Biting at nursery

[Char11]

Hi,
I'm looking for a bit of advice. My DS (20 months) is at nursery 3 mornings a week at the moment and he loves it. However, in the past 10 days he has been bitten 3 times on his arm. Apparently each bite has been from a different child. The second time this seemed conceivable as it was clearly a very minor bite which he didn't even notice (so we thought maybe a bit of a mimic biter). Today however he has come home With a very nasty red mark on his arm and the staff weren't even aware it had happened until they went to wash his hands after lunch.
I understand that these things happen, but I gather they have had a few incidents recently and am concerned about the level of supervision the children have. This morning I dropped him off and there were 2 staff in the room with about 8 or 9 toddlers. My husband checked the rota later and 4 were on duty. Obviously the legal ratio is 1:3 so does this include when staff go put of the room briefly (just want to get my facts straight before talking to manager tomorrow).
We are also worried about the effect on DS. He has a lovely temperament and enjoys nursery and we don't want him to start biting back, or get scared or going. Equally we aren't sure if moving him would be the best thing to do either. But we can't bear the thought of him being hurt so frequently.

Does anyone have any advice? Plan to talk to the manager tomorrow so any tips of things to ask or bring up would be great.

Thanks so much x

The ratios change as the children get older.
1:3 is babies
1:4 for 2 yr olds
1:8 for the pre-schoolers
Yes, staff from this ratio can nip out for a minute as they need to - it is very geography (of the building) dependent and quite a bit of grey areas when staff need to be changing nappies or preparing the snack etc.

That does sound unfortunate to have been bitten by 3 different children. It is more common than people think for children to go through a biting phase, but to have 3 in a group at any time does sound unusual to say the least.

Thanks. His room is up to 2 so I think the ratio is still 1:3. I'm not sure I believe that it is 3 different children really. They all seem a bit flustered when talking about it. I know they can't tell us who the biters are and I don't feel the need to know that. But I do feel it's a different problem if it's 1 child or 3 children.
Just don't know what to do really, it makes me feel so sad to think of this happening to him.

I had a biter at my DS's nursery when they were a similar age.

They kept my DS and biter separated and made sure they were doing different activities.

Ask them what steps they are taking to PREVENT the biting.

Ask other parents if their children have been bitten and if it gets worse/doesn't stop, you then have allies to be able to complain to nursery better and hopefully find a resolution.

In my experience (Nursery nurse) having three biters in one group is neither unusual nor unlikely.