Should I speak to nursery about this? If so what to say? Or am I overreacting

[DougalTheCheshireCat]

In the last few months, DD has been less and less happy at nursery. To help this, last week I went and spent two hours there with her on a ‘parents in the classroom’ scheme they offer on the day she usually spends with me. The idea was to spend a bit more time there and support her in improving relationships (she’s only there two days a week and her key worker has been off a lot recently). In that time I saw some things which are bothering me:

First, during a structured activity outside in the playground, another girl, let’s call her Sarah, was given her turn during a game. She set off. DD set off shortly after. I was calling her to come back as it wasn’t her turn. She didn’t (not clear to me whether she’d not understood the instructions, or was enjoying ignoring me) I was about to go and bring her back when Sarah turn around, ran back to DD and pushed DD hard, knocking her off her feet. This wasn’t during play with lots of kids, they were the only two there. And two nursery workers watching. One of the workers scoped a shocked and crying DD up, and told Sarah she mustn’t do that. I took DD to comfort her, but also acknowledged it wasn’t her turn and she shouldn’t have been there. I can understand Sarah minding DD gatecrashing her turn. And I know this age is fairly toddler eat toddler and I don’t think the physical response from Sarah itself is that surprising, although it was quite calculated – DD wasn't close or passing, Sarah turned around and ran towards her specifically to push her over. However, the nursery has clear ‘golden rules’ for children’s behaviour. And what bothers me is the aggressive physical response from Sarah wasn’t properly addressed. There was a brief ‘no pushing’ said to her back as she ran off inside with no further follow up.

Second, later on when the children were playing inside. DD was playing with toys and several other children joined in. they were doing ok with taking turns and sharing with my support. One of the other boys got over excited and slammed a large toy down onto DD’s hand on the table. It hurt, she cried. I don’t think he was being malicious and I was dealing with it (look you’ve hurt somebody, please be more careful, time to say sorry) when one of the nursery workers heard the noise, came over and without asking what happened, told both him and DD off for not sharing.

In general what I saw was that the team in the room spend a lot of time organising and sorting stuff, and much less proactively focused on the children.

The upshot of this is that the behaviour of some of the more boisterous or demanding children is going unchecked, which is driving more of this kind of behaviour from them and others (retaliation / copying) and lots of incidents of this are happening, many unnoticed and unchecked. When the incidents do attract attention, they are not being properly addressed. DD is no angel, but we don’t accept those kinds of behaviours from her, ever. So as well as being an unpleasant environment, it feels unfair to her.

Would you approach the nursery about this? Or is this just standard nursery rough and tumble (the kids are aged 2-3) and I'm overreacting?

if you approach would you focus on the specific incidents involving DD, or the general pattern, or both?

[JeanGenie23]

Well done Op I think you dealt with that well, and well done to the nursery manager as well she seems on the ball!