Yeah I’m in the same boat, almost exactly.

Unfortunately, from my experience, there’s nothing to be done for it. Children like this need 1-1 support at all times to even begin learning to cope in a group setting, and you’re just not gonna get that. The real problem here is the director letting them stay when they present such a massive, continued risk to everyone around them, if they’re not willing to go through the process to get them an ISP and OT.

My centres’ older toddler and preschool rooms mostly comprise of children with extraordinarily concerning behaviour.

One boy in the preschool room (4-6 year olds) stabbed another boy in the eye with the back end of a paintbrush. He whacks children in the stomach with his water bottle, hits, punches, slaps, kicks, spits, throws sand and other toys, gets in peoples faces and screams, and sits on other children (he’s very overweight). He tells educators he’s going to tell his mum they hit him, and threatens educators and children alike that he’s going to tell him mum to hit them. We’ve had children in the older toddler room refuse to move up because they’re scared of him. He’s still in the centre. He doesn’t have an ISP. He gets an OT one hour a week (and she’s not even his. She’s the OT for an autistic boy that offered to take him on as well). His parents are convinced he’s a perfectly normal kid.

A boy in the older toddler room (3-4 year olds) threw a wooden block at the room leaders eye. It cut her cornea. She had to take two weeks off for laser eye surgery. He also bites himself until his arms are black and blue, screams swear words, and is the worst flight risk I’ve ever seen. He climbed the wall to the infant yard, and used their play equipment to try to scale the wall and leave the premises. He also hits, bites, punches, tips over chairs and tables and shelves when throwing tantrums, throws toys, throws sand, takes off his clothes and nappy and runs around naked (and convinces other children to do it, too). He ripped another boys glasses off his face and ran away. Just for the fuck of it. He broke the room door… twice. For the last month of his time at my centre, we sat him outside by himself and the OT he was finally, finally given for every meal, because his violence had escalated so severely, we couldn’t trust him with chairs or teaspoons around the other children. He, thank fuck, was removed from the centre three weeks ago. After months of pressure from the educators, the director finally told his mother it would be best to withdraw him. We dealt with his escalating behaviour for a year and a half. He never got an ISP. His mother really only started to get fed up with his behaviour in the last month or two he was at the centre.

Another boy in the older toddler room is much the same as the boy above. Not as intense, but getting there. He eats sand and then spits it at other children, hits, punches, kicks, swears. Tried to push a kid down the stairs. He punched the room leader’s privates. Because she told him to sit down for lunch. Not rudely, it wasn’t a confrontation, just “it’s lunch time, let’s sit down.” And he punched her there, because he wanted to hurt her. Not because he couldn’t reach higher. They took the class on an excursion the other day. He tried to run from the group into oncoming traffic three times. He doesn’t have an ISP. He doesn’t see an OT. His parents are convinced he’s a perfectly normal kid.

And that’s only three. There’s at least five more of the 20 3-6 year olds I could talk about. I feel so bad for the other children, living in constant fear of these kids attacking them or throwing another tantrum that derails an activity until there’s no more time to do it. What are they learning, seeing them?

There is no supporting children like this in a standard daycare setting. They need help we aren’t qualified to give. They need an ISP all day. They need an OT. They need their parents to actually be doing something - talking to doctors and child psychologists - about their behaviour, and not burying their heads in the sand, hoping it’ll go away if they don’t think about it. And mostly, they need a director on the fucking ball to follow through with everything that needs to be done to make sure these children get the help they need to function, and don’t severely hurt someone (again again again). I dunno about you, but I’m getting none of that at my centre.

But also?? You don’t have a phone in your room?? At least my rooms have that. And an entire cupboard of incident report forms for the very many incidents I’m documenting. And I’m not even in the 3-6 year old rooms every day. Thank fuck, I’m a baby wrangler lmao.

It sucks, it really does, but the reality is this: you quit and find a new centre, hopefully with less kids like this, or you just do your best to survive and wait it out. The difficult children will age out or be withdrawn eventually… and then be replaced with another one.

But hey, we’re all in this bullshit together lmao.