DD hitting and pushing at nursery - what to do?

[Ewe]

DD is 17 months and has been at nursery since she was 7 months. She has recently started to hit, push and bite the other children in her room at nursery. This is very out of character and when we spend time with children outside of nursery she is absolutely fine.

She attends four days a week and this problem has arisen since we had a two week holiday so I don't know whether to assume it is an adjustment thing as she was used to having us and our attention 24/7 or whether she is just not happy and I should be looking into other childcare options.

They have also decided this is the perfect time to move her up to the toddler room and change her key worker - which I think is a bad idea. Just feeling a bit helpless and not really sure what to do. Any advice?

It might not be a bad time to move up, it'll be a very different dynamic if she starts doing that with the bigger kids. Does seem a shame about the keyworker though. Do they have loads of contact with their keyworkers? I know it varies.

But really, they nearly all go through this; it's just learning. And it will pass, itjust feels awful when you're in the middle of it.

The whole idea of moving her up into the toddler room and changing her key worker around about the time that she starts hitting and pushing sounds like an absolute cop out to me tbh and I wouldn't be happy with that, unless there were other things to suggest that she would be ready to move up.

Your DD sounds like she is experiencing normal behaviour, I doubt that the holiday has had too much to do with it.

Instead of the nursery flapping about moving her, I would instead ask to see their observations of DD. If they know that the hitting is getting to be a bit of an issue, then they should be observing her to try to identify if there is a particular time in the day she is likely to hit, or if she is playing with particular children etc etc. If they haven't observed her and cannot show you their findings, I would refuse the move. It sounds like a case of passing the buck rather than identifying and implementing strategies to deal with the situation.

I think I need to go in and meet with them really. I only found out today, by chance, that they are starting to do settling in sessions with her in the bigger room.

I would have had concerns anyway as an aside to the hitting and pushing issues as DD is quite small for her age (still in 6-9 month babygros, weighs 21lbs, size 2 feet - she is a petite little thing) and the toddler room is full of huge looking children and there are quite a lot more of them . She has only been in her current room for 4/5 months, the change seems too soon. Her keyworker is great, she spends all her time with her when at nursery apart from when KW is on annual leave.

I agree that the hitting/pushing needs to be dealt with before moving up. Reassuring that it is a common phase though, she's got a cold at the moment which seems to be making things worse as she isn't in a very good mood full stop.

I just want to give up work and stay at home with her all day really so every time something like this happens it just devastates me [sigh]

I wouldn't be at all happy with that situation and think you are right to go in and have a chat with them about it. I am that they are settling her into the toddler room already without even discussing it with you. Bad practice IMO