reposting here--daycare concerned about DS's behavior in groups

[Anonymous]

Posted in general parenting, but was told this m ight be a better forum.

DS, 21 months, goes to a wonderful home daycare with terrific providers. Lately, they have been noticing some new and disturbing behavior on DS's part--namely aggressiveness either toward other kids or more recently himself (banging his head against wall or table and screaming fits when frustrated or sometimes for no seeming reason). he also becomes very clingy, and cries with seemingly no provocation. After observing this for some time, they have noticed that he is fine in groups less than 5--3 or 4 max and he is fine, but once there are more kids, he acts out in various ways. As they put it, he is like two totally different children. We don't see this behavior at home because he is just with us or his older brother and gets lots of attention.

any thoughts about whether this this just a phase, or indicative of other issues? Fwiw, add/adhd and sensory issues run strongly family, older brother has both, but when he was a toddler it manifested itself as distraction and inability to focus, becoming almost paralyzed in larger groups, but not acting out in this way. And, he was not dx'd until age 3.5, 21 months seems young to figure out much but maybe I am wrong.

as for eating, sleep, etc, seems fine and on a good schedule and, as I said before, at home he is generally a very happy, engaged, emotionally responsive if boisterous kid. In terms of developmental milestones he seems on track for everything, neither particularly advanced nor delayed.

[Anonymous]

Where is his speech? Frustration could be coming at the inability to make himself understood.

[Anonymous]

OP here, speech seems age appropriate. Has at least 100 words (???I don't count but he seems to use a fair amount and understand much more, no trouble naming lots of things), uses speech to express needs, puts together a variety of 2 to 3 word phrases, like "more chicken please" or "shoes go to park" or stuff like that. I was a little concerned around 18 m but he seemed to experience that 'language explosion' that a lot of people talk about so I am not particularly concerned there as he seems on par with peers in general, as far as I can tell.

I should also mention that I bring him once a week to a music class for kids 18 m to 3. He is a bit on the younger side, and more distracted than a lot of the kids (esp the girls) but he does not exhibit behavior problems like aggressiveness, etc, and there is a lot of stimulation there--10 kids, parents, instruments, new environment, etc. He needs to get up and explore it, doesn't always follow the 'class', but doesn't have meltdowns either. His meltdowns at home are fairly typical/predictable and not super frequent--they occur if we say no to something (he tries to grab something dangerous or he wants yet another book before bed) and are of course directly linked to whether he is tired or not, so we try to make sure he sleeps well at night (7:15/7:30 pm to 6:15 or 6:30 am is typical, with a 1.5 to 2 hr nap).

I'm not sure whether its an overstimulation thing (which was not an issue when he was younger), an attention thing at daycare, or something that we should try to plan for better--eg, take him out of this daycare (which is not that big and which is willing to work with him--when he acts out they remove him from the situation and put him in a quieter, separate place until he calms down, but they are worried about the other kids modeling him, etc).

the only other thing I can think if is that we are expecting another baby in a couple months. We've told him a bit about the baby but I'm not sure he really gets it and I would think that the real acting out would happen once baby is here (which is another concern if it is attention/emotional needs).

[Anonymous]

OP, are his interactions with other children or adults age appropriate? (obviously at this age, we would only expect mostly parallel play).

With regard to music class. What you decribe is totally normal. I have taught early childhood music for 15 years, and your son's behavior definitly falls into what I would call typical. I have found that many times, some boys need to move more. What surprises me is that he can "handle" the large group of music class, but not the larger group at daycare. I would probably look at if perhaps the daycare is forcing him to sit still for "circle time" or the like.

What I would do is ask them to keep a journal for a week. Perhaps you can make up a really simple one with check boxes for each part of the day, indicating how he handled a particular transition to lunch, or naptime, etc. to see if you can pinpoint if there is a trigger.

How is his eye contact?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

DS, 21 months, goes to a wonderful home daycare with terrific providers. Lately, they have been noticing some new and disturbing behavior on DS's part--namely aggressiveness either toward other kids or more recently himself (banging his head against wall or table and screaming fits when frustrated or sometimes for no seeming reason). he also becomes very clingy, and cries with seemingly no provocation. After observing this for some time, they have noticed that he is fine in groups less than 5--3 or 4 max and he is fine, but once there are more kids, he acts out in various ways. As they put it, he is like two totally different children. We don't see this behavior at home because he is just with us or his older brother and gets lots of attention.

