A question for nursery users?

[cookielove]

So my question is, if your having a look round a nursery, and the manager or whoever is showing you the rooms, and you see a child having a tantrum say in one of the older rooms, but he/she is clearly in a time out, (or even if they are not in time out but calming down) would you be concerned about sending your child there?

Another point being if there was no carer attending to the tantruming child would that concern you?

Or if children are hitting each other, and a nursery nurse doesn't notice, would that concern you?

The first two wouldnt bother me

The third would, i can understand one hitting incident to go unnoticed but more than one slap i would expect the staff to have noticed. If i saw children hitting each other i would point it out (in a polite, "Its ok i will wait while you deal with that way" but i would not ignore it

OK, so i work in an older room in a nursery, and have had the first two happen while there has been a visit, i put forward the questions because i do wonder whether future parents would be concerned and make a snap judgment without knowing the full situation.

The third one, a parent had me cornered in the bathroom, and pointed out to me one child smacked another child with a toy, we immediately attended to both the children, but it felt odd to not have seen it myself, (not that i don't believe the parent, and the said child did confess), i don't really know what my point is, because we do miss things even when parents aren't talking to us.

As a parent dropping off and picking up my child every day..

I dont expect nursery staff to see everything every kid does. Sometimes I will see something they dont purely because they have turne round to talk to me and kids will be kids and will snatch or push when the adults are not paying attentiion

I expect them to see most things and have a pretty good overall picture of what is happening at the time.. eg that group seem boisterous will listen to make sure its not going to end in tears

I would see time out as a good thing.. means they are instilling discipline.

Ok so another question, as you say if you have a boisterous group which i do, we do keep an ear out especially when talking to parents, if a nursery worker was to leave a discussion with a parent (saying excuse me, but i must go sort that out) would you be offended?

no of course not... your first priority has to be the children in your care...

cookielove, I work in a toddler room too and have had children in time-out when parents have been in our room, lots of times, actually, as our room is the only access to two other rooms.
Parents do look and say 'aah, what's up' to the child. I normally say something like 'he/she is just calming down for a minute'
As for children hitting each other, it happens and sometimes I don't see it. I can normally rely on one of the children to fill me in, on what has happened! I normally make both children give each other a hug, because I haven't seen it and I don't know who started it. Followed by the 'we don't hit our friends, it's not nice' lecture.
I have had to leave parents mid-conversation to sort out the children, most parents are fine about it.
As a parent though, I wouldn't dream of trying to tell the nursery worker how to do her job.