2.5 year-old bitten twice at school

Hi all,


My son is attending a pre-nursery class and in the last three weeks, he has been bitten twice by two different children in his class. When my daughter attended this school a year ago, nothing like this happened. I understand that kids fight and will get bruises and scrapes but I worry that he'll get bitten again and this time, the child will draw blood. I have not been in this situation before. I have spoken to the Principal of the school and she tells me that there have only been two incidents of biting and both times it has been my son who has been bitten. He is not bad-tempered or out of control, just a happy, sociable kid. The first time was another child wanting the toy he was playing with and my son got bitten when he didn't give it up and today it was because he was patting the boy on his shoulders who didn't like it so bit his hand.


As a parent, what would you expect from the school or is there something else I should be doing or is this acceptable?


All constructive advice appreciated.

Hi,


My daughter had experienced the same situation when she was in pre-nursery. I was quite angry at that time. I advised the school to speak to the parents and pay close attention to the child who bit my daughter. After the incident, I noticed that the teachers and school took good care of my daughter and kept an eye on the child who bit my daughter.

Thank you flowerpot88. Glad to hear we did similar things. : )

Yes, I think you have a right to get angry.


Of course, I understand that kids do things like that and the teachers can't be everywhere at all times to prevent such things from happening. But at least the teachers must be aware of the seriousness of the situation.


How unfortunate that your son happened to be bitten twice. And if there's biting going on, then the kids easily learn it from each other!

This is going to be hard to read, but you need to pay close attention to your son's behavior -- in cases of biting, particularly around this age, it is usually the child who is bitten who is the initial aggressor, while the child who does the biting is reacting in the only way they can to feeling cornered and in danger. Particularly the second incident -- it is easy to envision a scenario where your son was patting the second kid on the shoulder, that kid didn't like it and asked your son to stop or tried to move away and your son continued and continued until finally the other kid reacted in a rage. Now, this isn't necessarily what happened, but since your kid has been involved in the only two biting incidents, and was bitten by two different children, you need to consider the possibility that your kid was the instigator.

Thank you, Slammy.

@Z, I do understand your point and have spoken to the teachers in regards to this. The first time she specified that it was not his fault, that the child simply wanted the toy my son was playing with and bit him when he didn't give it up. Regarding the second incident, the children were standing in line and my son kept patting the child in front on the shoulder. I understand that the child did not like this and I am sure there are a lot of things that happen between 2.5 year-olds that they do not like but I guess my issue is that I would have been fine if the kids had gotten into a scrape or if my son had been pushed, what I find hard to accept is that biting is acceptable. My son wanted to bite when he was 1.5 years-old and we taught him that it was wrong and he stopped this behavior within a week. Don't get me wrong, I know my son can irritate other children just as I know other children can irritate him. I just find it hard to accept that biting is so casually accepted.

When I spoke to the principal, I asked if my son was being difficult and she told me that he was actually the more mature one in the group but was just 'unlucky'.

I just don't want him to come home next time with a finger missing.

I didn't mean to imply that biting should be casually accepted -- absolutely not! Just that there was a decent chance that your kid wasn't just an innocent bystander -- I went through this [from both sides] with my son -- our compound has a lovely playroom and one day I watched him irritate one of the other kids until that kid turned around and bit him; we also had about a 6 month period of teaching him that biting was not okay [it can take that long sometimes even with consistent parenting]. For the record, I'd be upset with casual shoving, too....