I'm thinking the issue might be what activities they tend to do in a the home daycare in groups of 5 or more. As it is a home daycare, probably that group would include older preschoolers and well as some babies, and be the "whole group" time -- are the activities developmentally appropriate for 1.5 year olds? That could be the issue at that time, rather than the size of the group.

I think you might need to take a half day at least off of work and go observe the situation. Your son doesn't have any immediate red flags to me in his behavior at home and in his music class, so my first guess would be to look and see what situations at daycare are causing these problems.

If you can't go and observe yourself what is going on, a checklist would be a good idea. Ask the providers when these incidents occur:

1. what happened
2. activity that was going on at the time
3. how many kids
4. what ages the kids were in the group he was with

[Anonymous]

OP here, I was thinking of taking a day off and doing some observations myself. i will also give the teachers those questions and ask them to observe for a week.

I have been watching him closely in larger groups. He loves the playground--tries to interact with kids around his age, often parallel play or imitates them, and observes the older ones with a lot of curiosity. While he will occasionally check around to see where dad or I might be, he plays pretty independently at the playground. Daycare reports, however, that he rarely has issues when outside (unless there is a tussle over a toy, but that appears age appropriate and not overly concerning).

In music class he is a bit distracted, but not upset. In fact, during the couple songs where its basically instrument free play--tons of different instruments that kids can pick up and explore--he is fine. Loves to try different instruments, goes around handing them to other adults, and explores them. Does not seem disturbed by the rather chaotic nature of class--he has a harder time following direction than a lot of the kids (though he is on the younger side), but this past week did pretty well in a game where you moved and then stopped.... he actually stopped, a first.

In groups of adults, he loves to perform, eye contact has always been terrific, he is very social, loves peek a poo, and either doing something to make someone laugh or laughing at someone doing something funny. He is a good mimic, both language and body movement, and I have never had any concerns on his social interaction, until now. he asks for people by name all the time-=-mama, dada, his brother, grandma, his uncle, kids and teachers at his daycare, etc.

I suspect it is something about the activities at the daycare, or perhaps not getting the attention he craves during those activities, or doesn't want to follow the structure. In music class, at our house, in the playground he always has a parent around focused on him but at daycare it is a group dynamic . I will follow up and repost with my observations. At this point I am not terribly worried, but as we are considering his options for school, etc, next year it will be useful to think about the best atmosphere for him.

[Anonymous]

At 21 months it's probably too early to really tell if it's a permanent thing, but honestly, it probably is. It's something we've had to work on for years and we have peaks and valleys but it never goes away. If it's not frustration with speech, it's frustration over social ostracization, etc.

[Anonymous]

How much outside free play time to do they get at the home daycare? One of my NT dc would act like this as a toddler if he didn't get lots of fresh air and run around outside time.

[Anonymous]

OP here with a brief update. We recently switched from home daycare to a nanny--in fact, one of DS's teachers from the daycare who wanted to move to nannying. Since she has known him in both circumstances, she is well placed to observe the difference in behavior, which she characterized as being like night and day, two different kids almost. (I am also home on maternity leave, so I see it too, but have left the two of them to set up a routine, and I come in at the end of the day to have some special time with DS). He has been attentive, sweet, relatively calm (still a high energy boy) with none of the aggressive or overly emotional or hyper/distracted behavior they were seeing at daycare. He thrives on the attention he is getting and we notice it even at home in the morning and evening and on the weekends he is much more balanced, and just seems more grounded. While we were worried that he'd be "bored" by being home, our nanny is wonderful about getting him out and about, playing with kids at the playground, going to story time at the library, etc. So, anyway, just was an eye opener to me how much of my son's behavior was a reaction to group care. While I still think the daycare is wonderful, its clear that for my son, a quieter atmosphere and lots of attention is what he needs now and hopefully he will build the independence and skills to cope with larger group interactions--and if not, at least we know what the triggers/issues are and that he can thrive in the right place.