Injury at nursery...am I being unreasonable?

[boredbuthappy]

My 23 month old had his thumb caught in the door jamb of a steel door at his nursery. The door is the entry to his particular toddler room and I was told that when the incident happened, there were a few children huddle around the door (don't know that was happening, but it obviously caught their attention). Someone shut the door and didn't see that he had placed his hand in the door jamb and it was caught as the door was shut. It is swollen to twice its size and although he is not complaining about it apart from when you try to look at it or touch it, I am getting it checked to make sure that it's not something more than just a badly bruised thumb. I'm feeling very, very angry about this. I realize that accidents do happen, and happen at nursery, but allowing a small child's fingers/hand to be caught in a steel door? How can they be so careless? I'm not sure what to do about it. I haven't said anything since the incident happened 2 days ago, and I'm feeling foolish and irresponsible for not having done so. Has anyone had something like this happen to their child at a nursery, and if so, how did you deal with it? I'm really frightening that his thumb could be damaged.

My favourite phrase for this kind of thing is 'on reflection'. So ask for a meeting and say something like "on reflection I am worried about how this happened and also I wanted to know what you are going to do to stop it happening again."

This shows you're not reacting in anger and also puts onus on them to sort it. Part of ofsted's accident book rules is so they can stop accidents happening twice. If not satisfied with answers you could always call ofsted - they might want to inspect again.

Hope thumb better soon

Excellent advice from 1978andallthat. My DS's nursery had covers over the door jambs - particularly since doors to nursery rooms are often heavy and close really easily (so as not allow small children to wander about).

I work in a nursery and on our doors we have plastic covers so no little fingers can get trapped,I would go and speak to the manager and explain how U feel, so they are aware and can address the reason why this happened so they can prevent this or anything like it happening again, at the end of the day U R putting ur trust in the nursery to look after ur child as U would do and paying them to do so , U have every right to question what happened and why, hope ur Childs thumb gets better soon

Hi, thanks for your posts. We've had his thnumb xrayed and luckily it's not broken to have any permanent damage. DS seems to be nursing it less and less, very happy it wasn't worse. I plan on having a word with them on Monday about it.

I think it needs to be looked at. Did they fill in an accident log form of any kind when it happend? At my dd nursery if there is an accident they have to risk assess this again. Not sure if that is standard practice but it should be.