Toddler to be kicked out of day care for biting?
My daughter is 17 months old, and she's recently started biting other kids when they get in arguments over toys. Twice now she's broken the skin of other kids. The day care is extremely scared of liability, so they sent her home for this week, which is very difficult as my wife and I both work and have no family or back-up day care in this area. Now they're willing to take her back, but if she bites like this again, they say their going to kick her out. So I have two questions:
1) Have you had this situation (the biting) and how did you resolve it?
2) Isn't it a bit extreme to kick out a 17 MONTH OLD for a pretty normal behavior?
For a little more background, I have two older kids (7 and 9) who never went through this. In fact, they WERE bitten in day care when they were young, and no kid every got kicked out for it. Also, we have always had doubts about the toddler's teacher and her ability to handle any kind of issue - this has really confirmed it.
THANKS!
FOr those who have zero experience with kids, your answers are not helpful. For those who think that a 17-month old biting is uncommon and bizarre, you're completely wrong. (http://pediatrics.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=pediatrics&cdn=health&tm=63&gps=114_14_989_561&f=00&tt=14&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.keepkidshealthy.com/parenting_tips/ep/biting.html). Again, read up before you accuse someone of bad parenting.
ANYWAY, to give more details, the biting started with another kid biting her a few weeks back, and now she bites pretty much exclusively out of frustration, and specifically when another child tries to take something from her. She is the only child in her age group who talks, and that's what she does at home to communicate with us. Since the other kids don't respond to her words, she's trying to make her point, especially when she's being bullied. Hopefully that helps. At home, we really don't have the opportunity to correct the problem since we use words
One more thing - I do feel terrible about this. My kids have been bitten before (hard!), so I understand how the other parents feel. But never once did it cross my mind that the other kids biting mine should be booted from day care. I knew it was a phase of exploration that kids go through, and I expected the child to get past that phase. I knew that my child might be bitten again, but I felt comfortable enough with that day care's teachers to know that they would be monitoring things closely (and they were not bitten again afterward by the same child).
I just don't feel that this day care is doing enough. They did the right thing by having her shadowed once, but afterward all I got was a report of how many times they thought she was trying to bite (that's when they sent her home for a week).
I believe that the almost $1000 a month I spend on this day care is for more than to watch my child - they are there to teach and care for her, too. And this should be included as part of that.