Billy isn't his name of course but if I gave his real name, which is rather unusual, there might be readers who would recognise the main characters in this mini-drama.
Billy is a very troubled little boy. He will be 3 in the summer so he is just a bit older than Alice and Nicola. His Mother is a dentist who lives and works in the town where we live. There is a Father around but I don't know anything about him other than he exists.
Billy is very aggressive with all the other children, to the point that many of them are afraid of him. If he wants to play with a particular toy he will just grab it from whatever child already has it and if they try to resist he will hit them. In practice very few youngsters do resist his aggression so Billy has it firmly fixed in his mind that violence gets you what you want. It is the same with the slide and the sit-on toys: Billy will not take turns - he will just march up and push in at the front of the queue.
Overall we are happy with the way the nursery is run. But for ages the organisers have seemed to be intimidated by Billy and his Mum and they don't seem prepared to deal with the problem of Billy's behaviour. We don't know the other Mums, Dads, Grans and Granddads very well but we cannot imagine that any responsible adult would be happy with the Billy situation.
I think we might have to give the bosses an ultimatum - either Billy must leave or Billy must be far more closely supervised than he is at present or Alice and Nicola will be moved down the road to alternative provision. We know they have vacancies.
We are not very experienced at this parenting lark so if any reader can offer words of advice it would be much appreciated!
I agree with you that something needs to be done to address this situation, esp if you are unhappy with your kids being in this environment. I think a quiet word in the staff's ear would be a good place to start and see what their response is.
ReplyDeleteThank you - I will take your advice. Eve
DeleteWe went through a similar situation. After having a talk with Buddy's teacher we got a sense of the big picture and what plan was in place. Also, our school requires both sets of parents sign a report any time there is a physical altercation as documentation of these incidents. My two cents would be to talk to the school and get their point of view. In my experience, you can tell if a school is a good fit based on how they approach problems like this.
ReplyDeleteI think tread carefully with an ultimatum. I think it is always important to remember that our own children often need other parents to be understanding of their sometimes anti-social behaviour. However that does not mean nothing should be done. I again would be talking with staff about the issue. Also for what it's worth if I was about and saw him being violent with another child, I wouldn't hesitate in stepping in and giving him a very firm "NO" if no one else seemed prepared to do it, but that's just me. Thanks for sharing on #WASO
ReplyDeleteI have a little boy, he's a bit like Billy. We adopted him 18 months ago and he is now 3. He sometimes struggles at nursery with rage! We asked the SENCo to come in and spoke to all the staff about attachment. We are all working together to support our child 4, the staff are now very proactive in watching for the signs of agression and they try not to use reward and sanctions. We have a book to share the good stuff of which there is a lot and it's really good for the good not to be lost because of the not so good. If a parent had a concern about our child 4, I would want them to speak to the staff first. I would hate for one of our child 4's friends to feel like you do. Talking is a good first step. Good luck and share how you get on. Billy may just need someone like you to start the ball rollingxx
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