This is exactly what I think. Both of my kids have been bitten, though neither has bitten another kid. But I’m not naive enough to assume that my kids aren’t dishing out as much as they take - they’ve both been the instigator and a few circumstances and I’m certainly not proud of it (and I’ve made sure they’re not either).
If another kid bit mine, I wouldn’t care who it was as long as it wasn’t something that happened frequently and/or didn’t cause damage. It’s daycare, for god’s sake. Once they’re in preschool/kindergarten it’s a whole different ballgame. But a one or two year old? Please.
Do day cares have this policy, though? Is there a magical “bite count” where the parent is notified? Or is it, “Sorry, Mrs. Smith, I know this is the 35th time in the last two weeks that your child was bitten, but I can’t say who did it”?
Should the day care say if it was the same child (but no name given) all 35 times? Should it say it was the same kid 23 times, but a different kid the other 12 times with no names?
This and other things in society where policy is driven by the actions of the most irrational people among us are simply a lazy way to enact policy. If a handful of parents get upset over 2 year olds fighting, then you deal with that aspect of the problem. Don’t act like a nanny to the overwhelming majority of parents who act responsibly and would like information to best handle matters with their child.
If you’ve heard this reason, you need to seek treatment for the voices in your head. I don’t think you’ve heard this reason.
If you’re entrusting your child’s welfare to someone for whom you have such contempt, you’ve already made the first terrible choice. If you’re asking why it’s the right of the person who runs the daycare to make policies for the daycare, I’ll let you try to answer that one on your own, while I take a moment to laugh at your use of the word “battery.” Ha! Ha! Ha!
There, I’m done. Have you finished figuring out the answer to your question yet?
Edit: ooh, new post. You’re suggesting that you’ve kept your child at a daycare where they’re being battered 35 times in two weeks, and you haven’t taken them out of the daycare, and you’re blaming their confidentiality policy for your child’s injuries? Seriously, jtgain, are you even paying attention to what you’re posting?
You are mixing up arguments here. Just the day care administrator can make policies for the center, but not ones that fundamentally affect my right to parent my child in the appropriate manner. Maybe the kid that bit my kid are best friends, or maybe the kid has bitten every other kid in town. Is it a superficial wound or does it look like Hannibal Lector got a hold of her? Those factors affect how I respond to the situation.
And yes, laugh it up, but it is a common law civil battery. Age is not a defense against intentional torts. I wouldn’t advocate it, but a person count certainly sue the 1 year old child for civil battery. Yes, yuck it up again, but my point is true.
This policy does not fundamentally affect your right to parent your child in the appropriate manner.
Bully for you. There’s still no relevance to the thread’s topic, though. If they have the confidentiality policy, that’s their policy. I suspect they’ll let you know the name once you get a court order.
Your point is ridiculous. You wanna show me an example in case law of a successful lawsuit brought by a parent against another parent because of a toddler-bite? Because toddlers bite each other, and Americans are litigious assholes, so there’s probably been someone who’s tried to bring this ridiculous legal theory to court.
— 5 year old held liable for $11k when he pulls a chair out from underneath an old lady…Stands for the proposition that age is not a defense to intentional torts…
This is certainly not a definitive answer(I think it’s about Canadian jurisdiction, but has some good general points to consider) but it suggests that while a toddler is not automatically immune from prosecution for tort or personal injury based on age, there is precedent that a child is immune if they are too young to understand the consequences of their actions - failure to meet reasonable man test etc. IANAL, but it would really surprise me if anyone was able to sue a child of that age (under 3) for battery.
Yeah… just so you know, nothing you’ve said here indicates that you’d be the parent who acts appropriately and responsibly with that information. I’m pretty sure you need a nanny.
So…you don’t want your day care provider to act like a nanny? I see an obvious solution for you that would eliminate the possibility that your child might be injured in someone else’s care.
That’s a whole different thing. At a private birthday party or a play date, any tension between kids or parents is the problem of the people involved, and it’s up to them to deal with it whatever way they like. At a daycare, any tension between parents can turn into the problem of the daycare owners, and they may not want to deal with that. So they make rules to avoid it.
The thing is, Jtagain, most of your posts here aren’t about the situation, or about anything anyone else has said in the thread. They’re about banning birthday parties, or hypothetical lines of coke, or lunatic parents killing biting toddlers, or kids being assaulted 35 times in two weeks. I think you have a point - where’s the line beyond which someone else should decide what information you do or don’t need about your toddler’s experience? - but it makes it really hard to discuss that point, when what you’re responding to isn’t related to what anyone’s actually saying.
It also gives me a sense of why a daycare wouldn’t trust parents to discuss the situation like reasonable adults.
You have all the information you need. You know how they handle biting incidents. If you aren’t comfortable with that or don’t feel you can trust them to judge the severity of incidents appropriately then you take your child out of that daycare.
That is your right - to decide who watches your child and to change that whenever you desire.
Everything else are demands you are making that may or not be met.
There’s so much vitrol in this thread, I’m out of here. This isn’t the Pit. If you all are comfortable with allowing someone else to decide if you need to know information about how your kid was hurt, then great.
But to defend such a position with insults is stunning to say the least.
Nobody other than you said that. The identity of the biter is not information about how your kid was hurt.
Gotta say, I’m disappointed. I thought you’d taken my advice to step away from the computer and come back with a cool head; I thought you’d see how ridiculous and foolish your posts had been. Instead you’re only coming back to stomp off? Suit yourself, but you’d be better served by a sheepish apology for the crazy hyperbole of your previous posts.
How exactly does one “handle” a situation with one- and two-year-olds if you’re not there on the spot? Confront the parent? Beat up the kid? Burst in and put her in time out? Make booing sounds when the parent comes to pick him up? Shame them on Facebook?
As a parent of two toddlers who were both bitten and one who bit another child, jtgain, please, please please give me some magic advice on what you do after the fact.
I tried taking away his allowance, withholding driving privileges, giving his extra chores around the house, not taking him out for pizza, and none of these helped. It’s almost like he’s too young to understand, but that can’t be, right?
This is Japan. Parents don’t sue either other. Parents don’t go ballistic and kill either the kids or the other parent, yet one of our daycares had the policy of not telling. So there are other reasons than what you’ve given.
If there were an out of control child biting other kids three to five times on a single day, then it’s up to the daycare to take care of it, and good daycares will. I wouldn’t let my kids stay in a place that wouldn’t.
Again, I just fail to see what knowing who the other kid is going to solve the problem.