Accident report at daycare: child injured by staff - WWYD

[Anonymous]

I received an accident report from my NYAEC accredited daycare center today when picking up my almost 3yo. The report stated that my son may have red pressure marks under his arms from an incident earlier in the day. Evidently he was refusing to follow instructions when several kids were being taken to the restroom and sat down in the hallway and refused to move. The center director picked him up under his arms and the report states that "because of his weight" we might observe "small pressure dots" on his body.

How would you react? On the one hand, he's fine - I don't see anything besides the usual bumps and bruises. But it seems wrong - I know working at a daycare can be a physically taxing job, but the idea that the center director would have been physical enough with my son that she expected she might have left marks on his body just seems unacceptable - particularly when there was no safety issue or other compelling reason where manhandling makes sense. My husband is totally outraged and wants to pull our child immediately.

We've been at the daycare through 2 kids, but my son has been unhappy for the past 2 months, since some teacher changes and a family vacation. He is never aggressive but occasionally does what we call the civil rights protest - he just sits/lays down and refuses to move. The daycare has been writing up incident reports and seeming unreasonably frustrated with this. The director also keeps harping on his size, as though we have any control over that - he's been 95 percentile for height and weight since birth but he's not freakishly large, and this is a daycare that runs through preK so they have plenty of bigger kids running around. Anyway, I'd be grateful for feedback - what would you do? Is this normal? acceptable? a reasonable precaution for a well-run daycare? or a big red flag that something is wrong?

[Anonymous]

First off, how do you feel about how they react to your son's behavior? That's what I would focus on. Ask for a meeting about this incident and his behavior and te way they handle it.

[Anonymous]

I know when my daughter has thrown a major tantrum that has made it almost impossible to pick her up or restrain her. I can see how if you are trying to pick up or restrain a child during a tantrum it could cause red marks because of the thrashing. I have no idea if this happened but just playing devil's advocate.

[Anonymous]

If your son is unhappy and there have been changes impacting him, I'd consider changing day cares as its not the right fit.

[Anonymous]

It seems odd and mostly driven by the director's personality. Our NAEYC center would generally just let the kid sit there if he wasn't obstructing anyone and was somewhere he could be supervised (not sure a hallway would be OK, though).

It would bug me if they complained about my child at all, though. My son has had some issues through the years at daycare (huge biter, didn't want to sit for circle time, got frustrated if he couldn't have a particular toy RIGHT NOW, etc.). The director always discussed these things with me, assured me they were developmentally appropriate, told me how she was going to handle it, and in some cases suggested things I could do at home to help his behavior (like practicing sharing). So my child was no angel. But still nobody "complained" about him. They identified issues and managed them. So that alone would make me think about either trying to discuss that with the current director or possibly find another center. If you are on good terms with his actual teacher, I'd ask her what she thought of the incident, the director's response, etc.

[Anonymous]

I don't seem to leave marks when I lift my child out of his passive resistance position in order to change his diaper. He's a light-skinned black child, so the mark would still show.

This tactic of his frustrates me too and he is a larger child (size 5t at 2yo), but I'd be suspicious if the people at his daycare made repeated remarks about it.

I don't know, OP. I'd have a lot of questions for the staff if I were you. When does DS initiate his sit-ins? How do they usually respond to them---with words or their hands? What have they found that works?

I'm always wary of adults who get into power struggles with toddlers.

Check with the front line staff, not just the director. Please let us know what you hear.

[Anonymous]

Please call licensing and have them look into this. The staff will be reluctant to give details because it involves management.

[Anonymous]

I would be concerned, particularly if my son was having issues for 2 months and I didn't trust the staff. Now, if I liked the day care/director/teachers in the first place, I might give them the benefit of the doubt. But if they were already on "thin ice" in my mind, I'd start looking, following up on other wait lists ,etc.

[Anonymous]

Being in the hall could be a matter of safety but the school should be firm with that boundary. She could have told that he was not required to participate in whatever the next activity was and he could certainly sit out to the side or wherever but he needed to do so in the classroom.

