‘My son threw a block at another boy… now his parents want to have a meeting’

“They want the daycare director present and say they want to get to the bottom of the incident, but how can we know what happened when the kids are only three?” the mum reveals.

There are two types of kids at daycare: the biter and the bitee.

I have parented both, and so I feel I have a balanced view on the issue of kids getting hurt at daycare.

Let’s assume a baseline of trust in the carers at your child’s centre. After all, if you don’t trust them, you should move your kid.

Now let’s add in a bunch of kids, all different temperaments, needs, moods, etc.

It’s a powderkeg, and eventually someone is going to get bitten.

And when I’ve had to sign that incident report at the end of the day, whether it’s my child who did the biting, or my child who was bitten, I accept that the teachers have dealt with it fairly, I scrawl my signature and go home.

I have three kids and I don’t need more on my plate.

So it surprised me when I read Sherry’s story on Reddit, in which her three-year-old son threw a block at another boy, and the other boy had to get stitches.

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Sherry's son threw a toy at another child. Photo: iStock

Mum shocked to discover school parents want to have meeting

It wasn’t the stitches that were surprising, it was the fact that the other boy’s parents wanted to have a meeting with Sherry about it.

“My three-year-old and his classmate were at the playground at school and my son threw a wooden block and it hit the other kid’s head; he needed stitches,” she wrote.

“We asked my son what happened and he said the other kid was hitting his back. The other kid denied it and unfortunately the teacher only saw the throwing part.”

I’ll interrupt here to say this is such a classic situation, where the teacher only notices the end part of a disagreement between kids, which is usually also the loudest part because one kid is crying.

“We sent a sorry text to the family… and they said they want to meet us to talk about what happened.”

Sherry thought this was weird and didn’t know what to do. “They are three years old; how could we found out what exactly happened?” she wondered

Sherry said she felt sorry for the other boy, and she wasn’t justifying her son’s behaviour, but she felt it was strange to have a meeting with the school director present to discuss pretty normal preschooler behaviour.

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Reddit agrees mum is in awkward position

One person called the situation awkward and suggested that while Sherry shouldn’t avoid the meeting, the parents shouldn’t involve the children.

“Three-year-olds do not have the reasoning to understand why this is being talked about,” he said. "Your child already felt shame. I wouldn’t want my kid shamed any more.”

“If you’re going to talk to anyone about it, it should be the school since that’s who was supposed to be supervising them,” another person wrote.

A teacher weighed in, saying that the parents should let it go.

“I don’t think a meeting is necessary,” she said. “This isn’t the end of the world, kids throw things. At three they are learning, which is why they are in pre-kindergarten. What do the parents want to say?”

Originally published as ‘My son threw a block at another boy… now his parents want to have a meeting’