Nursery behaviour

[rosale]

Just wondering if anyone else has had concerns about their child's behaviour caused by nursery?

I'd say 90% of the time I'd class myself as quite a gentle parent and when ds does something (hitting, biting etc) I always explain why it is he shouldn't do it (it hurts that person, it makes them feel sad when it hurts etc) and I encourage (but don't force) him to say sorry to whoever he's hurt.

Nursery have advised me that the way they deal with it is to say 'no!' And send ds away and comfort the other child. They said they have no concerns and the amount it's happening is completely normal for a child just over 2.

If I try and speak to ds about something he's doing wrong, no matter how calm I am he now runs off and lays on the floor. Am I right to not be that happy with the way nursery are disciplining him? Am I right in thinking this could be causing him to run away when I try and speak to him because that's what he does at nursery?

For context - he's been at nursery since April 2022, and moved out of the baby room in August 2022. The room he's in now is children ranging from 2-4. It's been since he joined the older room that his behaviour has changed (I know this could coincide with his age too, but it seems out of character for how he used to be).

Thanks for any responses!

I agree.

Wow, please send your kids to one of my nurseries! It’s very few 2 year olds I’ve ever met who don’t ever ever hit, push, smack, snatch etc. Especially in a room with a big age gap - I find often mixed twos and preschool rooms are a bit chaotic with mixed expectations.

Plus some of it is luck. Three of my kids never bit, despite two of them being bit at nursery. One did bite. Not my fault, not nurseries. Just something they needed supporting with. If kids were perfect it would be a great old world.

Thats the problem, some kids never hear the word no

Thank you so much for the few people who have understood me here, it's so nice to see not everyone has taken what I'm saying the complete wrong way!

You try to rationalise with a toddler who is fully self absorbed, and don't expect them to (attempt) to show empathy (which they can't at this age, I understand) the nursery doesn't. They have consequences and you have conversations. If you don't agree it works with your parenting style, I'm sure you can find another- probably extremely overpriced nursery that had the time, ratio, and money to follow your ideas.

Unfortunately, MN is not kind about aggression in toddlers, even though it’s completely normal. You will have pages of nonsense insisting their child doesn’t do it, never did it, because of their parenting, because they ‘wouldn’t have stood for it.’

(They never say what this looked like in practice, which is telling.)

I had a biter, only at nursery though. At home, he reaches out and slaps. I say no, don’t hit, kind hands.

Its a hell of a lot better now (he is 22 months) there have been no incidents at nursery since mid summer but he did get grumpy at a class on Friday and tried to hit a child who wanted to look at a toy in our bag. DS suffers from glue ear and biting / hitting episodes generally happen when he’s under the weather with his ear.

He is not destined for a life of violence and I am a lovely parent but realistically and pragmatically there is fuck all you can do to ‘discipline’ a child of this age. They don’t understand. You can say ‘no’ but if it happened at nursery at say 2 and you pick up at 4, how will that help?

One thing I will say though @rosale and it’s not aimed specifically really at you but I would be mindful it’s gentle parenting and people who aren’t your sons parents won’t adhere to it. I’ve seen this expressed in various gentle parenting groups over the years with people expressing concerns about teachers and grandparents and people will do things differently.

Be interesting to go to schools, ask them about the (let’s say) ten worst behaved pupils they have and then find out how much they heard no at home as preschoolers.

I bet most of them will. Constantly and probably within the context of it being naughty, bad, wrong.

Children need to have their sense of worth and self respected and understood. That doesn’t mean never saying no. But it does mean minimising it because ‘no’ is ignored if it’s constantly heard.

‘let’s find a different toy.’
’lets do that outside’

etc.

I think 'no' is a very useful word as a parent. Much better than lengthy explanations. Sometimes your focus needs to be on stopping the behaviour in question, not on giving explanations to your children.

I always tended to use a sharp 'no' to stop the behaviour and then give the explanation afterwards. I'm definitely not the strictest parent in the world, but DC has been brought up to understand that 'no' means 'stop right now or there will be trouble'. And that's quite useful - often I just have to say or shout 'no' (or mouth it from a distance while shaking my head) to make DC (now reception age) pause the behaviour in question (for example, jostling another child in swim class, running about somewhere where they shouldn't be or touching things when they shouldn't be doing this). Sometimes DC doesn't understand what they're doing wrong (but usually they're well aware of it!) in which case they might come over to ask me and clarify.

« I always tended to use a sharp 'no' to stop the behaviour and then give the explanation afterwards. »

Isn’t that exactly what the OP is saying is the right approach and what she thinks the nursery should be doing?

I read the OP's posts as avoiding the word 'No' altogether and instead launching straight into the gentle explanation. The problem I have with that is that it's much harder to get a child's attention that way, whereas a stern 'No' normally does the trick.

If they know what they're doing wrong and why it's wrong, the explanation isn't necessary - they just need 'No, stop doing that please' and then a consequence if the behaviour continues. If I had to give my DC the consequence, I might get them to explain to me what they were doing wrong (but my DC is older than the OP's child - I would only tend to do that with a child 3+).

@NewMum0305 this is exactly what I mean! I usually say his name firmly and he'll stop and look at me then I'll say something along the lines of 'we do not hit so and so' then I remove him from the situation, then we talk about why the behaviour is wrong and how it makes people feel etc etc. Thank you for understanding!