DS bitten again at nursery

[CrazyCatMom]

Picked up DS (20m) from nursery yesterday and was presented with two accident forms to sign as he had been bitten twice by the same child (separate occasions, same day). One has barely left a mark, but the other has come up in a horrible purple bruise and I can see the individual teeth marks so it must have really hurt him.

The same happened about 6 weeks ago when he was bitten twice in the same day by the same child. No idea if it is the same child on both days iyswim but I have my suspicions.

I signed the forms and did let his key worker know that I wasn’t particularly happy he has been bitten on multiple occasions now (she seemed shocked I am annoyed my child has been hurt??!) but was polite and I know it is a phase lots of children go through.

Would it be fair for me to phone and speak to nursery manager next week? DH has suggested waiting to see if it happens again but I think 4 bites is enough to be raising a concern, and tbh I would at least like a phone call if he is bitten in advance of pickup as I felt a bit blindsided by it on both occasions.

I think raising the issue with the manager is perfectly reasonable. They need to explain what measures are in place to prevent it happening again.

It never hurts to mention it to the manager or to ask for a call ahead of time to let you know.

Is he still in the baby room? Very young babies can bite through teething and exploring and it can be very hard to predict when this type of bite will happen. It isn’t usually frustration or communication driving this type of biting as it is in older toddlers. In older children staff can usually recognise triggers and work with the biter to lessen the risk to others.

All bites can be hard to prevent, even with a staff member shadowing, as they can be so quick. All the staff hate bites occurring so you can be sure this child is already being monitored.

All that said, it is absolutely awful when your child is the one bitten and you won’t do any harm asking how they are dealing with it to prevent more bites.

DC’s childcare nursery always took biting very seriously. Any parent whose child bit, was pulled aside every single collection and made aware it’s unacceptable.

I’d speak to the manager to ask what they are doing to keep your child safe from the other child, if they are the repeated target.

Exactly this. I’d be wanting to know what measures were being put in place to try and avoid it happening again.

I agree with all of this, especially that biting can happen so quickly and the biter most often isn't even showing any signs of being angry or upset. They can be quite calm and then just lean in and bite.

Over the many years I worked in nurseries, there were occasions where I'd be sitting with a group of very young children and I'd notice one leaning forwards, out of the blue, with their mouth about to clamp around somebody's arm or leg and I've have to be quick to stop them.

It's entirely reasonable to ask what they are doing to reduce the risk of another bite. You want to see them keeping track of incidents, when was it, what exactly happened, and what was happening just before to try and spot patterns. If it seems to be teething, then they need to be really on it when that child is teething. If it's a particular toy, right before nap time, etc., then they can try to prevent those flashpoints.

Sometimes, however, it really isn't easy to find the trigger, and biting is so fast, you can't stop 100% of incidents even if you have a staff member right beside the child. I really rate our nursery, but they had a child go through a very difficult biting phase when DD2 was around two. I signed multiple accident reports along the lines of 'DD2 was looking out the window when a peer came up and bit her.' The staff were clearly upset, but couldn't find a pattern and couldn't always block the child fast enough. Then one day it stopped as quickly as it had started.