daycare child's behavior

[daycaredelight]

I have a 3 year old girl in my daycare whom I am experiencing issues with and am at a point where I cannot get anything from the mother other than quizzical comments and looks when I explain her child’s behavior.  I don't want to think that there is any abuse taking place, but I also don't want to be blind to the possibility and that is why I am posting here.  This child is also in preschool and I am starting to wonder if there are problems there too.

This child is particularly aggressive, controlling and disturbing towards other children.  For example, if she sees me discipline another child by removing a toy or redirecting a child to another activity she will take that same child later and try to enforce the same discipline herself often more aggressively and even getting other kids involved in picking on the child.  She does it in such an aggressive and undeserving manner that it ends up causing more trouble and upsetting the other children.  Most of the time she simply grabs the earlier offending child out of the blue and drags them out of from where ever they were playing or takes their toy and throws it away or plows her way into the middle of a game or tranquil group of playing kids.

I find myself worrying about the other children when my back is turned and must close the door when the other children are sleeping so that she doesn’t purposely go in the room and scream repeatingly for them to wake up.

Screaming - that’s another issue.  If you try to talk to her calmly about a problem she will start to scream, deep breath, scream, deep breath, scream, pause pause pause, deep breath, scream.....  Her legs and arms are flaying around so much I have to hold her down!  She is not having a tantrum, she is laughing and smiling and seems to truly enjoy that she is able to continue screaming.  Then, as quickly as it all began, she is tossing her head smiling at you wanting a hug - and she hugs hard.  

Hugs: hugs are great, but she bear hugs other kids and tackles them to the ground.  If she is successfully fended of by a child she will get upset and push or claw at them.  She left a noticeable mark on one boys cheek that required a patch type band aid.  That boy is now scared of her and refuses to even sit beside her.

The worst part is trying to discipline her.  I use time-outs when necessary and it is during these particular times that I came across the most unusual behavior.  The first time she did this I truly was upset with myself as I thought I had not paid attention to her and caused her to pee her pants.  Then, after the second time, I knew something was up, now it is a daily occurrence.  He behavior has become increasingly worse since being here the past 1 1/2 months and now she is in at least three timeouts per day in which at least on one she will either pee or poo while seated and not say anything.  When I notice she simply grins and giggles or looks complacent.  If I ask her why she did not say she had to go to the bathroom she just says she doesn’t know and laughs or says nothing at all and trys to ignore me.  I had her help me clean it up last time and she made more of a mess than it was worth it, then threw the dirty cloth on my clean stack of dishes.  She thought it was funny - so did the other kids and thus ensued a toy throwing rampage that ended up with her having to be held down while she screamed and flared her arms and legs around in a true bit of glory laughing when I tired to stop her from throwing more toys and another child crying from being hit by a flying projectile.  I could not help the hurt child because I literally had to physically hold her down on the floor for a good three or four minutes till she became manageable enough to be put in a high chair with a strap in it to hold her put.

That’s when she started to do the other bit of disturbing behavior - self injury – when she is in a time out I often notice that she is biting herself on her hand or arm up to her elbow.  When I try to stop her she says she likes it and pulls her arm away to continue.  I do not see any scars or other marks that look like self-injury on her arms though and I have not seen her draw blood – just make some pretty impressive indent marks that go away after a while.

Needless to say, she has bitten the other children too, but most three year olds have.

If I have to drop off a child for an activity she will always ask to go too.  On particularly bad days she will pee in her car seat when I explain to her why we are dropping off a child someplace.

I know she is only (just) three, but I have seen some particularly manipulative behavior from this child also.  Instead of asking for help she will take the little potty out from the potty seat and dump the contents on top of the closed toilet seat after she has used the potty.  I thought at first that she just wanted to be self reliant with her bodily stuff, but even when the lid was left open for her on purpose, she closed the lid and claimed it had already been closed and dumped the contents on the toilet, stepped in it, dragged her pant legs in it, then left wet foot marks across the carpet after leaving the bathroom.  I guess she thought it was funny because she escorted the baby to the bathroom to have a go at it too.  I was just amazed that she seemed to genuinely have no idea that this was inappropriate behavior and her mother said it sound really weird too.

She has held our cat down and pulled the whiskers, the tail and even twisted the cats neck once yelling at the cat, "NO!!"

She has a huge fit when it is time to go home, kicking and twisting and, frankly, it takes two of us to get her dressed to get her out the door.

I could go on for a while yet, and perhaps some of this is venting a bit, but I really could go one for a while here.

I have some great kids here and we all got along really well.  However, I have noticed a change in the atmosphere of behavior with the other children too now.  They seem collectively to be picking up on some of the bad behavior and all seem to not really want to play with her or look to find a place to hide to be undisturbed from her.   Worse, some of her screaming is rubbing off on the other kids too.

