My son is suddenly scared of nursery and says teacher hurts him?

[Lisa1993]

I have a three year old boy who is on the pathways for suspected autism. He has a speech delay and some behavioural issues. He goes to two different nurseries. Reason why is because the first nursery only does morning and by the time I got back to work he was getting 1 hour help with his behaviour every day I didn't wanna mess about with that so kept him in there. Plus he loves his friends. He goes to a morning one that is in a school so he wears a uniform and the second one he goes twice a week for the rest of the day. Now he adores the first nursery, he gets excited saying he is going to play with his friends. The one he goes to every Wednesday and Friday he goes after the morning nursery while I work, he suddenly hates it. When I pick him up on my break to take him to the second nursery. He fights me, says he wants to go home. Sobs and kicks off. I was baffled he's never been like this with this one before.

I just seen it as a phase and powered through the tantrums. One day me and my partner picked up him and on the drive home he quietly said the teacher hurt him. I was baffled and asked him to repeat. He said the same the teacher hurt him. I stayed calm and tried to think of how to handle this. My son has got the tendancy to fib. He's said before his 11 month old brother has hurt him even though it was in fact him who hurt his brother. Or he says his daddy has hurt him even though he hasn't seen him all day. So I thought maybe another fib? His cousin goes to this nursery too and my sister has never mentioned any concerns and her son loves this nursery.

Anyway again today he was happy to go to first nursery but then when I picked him up to take him to the other nursery he started sobbing saying please mammy take me home. I wanna go home. I'm scared. I asked what was wrong? He said he doesn't like the teacher. He doesn't like this teacher. I said what's going on there. He suddenly just went quiet. I heard him talking to himself so listened carefully and he was saying this teacher hurt my friend. Hurt me too. He doesn't know names due to his speech. I thought I need to speak up.

After soothing him and taking him in I pulled the nursery and asked is everything okay on their end and explained. She seemed shocked and just said no everything's always been okay. He doesn't like it when it's dinner time and we have to guide him back to the table but other than that she doesn't know. Said he just comes in and plays. I felt bad for the insinuation but my plan is to wait until he finishes nursery and sit him down and have a talk about this properly.

Has anyone got ever had this before ? How do I handle this? This nursery has a good reputation and several recommendations so I don't want to overreact and outright accuse but I also don't want to assume my son is a liar either. Yes he has behavioural problems so I know it might be the case but I've seen so many articles of people who ignored their kids pleadings and found out they were being abused. Advice anyone?

Bumping for you

It doesn't have to be one or the other. He is feeling a little unsettled in the new setting and even little things like being guided to the table or being told not to do something may upset him and he expressed that as the teacher hurt him. That's not a malicious lie to get the teacher in trouble. He is too little to understand the implications of that. He is just telling you he felt hurt. At the same time the setting can be safe but not realise how unsettled he feels, some children (all three of mine were like this) are very quiet when unsettled and only express how upset they are at home. Let them know about his behavior so they can spend some time reassuring him. It isn't accusatory, it's just helpful to let them know.

i can imagine this is a very hard thing to hear especially if your child is on the spectrum as how they see and interpret things, how language is used to describe emotions, can be different and harder to understand for parents and carers. I agree with the other poster that this may be very true to him so take his feelings as genuine, and then try to understand what he means by this. Remember that often with autism things are taken quite literally. So be specific when you chat about it, maybe ‘ in what way did the teacher hurt you or your friend, can you tell me what they did?’. I have autistic children so I have to be very intentional with the language I use. I hope you can resolve this soon and that nobody is seriously hurting your child. Also I just realised he’s suspected autism at this stage so that does make it harder for teachers to adapt until they see a report and guidance. However from experience, some people are not good at dealing with people with autism and can lose their temper quickly, so bear that in mind. Good luck.

I'm not minimising here at all. However my autistic child used the word "hurt" for all manner of things when he was small and quite often involving food ie. "I can't eat that, it hurts". His clothes hurt, the bath hurt so on and so forth. Descriptive language for discomfort I soon worked out.

You should talk to nursery manager. Because either it's true, or not, and if is needs ti be a tinned, and if not she should be able to reassure him.

I’d be looking around for a new nursery. Sorry. 😔 It seems so strange he’s happy with one but not the other unless there has been a genuine problem at the second nursery.

Even a fabulous outstanding nursery can be a problem if you have one rough staff member who was badly brought up and doesn’t understand that you shouldn’t yank children about.

Good luck.

As a nursery practitioner and a mother to an autistic child I completely understand your worries. My advice would be to book an afternoon off work then speak to the nursery and request a stay and play visit where you spend time with your child in the nursery setting and then you will be able to get a better picture of the routine and what might be causing your child to feel hurt, maybe it will also give you a chance to see which teachers in particular your son seems to be fearful of and then you will have a bit more information to work with going forward

I really feel for you how stressful!!!
How about a childminder girl the afternoon sessions?
But I'd speak to the manager at the 2nd nursery definately I think that's important to establish the routine a s what is going on there for sure.

When you're autistic transitions are often very hard and it sounds like this set up doesn't work for him at all. He needs to be in one place where he can settle properly not shuttling between home and two different nurseries. I wouldn't think too much of the teacher hurting him, that is probably his way of interpreting what is going on - he is very upset by going and because of that he feels the teacher has hurt him.

This is a hard one! Could it possibly be related to dreams? My DC has very vivid and memorable dreams, but sometimes doesn't realise it was a dream!
DC was saying a friend had called her some nasty names and was very upset.. 20 minutes later we worked out it was from a nightmare she'd had!

But it's just as possible the transition from one setting to the other is making him uncomfortable and he isn't able to express that

Ask for sure as of course if he's been hurt then take him out, but In terms of not liking it expecting an autistic 3 year old to be transferred from one setting to another sounds like hard work. Something is bound to kick off as he will of course just want to go home with you. He is probably done for the day and instead has to resettle in a whole new environment and say goodbye all over again. Again, I'm not minimising it I just know that children this young sometimes don't explain things accurately (as a PP said use the word "hurt" out of context). Of course double check with nursery though, maybe ask them to specifically update you on his day?

Girl?
I mean a childminder "for" afternoon sessions

Obviously you need to speak to nursery although I appreciate it is a difficult conversation to have - and you might not trust the answer anyway. But the entire set up is very full on.

My childminder was very reluctant to have a half mix of nursery and childminding and our nursery were reluctant to have any less than 2 days with those days ideally being consecutive. My DD is now 4 and at school but she finds going to after school club difficult.

I wouldn't be surprised if your son is struggling with the different nurseries etc.

We ended up going full time at nursery when DD was 2 which worked well.

My dd said similar at her old nursery. She's also autistic and said things about her previous nursery. Not that she was physically hurt by staff but that she was shouted at, told to be quiet, told no thank you and a hand put in her face when she was upset. She was upset a lot at nursery but they knew she was a crier so we had a meeting when she told me that where nursery said none of that happened but I turned up to collect her one day and all the children were sitting around a table with one member of staff, the staff member put her hand in an upset child's face and said no thank you, they had no toys and dd wasn't there. Just lots of things that didn't sit right with me so I pulled her out there and then.

We've had no issues with new nursery at all.

Could he be struggling with the change aspect? Does it impact his routine with lunch or nap times? He might be more tired in the second half if he has been playing all morning? A lot of kids struggle when half days change to full days.

I have no experience with autism but I’m being the feeling that hurt might mean upset. For example maybe he was upset with his dad for being at work all day? Not that he physically hurt him in anyway. “I’m hurt daddy was gone all day.” It “hurt” his feelings. That’s just my observation.