DD turned 3 years just before Christmas and started nursery middle of January. She had never been looked after by anyone else other than myself, DH and DGP so she had 2 settle in days of 2 hours each. The first day and stayed with her and she was very confident (for her anyway) going away from me into different rooms while I filled out paperwork. On day 2 DH left her by herself and on pick up was head to toe on glitter and chatting away about how much fun she had. The next week for her first full afternoon (she just goes 3 afternoons a week and then 1 full day with DGP and 1 full day with me) was upset on pick up and when she got home she said a boy had hit her. I called the nursery and no one had seen anything but they said they would deal with it by writing an incident report and dealing with the boy. Since then she has been upset to go. She did have a few weeks where she seemed to be doing better (still crying on drop off but seemed happy when there and on pick up) but then caught chickenpox and was off for a week then the follow week only attended 2 afternoons on account of immunisations.
Fast forward to now (2 months) since starting nursery and she is just hating it. She cries on dropp off and then today when I picked her up she just looked miserable. The teacher said she'd been crying most of the day for me and that whenever another parent turned up to pick up a kid it would set her off.
Basically I think she is very upset about this boy who hit her. The nursery say they keep an eye on him but literally every time I pick her up from inside her rooms he is always right next to her. He is very big for his age and they say he is still very young but he must be almost exactly the same age as DD as she has just turned 3yo and the room she is in is 3-5yo. DD is of course very sensitive so anything the boy does ie accidentally bang into her, shout too loud etc I think causes her stress.
DD has also tagged onto one of the nursery teachers (as what I can imagine as a surrogate for me) and will not leave her side.
I just feel so stressed seeing DD so upset and not being able to help. I just don't know what to do. I try telling her to go to another room if she doesn't like being near the boy but she won't leave the teachers side so if that teacher can't move room then she won't either. I've tried telling DD to tell the teacher if she is finding it hard but that doesn't seem to do anything. What am I supposed to do to help? I try not to let her see how I feel about it and try to speak positively about it. I try to talk about the other children who are nice and all the fun things she could do at nursery but she just replies "I don't want to have fun" "I just really miss you mummy". It is honestly breaking my heart!