Toddler Behaviour Plan at nursery

[jolies1]

Looking for a bit of advice and reassurance to make sure I’m not just being an overprotective Mum!

18 month old DS has just been put on a “behaviour plan” at nursery. We haven’t seen anything in writing. DS has had a few incidents of hitting / biting other children (probably 1 a week) for a while, obviously we do not want him to be doing this and feel absolutely dreadful for the other child / DS’s victim!

This often seems to happen on busy days and has been triggered by another child taking a toy off him or when he has been trying to get onto a member of staff’s lap at the same time as another child. On two occasions we have been told by staff they haven’t actually witnessed incidents just the aftermath as it has been ‘chaotic.’ Incidents also are more frequent when they have been stuck inside all day.

At home DS is energetic and we have had the odd incident of hitting when we have had to pick him up and remove him from something he shouldn’t be playing with for example, however it’s quite rare and nothing I haven’t seen from other toddlers in our family / group of friends.

I’m worried that this seems very quick to label DS and I don’t want this to impact his journey through nursery, if he is identified as a naughty child who needs his behaviour managed, however I do want to prevent him hurting anyone else.

I think it's something that really depends on the details and their attitude to it and him.

If it's 'he's in a bit of a tricky phase right now, and this is happening often enough that we need to be recording what happened before and during each incident so that we can try to spot patterns. Then we can put support in place to prevent these situations until he grows out of it' and they still seem positive about him otherwise, I think that's fair enough. Much better that they be proactively trying to manage it than not.

If they seem negative about him overall or if the plan is much more about what DS will change than about how the adults will manage the situations, I'd be much more wary about that. Obviously some amount of talking about not hitting/biting is reasonable, as are things like being taken to a quiet corner to calm down (with staff, not on his own) or not getting the toy he hit/bit over, but at this age, it's primarily on the adults to manage the circumstances.

They wouldn’t be doing it if they didn’t deem it necessary. This can only benefit your child and help them stop behaviour that isn’t nice and will stop other children wanting to be friends with them.

If your child was the one coming home each week having been hit or bitten by another child you’d want something done about it.

It’s probably Ofsted driving them to label it and document it. Underneath will likely be a common-sense approach to help him learn how to interact with other kids.

My son got bitten on his chubby cheek at preschool once, big teeth marks!

He promptly retaliated by biting the other child on the chin.

By age 4 they had all stopped biting each other. They do learn!

But do they mean “behaviour plan” like a school would mean it for an older child eg this child is naughty and we need to deal with it?
Or do they mean “plan to deal with the biting”?

Absolutely - I don’t want him to hit or bite! It’s a horrible thing knowing your child has done that to someone else’s. At home if he did anything like that I would say “no hitting, hitting hurts” or something like that and remove him from the situation & that’s always worked, we have had very little incidents at home or in playgroup, at the park etc. My worry is he is being labelled as a naughty child / behaviour issues very quickly and I don’t want it to impact the rest of his time at nursery.

Well he does need his behaviour managing. He is regularly physically harming other children. Put yourself in the shoes of the other parent. How would you feel if your child had been bitten (maybe more than once) by another child? What would you be expecting nursery to be doing to ensure that it doesn’t get bitten again? I would suspect that nursery have a few fairly annoyed parents demanding to know what they’re going to do about it.
Now, this is reasonably developmental normal and hopefully he will grow out of it. I am NOT saying that he is a ‘bad kid’ but right now he needs some more support to help him learn positive behaviours. You need to support nursery here. For his sake. You may also find yourself needing to find a new nursery if you don’t support them.

We haven’t seen anything, just been told DS is being put on a ‘behaviour plan.’ I’ve no real understanding of what these are in a nursery setting.

Absolutely - I want to support them, and our DS and make sure no other children are being hurt. I want to make sure the response is appropriate however and make sure there is some investigation into why this is happening, especially when it seems to coincide with days it’s been chaotic & doesn’t reflect his behaviour at home.

At 18 months I would expect the behaviour plan to focus on how the adults will be managing it and what they will do to prevent things like biting. It would be good if you could have input too and share what works at home. My eldest used to bite her younger sister at that sort of age (2ish), it only happened a few times though because I, as the adult, learnt to recognise the signs and physically intervene (i.e. pick the baby up and move her away).

Wow, I think that's crazy putting an 18 month old on a behaviour plan 😅 their hardly in control of themselves at that age are they 😅. Surely the plan is more for the adults at nursery and how their gonna deal with it?

Loads of kids go through biting stages, don't worry. I had a biter and a bitee 😅 they do stop eventually

My worry is he is being labelled as a naughty child / behaviour issues very quickly and I don’t want it to impact the rest of his time at nursery

They could well label him but I doubt it given his age. He won't be the first 18 month old they've come across who bites occasionally

Life at home is presumably mostly just you and him? Nursery on the other hand is lots of small children all being unreasonable toddlers all at once. There is bound to be a difference in behaviour. As others have said the behaviour plan should be a series of steps that they will take to attempt to prevent it happening. And possibly some points about how it will be handled if it does happen. The staff will have seen this many times before. Once he stops they’ll have forgotten about it in 3 months time!

You need to find out what the plan actually is. If it involves supervising him more closely, ensuring he gets regular time outdoors, and talking to him about sharing and gentle hands then that's great. If they're putting him on the naughty step then clearly that's not on!

My daughter was put on a behaviour plan when she was about 18 months old. They explained to me that really it was just so that they had a central file of the incidents rather than saying that her behaviour was worrying, as it’s fairly common at that age. She grew out of biting within a few months.