A kid bit my kid at daycare

In My Humble Opinion
1

The Little One (20 months) had her second day of daycare today. She’s going two mornings a week (the other mornings she has a babysitter).

This morning one of the other kids bit her on the cheek (thank goodness, not breaking the skin, but leaving an angry red welt). The teacher gave me an accident report and verbally told me about it. We were not informed as to who the child was.

So my natural response is a) to be really upset at the kid who BIT my child, b) to understand that, yeah, some kids are much more aggressive than others, and I am lucky that it’s not my child who does these things (I do some childcare at church and we have a biter there, too, although thankfully he hasn’t bitten another child while I’ve been watching – but he does bite the toys like whoa, and I think he has been known to bite another kid a time or two) and not to blame anyone too much for the incident, and c) to let it rest unless another incident occurs.

I guess I will add d) I will inform the daycare facility that if it happens again that I will withdraw my child from the center. (Not because the Little One can’t handle it, which she probably could, but because I can’t personally.)

My parents are visiting. My parents’ natural response is to say that my husband and I need to have A TALK with the daycare administrators, immediately, and let them know in no uncertain terms that this behavior will not be tolerated and that we need to know who the child is, and that my child needs to be separated from that child.

My thoughts on this are that I can’t imagine that they will tell me who the child is. (I actually would rather like to know, mostly because NOT knowing I view all the kids there with some hostility, which isn’t fair to the ones who didn’t bite her, but the center has no way of knowing that this is my reasoning.) But then, I feel like maybe I’m not a good parent if I don’t stick up for my poor child, who got bitten even though she wasn’t doing anything wrong.

I guess I’m just confused over what to do. My well-documented clashes with my mom on just about everything under the sun but particularly parenting aren’t helping a whole lot, either.

2

Based on my two boys, this is common. My younger one was in Montesorri, and we had the accident report of “A friend bit [rugrat]. We applied ice and TLC.” This led to my wife and I snickering that friends don’t bite friends.

Each of my boys got a bite report at least once. The biters also are usually asked to leave, since the schools do not like giving out those types of accident reports.

I would be concerned, and keep an eye out, but I would not automatically take this is a reason to leave. There seems to be a percentage of little ones that go through a biting phase.

You should certainly talk to the school about what they do with biters, how many strikes, etc.

3

I thought this was pretty standard toddler behavior in daycare. This article references a study showing that 50% of kids are bitten at least twice while attending daycare. Today your kid is bitten, sometime later your kid will bite someone too.

4

I think you need to calm down a bit. Biting is a natural phase in toddler development.

Think of it this way, toddlers have very strong emotions and don’t have the capability to rationalize those feelings. They express themselves the only way they know how. Most times they don’t even have the words needed to get their needs met. Biting is not something that is taught to the biters, it is an instinctual reaction. The biters get punished, the bitee gets cuddles.

Kids get bit all the time, it’s not a big deal. I think I read somewhere that if your child is in a daycare they are likely to be bitten about 10 times a year.

5

Kids bite. They get bit. If it’s bad enough to leave a mark, then a report get sent home. If you pull your child out of every daycare where she gets bit, you will run out of daycares to choose from.

It’s good you don’t know who the other child is because one day your child will be the biter and you will be glad the other parent doesn’t know.

6

Chill out.

Our kid was bit plenty, and once it becomes chronic it’s worth demanding additional action from the school. But if you refuse to enter your kid in a daycare where she won’t get bit, that means she’s not going to daycare.

Anyway, the biter and my tyke are fast friends now. The reason for the biting was that the other kid thought ours was the bees’ knees. Our daughter liked her very much but was shy and not quite so demonstrative. So the other bit to get attention. After a while it got annoying, then the school started monitoring it, and then after a while longer, it went away. By the time your kids are 2 1/2 or so, the kids usually have better ways of expressing their feelings.

–Cliffy

7

Alternate solution: stop putting yummy raspberries on your kid’s cheeks! :slight_smile:

(Go with choices b and/or c.)

8

The moment you make a huge stink at daycare about your child being bit is the moment your child turns into The Biggest Biter Ever Known In the History of Toddlerhood. This is parenting karma. (And don’t get me started on what happens if you brag about how easy potty training was).

Biting is normal. Toddlers biting is not very controllable. And if you pull your toddler from this daycare, be prepared to pull you toddler several times over the next few years or stay home.

ETA: If you find a daycare where you never get told about biting, it doesn’t mean that your child isn’t getting bit. It means that either your child isn’t getting bit or they aren’t reporting. I’d be happy about the report.

9

A møøse once bit my kid…

10

Well, yes. That would be the idea. We went through a fairly arduous process to choose this particular daycare, and I don’t think that there are any better ones out there. She’d stay home with a babysitter until she got a little older. And maybe not even that much older; I’d be happy with her being able to tell the other child “NO, STOP BITING” – it’s her helplessness now (she doesn’t really know what to do in the face of aggression) that bothers me, I guess.

