DS told Nursery Mummy and Daddy hit each other...

[namechange22345]

Just that! I have been called in yesterday to discuss the 'incident' where Mummy and Daddy hit each other. We definitely don't and I was mortified! The manager wasn't very reassuring and said that it may have to be a referral for early help?! I've spoken with DC who just says 'but you do hit each other though' and we don't!! He's 3, 4 in Feb. I'm so worried this will lead to a safeguarding issue or even Social Services. I'm beside myself with worry now. Does anyone have any experiences/ words of wisdom?

You've already posted about this haven't you?

Oh dear. Nightmare. No advice really but my 5 year old keeps talking about the time we forgot him and left him home alone 😵‍💫 never happened, obviously! Just hope he doesn't say it at school!

@ofwarren No, I haven't. Only just posted on 'parenting' also as wasn't sure where to post!

Has he misunderstood something he saw or heard? Can he show you the event with a doll?

That sounds really stressful. As a childcare worker, reporting it isn’t a bad thought if you - it’s always better to speak and be wrong than stay silent if you’re right!

Do you ever play fight/rough play? Could he be referring to something like that? I know I had a case of a child disclosing something similar and it turned out dad had lifted mum up being a ‘baddie’ and the kids were chasing him to get her back etc. Obviously when explained by a child it didn’t come over very well. Even tickle-fighting each other or pillow fights.

Either way I wouldn’t be overly concerned. If there had never been any violence in the home then you have nothing to worry about. Be open and forthcoming and allow them to investigate it.

Oh, this reminds me of the time my D's filled out a booklet in the first weeks of reception about his life. He wrote at least 3 times that we don't let him have food.

Which wasn't true (obviously!). We didn't let him have biscuits. When I asked him about it, he said but you don't let me have food. He told me this while he was eating his dinner. When I pointed this out to him, he said, yeah, not this kind of food, biscuit kind of food, silly.

I had to go and talk to the teacher about it. She was reassuring and said we can see that he's clearly fed, we're not worried. She saw the funny side. I can appreciate that this isn't what happened with you though.

My advice is to let SS in to your lives, if it gets to that and they'll see what's going on.

The teacher in our case did say to me that we don't believe everything the kids say about their home lives and it's a good idea not to believe everything they say about the teachers or their school life either.

DD at the same age told nursery that she had a brother than mummy kept in a cupboard and wouldn't let go to school.

They did call me - mainly to check if she might have had a sibling who had died or something similar. They didn't believe that I kept a child in a cupboard.

We did have a lot of dealings with social services when she was a baby until she went to school as I had very severe antenatal and postnatal depression. Once I got past the idea of them being involved at all, I found them lovely, supportive and very normal. So if they are called in, don't panic.

Did your DS say why he thought this of you and your husband? Has he seen something in a book or on TV?

Can he tell you more? When? How? What else are you doing? What do you say etc?

Could he be misunderstanding what he sees or something?

Sometimes my now 6 year old dd has been convinced that dreams she’s had have been true. Could be this?

Have you asked him to show you what he means? It sounds like he is misunderstanding something. Ask him to act out how it happened.

My son told his nursery that we locked him in his room and he had to climb out his window to get outside. What we'd actually done was a practice fire drill. We lived in a bungalow so he was practising getting out his window in case of a fire in our hallway. Kids misrepresent, but you do need to get to the bottom of it to help him understand the world around him.

I've asked him and he just says 'but you DO hit each other all the time'?! DP will walk behind me and slap my bum on a rare occasion but not hit me or the other way around! I'm so worried that they're going to take it further! I am honestly MORTIFIED! I feel sick.

Ask him to SHOW you. If he smacks you on the back side then there is your answer.

I agree with the suggestion that he shows you what he means - my three year old once described a high five as "hitting". As in "mummy, can you hit me again!!" It was embarrassing.

They usually work out fairly quickly if it's a misunderstanding. DS once told nursery I grabbed him and dragged him over. I had grabbed his hood and he had fallen over, but only because it was all I could reach (also had DD in the buggy) to stop him running into the road.

My sister age about 5 told the teacher I was dead (I was about 8) I remember sisters teacher bursting into our classroom and whispering urgently to my teacher, then the teacher pointing me out . I had no idea what was going on until the next day when teacher told my mum what she had said.
Sister was always very dramatic and hasn't changed !!

My three year old currently loves to tell the story of how daddy drove the car really fast and then crashed. It never happened, I have no idea where she got the idea from that it did, but she is quite convincing! My ds at that age told us that his nursery never gave him food. Also nonsense. No idea where they get these things from!

My daughter once said to someone, although not at school that 'dad shut mum in the cupboard and she was screaming' and to this day, I have no idea what she referring to or meant. I imagine that could have been awkward if it was said at nursery 😅

Not that it helps but when I was 4, I told my teacher that my mummy had locked me outside in the garden.

In reality, she was in the kitchen and I was playing in the enclosed garden when a gust of wind blew through and slammed the back door shut. She immediately opened it again. 😂

We got into trouble with the school, summoned to speak to teachers and noted for a safeguarding issue - DS told his teacher he was scared someone would break into the house and get him “when my Mummy and daddy go out and leave me by myself”. It never happened!! We never, ever left him alone for even 5 mins and it wasn’t true.

What happened was that the teacher had been going round each child, asking them to tell the class about a time when they felt scared and why. DS, then age 7 and very social and confident, told us later that he panicked when it came to his turn because he couldn’t think of any occasion when he had felt scared, so he just made it up!

He’s now 12, and begging to be left in the house for 10 minutes instead of being dragged out to pick up his siblings or for me to run to the shops for milk etc. But he’s never allowed to stay alone, because somewhere there’s a black mark against our name for “leaving” him 4+ years ago (even though we didn’t!), and I’m completely paranoid. He’ll be getting a babysitter until he’s 18 at this rate.

My child told her teacher she had four brothers, she hasn’t, she has one older sister.

@MadeInChorley Oh bless you, that sounds really tough. What was the whole procedure if you don't mind sharing? I fear that this may be referred. It's absolutely mortifying isn't it. I was made to feel really guilty and that I've done something wrong!

I was spoken to at the gate at pick up time by the class teacher and when I looked astonished and denied it, I was asked to discuss with the head. I was also told by the class teacher that he’d have to “make a proper note of all that was said”, but I’m not actually sure if that’s a note in their little black book of safeguarding in school or if it was reported externally. We never heard anything else.

But it leaves you completely paranoid. DS is actually really clever and straight talking, not a fantastical. Which may be why his “pit on the spot” story was believed.

Could he have seen you having sex?

My DS has a lot of form this sort of behaviour.
As a nursery child he was obsessed with his Willy. He was fond of tugging on it to get it to get an erection and then proceed to
wave it around and say that his Willy now looks like Daddy’s. What he really meant was that it was just bigger than before as he’d noted that his father’s (flaccid)penis was indeed bigger than his.
That was almost as bad as when he told nursery his favourite game was going in and out of mummy’s legs while she lay down on the sofa . I’d had spine surgery and wasn’t allowed to pick him up
so I’d got creative with games where he’d sit on my knees then I’d move them about as if he was in a horse.

The time he told NSPCC he wanted to kill himself brought police with riot shields to
my door at 11pm
one night. Luckily the leader of the Special Educational Hub where he was at school knew exactly what the situation was and managed to explain that DS (who has ASD) wasn’t in the least bit interested in self harm but had been fascinated by the website and has thought he’d spend a few moments messing around.

Whilst I understand your concern, no-one is going to have an issue with you leaving a 12yo at home for short periods (unless he has additional needs that mean it's not safe). I think you need to find a way to move past this.