Biting at nursery

[Rockysadrienne]

Hello all,

I am looking for some advice. My son is 16 months old and has been attending nursery full time for nearly a year. Recently another child has been biting him. Yesterday he came home with another accident form explaining how he and his peer were playing and his peer bit him. This is now the 8th such incident. 6 were in June and a further 2 this month. I have raised this on 3 occasions with the nursery and was reassured the incidents were isolated, the other child was being separated from my son and the parents have been consulted.

My question is - is this normal? The child seems to only go for my son. There have been other incidents which make me think this child has issues with my son only, as my son was hit in the face with toys on 2 separate occasions and came home with black eyes. My son is very big for his age but very gentle so I don't think him being physically bigger has any bearing on how he plays with others. Any advice would be helpful. Thank you.

The nursery can't give you any other information about the other child, only your own so you need to focus on how they are keeping him safe

Oh my goodness, he got black eyes twice? That’s shocking and would worry me about inadequate supervision of a child that small. This does not sound normal and I would expect them to set out very clearly how they will prevent this happening again, or remove him.

Biting/hitting/pushing is very common but that amount of incidents would seriously concerning. The nursery should be putting adequate plans into place to protect your son and help the other dc with his behaviour and I would be concerned that they seemingly are not able to safeguard your son,

If this has happened 8 times then they are not keeping your dc safe. Once or even twice would have been one of those things, but 8 times?!

Thank you. I have to admit that I was only aware of 5 incidents including yesterdays. Clearly I wasnt informed of the others. It makes me feel horrendous. My husband and I have called a meeting, we have decided our son will be pulled out until the nursery can move our son into another room. The black eyes were due to him being clapped in the face with toys. In looking at the incident reports, those two occasions were down to his peer losing his footing and accidentally hitting my son in the process - doesnt make me believe the story now thinking about it more.

Honestly please move him. They sound like they're really not on the ball with this.