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Unregistered 01:34 PM 10-24-2010
My son was a biter, too. When he was a year old at a large corporate nation wide chain daycare, a child with a known biting problem at enrollment was allowed to join the daycare without notice to the parents. After my son was severely bitten many times and the daycare downplayed and refused to tell the parents anything, the biter finally left voluntarily. Yes, the biter was not terminated and the daycare didn't say anything to the family except sending her home after she'd bitten many times. They didn't even seperate her from the group when she had to be picked up and she bit more during that time. My son would have huge bruised bite marks on his back - she would bear hug him and bite while the teacher was changing diapers. I found out years later from other teachers that he would be hysterical for the rest of the day and would be screaming for mommy. I'm haunted by that to this day. They only had one teacher classrooms, so she couldn't be effectively shadowed. During the time and for a long time later, my son would night wake with night terrors. Even saying her name would start the night terrors again. The damage was done. I don't blame her - she had no business being in a large group setting with her type of biting problem - I blame the daycare. My son started biting immediately and he bit regularly until he was 3. He only bit 2 different kids the entire time. And believe me, those parents were both teachers in the school system and made my life hell for years. Daycare intervention is a big one. I requested for years that the daycare seperate my child from the 2 he was biting - they never did and that was a shame. One of those 2 was also a biter who picked it up from the original biter as well, so my son and the other child would sit and bite each other for the fun of it while the teachers watched and laughed. Teachers told me this. There was even a daycare teacher with a child who was a biter who picked it up from the original biter as well. They bent over backwards to move him around and help out the teacher mom - even switching her child and my child in 2 different classrooms to accomodate the teacher mom. They refused to accomodate my child in any way regardless of my suggestions. Every one of my suggestions was used with all the other biters in the daycare, but they refused to try that with my son. My child was the only one that ever got punished - I know because the daycare teachers told me and so did the parents. Go figure! If hindsight was foresight, I would have taken him out of there after the first bite and enrolled him somewhere else. I'm positive I would have never had any problems with him - he never bit outside of daycare regardless of situation. He got sent home a couple of times but I was threatened with termination every week and my child bit maybe once or twice per week and rarely ever left a mark - they even wrote him up for attempting to bite! Fastforward 2 years later and I find out recently that this same chain daycare allowed another child of same age to bite every day for a year and the only thing ever done was give her parents handouts, never even had a conference with her and certainly never mentioned termination! Found out from the parent herself. Talked with other parents who had been complaining about the biter to the director. Biter had never been sent home even once. The mom is a teacher in the local school system - conicidence you say, I think not. In every case where the biting was overlooked, the parents were teachers in the local school system. I was the only one not in the school system and only had one child. The others were paying $24,000 and $36,000 per year in daycare tuition. I was only paying $12,000 because I only had one at their daycare and therefore was easily expendable. I'm sure not much I could do now, but trust me, when I have more children, I will use my experience. Everyone tells me to avoid me large group daycares and hire in home small centers instead and I agree. I've polled all my friends and not one single one had a problem with small in home centers. Live and learn I guess. I wished I'd discovered this forum years ago, it could have really helped me back then.
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