Being a NYAEC accredited center doesn't mean squat - it can still have teachers and directors that have no clue how to deal with small children without getting physical.

[Anonymous]

Listen to your husband and pull your child. I would also forward your incident report to the NAEYC agency.

My 4 year old has always been the strongest kid in the entire world. While he is normally well behaved, he has had several sit-in or stand-in type tantrums where he will stubbornly not let us pick him up. Think the strength of Pop-Eye crossed with a wiggling octopus. He is almost stronger than me and I can pick him up without leaving red marks on him. I would never just grab him by the arms or just under the arms. She could have actually hurt him.

The childcare provider lost their patience and did not know how to calm him down or even safely pick him up. She also sounds extremely unprofessional if she is commenting on his size. My DS has always been 95% for height and 50% for weight. He is tall and has very long legs so his sizes were always a few years off too. My DD is a strong bean at 80% height and 5% weight and she has to wear sizes several years above for the pants to be long enough.

Even if your child has weight issues, this isn't something that the director should be making rude comments on. If she cares about childhood obesity, she could remove all the sugary crap that they serve in preschools and give the kids more outdoor running time. She could request that parents not send cookies or sugar in the lunches. There is not reason to make snarky comments to the parent.

[Anonymous]

What is the name of the daycare?

[Anonymous]

What is the name of the daycare?

[Anonymous]

I've never left pressure marks on my children when moving them around even during the most dramatic of tantrums. You pick them up and put them in a football hold on your side so they don't kick or hit and then you put them back down in a safer/more appropriate place to get a hold of themselves. Leaving pressure marks is a result of aggressive squeezing which I would imagine someone would do if they were very angry and not in control.

If the director was not able to move your child without injury she should have called you and not touched your child. If the situation was that bad I would have wanted to be called immediately and would have come at once. The only situations that I've heard of this happening is with a friend's child with autism. She was called numerous times to intervene because the child was at risk of harming himself. She eventually placed her child in a center with staff well trained in caring for autistic kids and things settled down. If your child doesn't have special needs I highly doubt his melt down was that extreme.

This director actually reminds me of my 4 year old. When my 4 year old hurts his little brother he'll come running to us to let us know what the situation is. We always know when he's really hurt his little brother and knows he's in the wrong because he's clearly heading off the situation with damage control.

Just because the director wrote up a accident report doesn't make it okay. If she even thinks she handled your child severely enough to leave marks that would last an entire day there is a problem.

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone. I would be less upset if this had been the result of a tantrum - my older child was hell on wheels as a toddler and I know how hard it can be to wrestle with a flailing hysterical child. But that wasn't the case here and the head teacher actually seemed kind of embarassed by the director's explanation to me. And my reaction is compounded by their attitude over his previous "sit-ins" - a lot of frustration directed at me and a slew of written behavior reports (which in 6 years at the daycare and MUCH greater transgressions I've never before received), complete with photo documentation! I met with the entire team awhile back and things seemed to improve, but at the same time my son now gets hysterical when it's time to leave for daycare, which he never did before. After yesterday's admission that they grabbed him so hard he might be bruised, I'm beginning to wonder if he's upset because he's being mistreated.

We've always intended to move him before K, simply because he is a winter birthday and don't want him spending 18/20 months in the 4yo classroom. But I do trust most of the teachers, especially a few who are just awesome, and after 6 years, I sometimes have a bit of "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't." I'm going to have to make a decision about what to do - my son turns 3yo in a few weeks and should move to that classroom, and I've been torn about that - half of me thinks the change would be good, but I also worry that a bigger classroom with higher expectations might just exacerbate things. My plan is to sit down with another senior administrator, whom I've known throughout and trust implicitly, and see if I can figure out a good approach. I really appreciate the gutcheck from other parents on whether I'm overreacting.

[Anonymous]

If DS is being willful enough that there have been issues for the past two months, that seems to indicate that he's really unhappy there. Whether the school is at fault or not, I'd be looking for a new school.