent lighting? Umm, no thanks. Oh but they're 'learning through play'. No they're not. They're just rambling around. At least in school there's some structure. And 4 1/2 to 5 is very different than 3-4 years of age. They are more 'ready' to be in a classroom environment. I just think school is pushed too early.

I feel this way because both my older kids just never ever got on in nursery. Reception and the rest has been a totally different story. They got their sea legs on, their confidence going and school's been overall, a good experience so far (my eldest is in secondary).

My daughter got a black eye in nursery which took 10 days to heal and NO ONE could tell me what happened. It was a proper, swollen, eye- shutting shiner. I was really shocked. She couldn't open her eye for four days! My daughter's buddy was marked down for not being able to zip his coat and button his top. Ridiculous! They get school reports!! It's just vile. What a social experiment gone crazy.

In all honesty, my daughter's nursery was full of kids from all over the world: mixed race British, Somalia, Poland, Thailand, Israel. Mums in burkas, mothers wearing the Star of David around their necks, young mums off the local estate, wealthy parents driving German cars, parents from the West Indies, parents from Eastern Europe... you name it, we were a mixed bunch. I don't think any of us felt our child was being discriminated. London is such a melting pot... England is such a melting pot. Your son is unhappy because of his environment, not because he is being treated differently because he is mixed race. This would surprise me. Though I understand why you wonder. Because when our children are unhappy, we feel they are being persecuted in some way. Judged.

I will not be putting my youngest in any nursery. I work from home and will need to have someone come in, but I just don't want to go through the angst that I experienced with my other two.

CharlesRyder, your post made me cry. It could have been written by me. Exactly the same experience as us. Your little boy biting his hands and getting told off for it made me feel so sad. Your post really mirrored what my family and I have gone through for the last year. I seek comfort from you saying that your little boy does so well now, that is amazing to hear.

Like you, I really listened to our nursery and the staff, all his obersvation reports were negative, they did not have one good thing to say about him. They said he was behind socially, cognitively and behaviourly. Who knows, he might be but if he was, that is an even bigger reason to treat him with kindness and respect.

I picked him up at 11 after his second settling in session today and he was alot happier. The girls are lovely and the manager said that with pre school children you should not focus so much on undesirable behaviour but more on the positive things that he does, so that the overall interaction with the child is positive and encouraging rather than punitive. She said some of the things the other nursery made him sit on the naughty chair for, or wrote reports about she said was so minor that she would not even mention it to me. She also said that if children are supported and supervised properly, there is very little need for "telling off" as the adult would handle the situation before it escelates. So for instance, when ds sat with 3 children and he struggled to take turns, the nursery worker said "we must all remember to share and take turns" at which point ds said "ok, your turn" to a little girl. The other nursery would have gone " NO DS, THAT IS NAUGHTY, one more thing like that and you go on the chair".

It is still early days but he was happier when i picked him up and told the staff "dont worry, I am coming back tomorrow" which was really nice. He had another wee accident and he said "dont worry mummy, the teacher was not cross cus accidents can happen".

He does display some behaviour from the previous nursery still but the manager said it is not surprising and that it will change over time when he feels better in himself.

Two weeks in now and ds seems very settled. He is happy to go in the mornings and talks fondly of the teachers and his friends. He has had no wee accidents and sleeps very well already. He has made new little friends too.
Praying it continues.

Unfortunately I also sent my daughter aged 2 to the wrong nursery. She only did two days a week and they would often say she wasn't settled because of this- not because of their shabby attempts at settling her and the constant moving of staff.

One day she came home and told me she was crying in the mirror in the toilets as no one would help her with her trousers- safe to say this was her very last day. I wrote to the nursery and explained my issues and removed her from their books.

She starts nursery school in September, I am hoping her shabby nursery experience doesn't stop her from enjoying school.

I hope your son enjoys his alternative care also- and that there is no lasting damage. Some people just haven't a clue!

Really glad he seems to be settling into his new nursery! I hope my DD will too!!