The peeing and pooing in defiance is quite disturbing.  Her mother said to me this evening that she does that sometimes to her too and she doesn’t know what to do about it. The biting herself is odd too.

I am not sure I can continue to provide care for this child, but I also don't want to turn her away if there is something serious going on that just takes another more experienced person with this sort of behavior to notice or recognize.

Anyone have any idea what could be going on with this child??

[Sepyon69]

sorry i just realized that i posted this post using the wrong name... I meant this for daycaredelight... my apologies

[Sepyon69]

Hi there...wow ok so first off let me tell you that I am also the owner of a home daycare and have been in this field for quite some time. I would like to tell you that there seems to be several things going on here: 1) this child migh have seem the behavior she is acting out from her parents (her father may be abusing her mother) or 2) her parents do these things to her (as far as the disciplining thing). It could also be 3) that she is the type of child who really needs a lot of attention. Are you in a center or do you operate out of your home? I ask because this will play a HUGE role on how you handle this child.

I had a four year old who came into my care after her mother had to remove her child from 44 daycares in less than 3 months. I have A LOT of patience and I knew I would be able to handle the child. I wanted to be able to her this child, but after 6 weeks of this child acting just as you have just explained, I was fed up. So everyday the mother had been thanking me for keeping her child and understood the importance of her being in daycare if she were going to hold a job and supoort her children. Finally one day I sat the mother down and laid out a normal day's drama that took place and I told her that if I were going to keep her child, that the child WOULD listen to me. She gave me free reign and within 4 weeks, the child was completely different. I DO NOT spank my daycare children. Isolation and time-outs were not helping this child or me. She would poo and smear it all over the walls. I got to the point (before I spoke to the mother this particular time) where I was calling the mother to come and clean up her child and the mess she had made.

What I ended up doing was making this child stand in the middle of the room and hold her hands up in the air straight over her head. At first she refused. So when this went on a couple of days, I told her mother when she came to pick her up to leave her and that once she had listened to what I had told her to do, I would bring her home. She agreed. The first day, the child thought that her mother was just gonna come back even if she hadn't done what she was supposed to do. Needless to say, that child stayed with me over night and all the next day until her mother arrived again. Again, she thought her mom would come back and once her mom left and went home without her, about an hour later, she began to grasp the concept. She held her hands up in the air for the designated time and I then explained that none of this would have happened if she had just listened to me. I then took her home. So this became her time out. She relapsed and I added an object (a book) and more time to her time-out. As I said before, she was perfect after about 4 weeks of this. I cared for her and her baby brother for 8 months and everyday that child would tell me she loved me and would see me the next day. Everyday it broke my heart to think back on how hard I had to be with her. The mother withdrew her children due to a work injury and once she recovered, she went back to work having to place her children in a public daycare (as I did not have any openings). That was 2 yrs ago and that child stayed in that same daycare until this past August when she went to kindergarten. Her mother still sends me thank you cards and the child still has her mother bring her to see me.

I didn't mention that this child was in a state-mandated therapy and that I was having to log her behavior daily. My point is, this child was the way she was because she needed tough love and adequate attention. She had watched her father abuse and beat her mother until she was almost two years old. She watched her father throw her mother around while pregnant with her baby brother (she was sooooo protective of her brother). Her father's idea of putting this child in bed (even as a infant) was to stand at the door and throw her child against the wall and let her fall into the crib. SO the child responded in the same way. Once she got the picture that this is not how you are supposed to act, she changed COMPLETELY. Though it is hard to do, believe me, sometimes tough love is the only fix. My email address is ***@**** if you want further communication. I hoped this post helped and I hope I haven't offended anyone by my tactics.

[daycaretrouble]

wow!  almost sounds like you're talking about a child in my daughters old day care. We left our previous day care because of her behavior.  As a parent, it is very frustrating to pay for care, that would normally be excellent, but is altered because of the behavior of a child like this.   I spoke to the day care director about the problem (which actually was not as bad as yours).  and even voiced my concerns about my child witnessing such behavior and tha amount of staff it took to handle her.  basically there was no response and the facility wouldnt remove the child.  There was a mass exodus of children shortly after and has pretty much tainted the reputation of what was once "THE" day care to go to in our small town.  where once there was a waiting list for spots,  now there is an add in the paper.  One child can affect so many others.    I am a nurse and have researched child behavior because of some incidents that have arisen in daycare.   I often see that "poop" related behavior (throwing, eating, pooping in pants when potty trained, etc)  are listed in many articles as abnormal and often are associated with trauma of some sort in there life.  Cruelty to animals also is listed as a major red flag.  I would google sites regarding normal vs abnormal child behavior, signs of abuse.   many have symptoms listed and will tell you which ones to be most concerned about.