My daughter is 23 months old and has been going to nursery since she was 16 months. She attends five days a week from 9am to 5pm and usually loves it—on Saturdays she’ll even point to the front door and say “nursery,” showing that she wants to go.
When she first started, she settled in straight away. She never cried, was very calm, and one of the staff even told me she was the calmest baby they’d seen in 16 years of childcare. She joined in happily with activities like singing, painting, sand play, and story time.
But over the past month, things have changed.
She has started scratching other children, sometimes badly enough to leave red marks or even draw blood. The first time it happened, the nursery called me and asked me to cut her nails, which I did. Things seemed to improve for a couple of weeks, but yesterday I got another call saying she had scratched another child’s face without warning. It was bad enough that the parents complained, and this morning we had a meeting with the staff.
They explained that when they remind her to use “kind hands,” she just looks blank and shows no emotion. They mentioned this a couple of times during the meeting, so I eventually asked whether they thought she could be autistic. They said she’s too young for a diagnosis and suggested, for now, that we keep reinforcing “kind hands” at home and pick her up an hour earlier each day. Honestly, I can’t help but feel like they may be preparing to ask us to leave.
At home, she sometimes scratches me too, for no clear reason. When she does, I hold her hand to stop her and remind her about kind hands. Occasionally she scratches her dad as well, but usually only when she’s upset or frustrated. She’s more attached to him, which might be because I spend less one-on-one time with her. The staff also suggested I try to have more focused one-on-one time with her.
Something else happened yesterday that’s been on my mind. After the nursery meeting, we picked her up and in the car she pointed to her wrist saying, “Sxxxxx bite it,” and then rolled up her other sleeve and pointed to her forearm saying, “Dxxxxx bite it.” That made me wonder if she might actually be copying other children who have scratched or bitten her. We do have incident reports of her being scratched and hit at nursery, so it’s possible. Of course, I also know that at her age she might be repeating things she’s seen happen to others, not necessarily describing what happened to her personally. Still, it upset me, and I can’t help but feel like she’s now on the nursery’s “naughty list,” especially since I never made a fuss or a formal complaint about the incidents where she was on the receiving end.
I’m really wondering if anyone else has been through something similar and could share their experience or advice. Could this kind of behavior be linked to autism? Obviously we will pick her up early for next few weeks as 9-5 seems to be too long for her but I equally don’t want her to miss out her fun time with her friends. Any tips how I should handle the situation?
For context, she does like routines (for example, I always have to sit on the left and her dad on the right), but she doesn’t line up toys. Her speech, physical milestones are all fine.