3 year old tells nursery that Daddy hits her?! (He doesn't.) Experience? Advice?

[ChangingWoman]

My v. chatty, happy DD conversationally told one of her nursery carers this week that "Daddy hits me". They obviously have to record this and spoke to me about it this morning when I dropped her off. I've had to write a note for their files to confirm that I've been notified and we've talked about it.

Having thought about it for a while I'm not sure what I should do next.

While DD sometimes hits her Dad, he doesn't hit her and she's usually quite a Daddy's girl. We don't believe in corporal punishment at all and he doesn't spend that much time alone with her. It's actually the second time DD has said this (the first time was during a game in front of some of my friends and I think the fact that some of them laughed may not have helped) but I don't have any reason to think that there's any more basis in fact for what she's said than when she talks about dinosaurs in the park or rides in spaceships.

Should we expect social workers to turn up on the doorstep? What's the best way to discuss this with a small child? I don't want to ignore it but don't want to ingrain the phrase in her mind and have her repeating it all the time either.

Any advice or similar experiences welcomed. (I tried to google this earlier but all I got was horrific stories of child abuse.)

It has to be a lot more than just the ramblings of a 3yo for SS to take action. Nursery can see she's happy, chatty and uninjured. I think it's one of those things best ignored and it'll go away. Same age, DS used to refer to fizzy drinks as 'beer' (no idea where it came from) so announcing 'Mummy let me have some beer' to his nursery teacher was a sticky parental moment.

My DS1 went through a similar phase. He used to ask loudly, every time he did something a bit naughty, "Are you going to smack me, mummy?", and tell me / DH that each other had "smacked" or "hit" or "pushed" him. There was usually a basis in fact for this - e.g. if I grabbed his hand to stop him running out into traffic, this would become "mummy smacked my arm and hurt me", but we have never, ever (and never would) smacked or in any way intentionally hurt him.

I am fairly sure that the "smacking" talk with him came from a particular friend - every time she came over they would play games where the child would end up getting a smack (the obvious conclusion being that someone had smacked her.. but given my experience with DS I now try to avoid jumping to these conclusions).

Anyway, it was just a phase. It stopped after a few months. I did try to talk to him about how it was very very important to tell us if an adult ever hurt him, but how there was a difference between smacking / hitting him and just doing something that was to keep him safe and didn't actually hurt him. It is such a difficult message to get across to a small child though, and I'm not sure that I really managed. After a bit I just stopped paying much attention to him saying it, and it stopped.

I have no idea whether he ever said anything like this at nursery - they never mentioned it to me, so I suspect not, but he did once come home and tell me that one of the nursery staff had hit him. I didn't want to dismiss this out of hand (although thought it very, very unlikely) so instead asked who had been in the room at the time. When he reeled off a list of 3 other members of staff and 6 or 7 children, I was comfortable that he had not been "hit" (if anything, although the story was confused, I suspect that he was messing around with food and she took the food out of his hand before he threw it! It was this level of contact that would have caused him to claim that he had been "hit" or "smacked" at home).

I appreciate that it's a worry but I always comforted myself with the fact that DS was clearly uninjured and if really really pressed would always tell the 'real' version of events. You have my sympathy though, I really stressed about this for a few months, sure that people would think that there was no smoke without fire and that we would somehow end up being investigated.

Thanks both. Love the beer / fizz story! I did wonder whether DD was getting mixed up with Daddy tickling her or physically stopping her from throwing things, breaking things etc..

I was just feeling a bit better about all this yesterday when DD tripped over at a museum and bumped her head on some metal railings. I now have to take her into nursery tomorrow with a big purple lump on her forehead - not good timing!

I would explain to the nursery how it happened when you take her in.

A 3 year old without marks or certain behaviours that indicate abuse, would not generate a referal to SS.

My DN would blame her mother for every mark on her, even when she had got the mark whilst with me, professionals have all had their own/others children go through this stage, which isn't uncommon.