But anyway, regardless, I am glad to see the unanimous response is that I am overreacting, so maybe that whole point is moot.

Now… anyone got ideas on how to tell my parents that they are not just overreacting, but REALLY overreacting, without them telling me I am a rotten parent who doesn’t love my child? Sigh.

(The thing that makes it worse is that my mom was always GREAT about sticking up for us. And in situations where she was <i>right</i> to stick up for us.)

11

Simple. Just pretend to make a huge deal out of it when they’re around.

12

Here’s the thing, though: the main way she’ll learn what to do in the face of aggression is by actually dealing with it. We’ve got a two-year-old who isn’t in daycare, and we practise various forms of ‘No’ with her (firm ‘NO, Mama, please don’t nibble my arm right now’ and so on), but a dozen sessions of that teach her a lot less than one good clash with another toddler over whose turn it is for the musical sheep.

I figure the only thing you can do with your parents is the firm ‘I know, but we’re going to have to work out how to deal with this our own way.’ (Or, basically, ‘NO, Mama, please don’t nibble my parenting decisions right now.’) Repeat as many times as it takes.

13

sigh

MY kid was the one who bit someone.

He later was diagnosed with ADD, and that explains a LOT of the problems he had in daycare. Thankfully, he only bit (or got caught biting, probably) once. And I do think it was borne of extreme frustration.

Kids have to learn how to get along with other kids. The socialization skills are one of the biggest benefits to putting your child in daycare, as opposed to getting a sitter. That’s my opinion. Kids are gonna get into pushing and shoving matches, kids are gonna yell at each other, kids are gonna have bestest friends and tomorrow, they’ll be worst enemies. But the opportunity of having your child in a group of children where they are all learning together that they AREN’T the Center of the Universe, I think, is a benefit of daycare that is sorely underrated.

Truth be told, I think kids get in BIGGER injury-causing fights with their SIBLINGS. Unfortunately, you can’t tell the kid, “I think you need to find another family.”
~VOW

14

Musical Sheep?

15

My son was bitten at about the same age. Interestingly, the next day a friend from work whose son was in the same day care confided in me that she was really concerned because they told her that her son had bitten someone. :slight_smile: Once we figured it out we laughed about it, and her son settled down and turned into a productive member of society.

It’s really no big deal. It is standard practice not to tell you who the biter was. I think you are a little too worried about this. My own daughter bit me once when she was about that age. You don’t need to “stick up” for your child, this is not a personal attack (come back in about 10 years when your kid is getting picked on by Mean Girls in middle school and we’ll talk). It’s just what some kids do.

My child’s day care, and probably yours, had a policy that repeated biting will get the child expelled. But it’s usually an isolated incident or a short phase that is correctable.

16

No big deal. AT ALL.

All 4 of my kids went to pre-school. All of them were bitten and occasionally bit others. It’s part of the age. You child will learn a lot more about dealing with other children by this experience, your reaction, the teacher’s reaction, etc. This is how kids learn, by experiencing and observing.

If you over-react, you are teaching your child that getting hurt is a BIG DEAL, and she will probably respond a lot more next time, crying and fussing. If you make it no biggie, just a kiss and a pat, then she will learn to not make such a fuss at small injuries.

17

And now she’s a werekid.

18

It could be worse – my cousin once bit the nurse after getting a shot. :eek:

My little sister went through a biting phase, and so did a cousin of mine (not the same one mentioned above). Both were fairly brief.

Just make sure he had his shots. :wink:

19

As others have said, toddlers bite sometimes during the period when they have few other means of expressing themselves. Which is why my wife and I were happy to spend the extra dollars at Dame Agatha’s Academy of Hittin’ & Scratchin’ for Tykes.

20

Do your parents already know about the incident? If not, why tell them if you know it’ll cause a stink? If they already know, then I’d try to make light of it, because really, it’s not a big deal.

Both of our kids have gotten bitten at some point or another starting at around whenever they could walk. Like everyone’s mentioned upthread, it’s normal. What I would expect from the daycare is an incident report (to me and to the other kid’s parents, which I think is generally required by most states), verbal notification and that they’d tell the other kid’s parents if it were a habit. So basically, exactly what they did.

Out of curiosity, how do you think it would help to know who the culprit was? If something like that happens to our daughter, we usually find out from chatting with the caretakers - there are few enough kids in the daycare (many people in our area lost jobs and took their kids out of daycare) that most of the parents know each other to some extent and know who the biters are/aren’t. Knowing which kid did it has never made any difference one way or the other, except to elicit an embarrassed, “I’m sorry” from one of the kids’ parents.