What do daycare or preschools do when a 4-5 year old boy keeps hitting other kids?

[pinetrees150]

What is their procedure, warnings, guidelines, etc.

Thank you.
Is there some kind of set guidelines.

[Amber R]

My daughter is in Pre-k and is 5 at the moment. There are 4 and 5 year olds in her class. She attends Headstart. They do not deal out any physical punishments. What they do at her school is sit the child in time out, check the child that was hit for bruises or red marks. Both parents are called. The teachers called the child who was hit first to inform them what has happened and tell them what to look for. Then they call the parents of the child who did the hitting. Those parents are told that the child needs to be either picked up immediately or they will be separated from the rest of the class.
Im not exactly sure what they do when they are separated but im pretty sure that they do not allow the child to be near the one that they have hit.
I think that they also take the child off to the side and find out what the problem is...if maybe there is something going on at home or maybe the other child really provoked them. In either case, the hitter is separated from the other so to avoid this from happening again.
I would call whatever program you are interested in and find out the exact way they handle this.

Good luck!!

[dianne90578]

It varies, depending on what daycare he's in. Every daycare or preschool has different ways of doing things. However, having worked in daycare for seven years before having my own daughter (I stay at home now), I can tell you that most daycares have similar procedures for stuff like that. What they will do is put him in time out, one minute per year of age, so he'd be in time out for probably 5 minutes at a time. He would be warned upon getting out of time out that he is not to hit other children, and he would be made to apologize to the kid or kids he hit. His teacher would probably mention this to his parents at the end of the day when they come to pick him up. If he hit someone again, he would either get time out again, or be sent to the director, who would probably sit down and have a talk with him. He'd be sent back to his class under strict orders not to hit anyone. He'd probably stop hitting for awhile, but pretty soon, maybe the next day or a few days later, he'd try it again. If the hitting kept happening no matter what the teachers did or the child became increasingly violent, the parent would be called right there and then to come get the child. Sometimes a child like this is sent to another classroom for a day or a week to remove him from the situation. This can be used as a form of discipline, if the child is sent to a younger classroom where he feels bored and out-of-place (he's with the "little kids" and he's a big kid; he's embarrassed, etc.). Or he could be what some people called "tomato-staked" to a teacher, meaning that he has to stick with that teacher physically, everywhere the teacher goes, and is not allowed to sit at the table or stand in line with his friends. I've seen all of these discipline measures taken against kids who are chronic "hitters". The truth underneath is that you can't really fix this sort of problem in a daycare, b/c this level of misbehavior requires high level involvement from and a great deal of time spent with the PARENTS, who are ultimately responsible for the child. The daycare teachers can "Band-Aid" the problem for awhile, but the child will most of the time go back to his default behavior. I know because I've seen it a thousand times.

[kraden_hottie]

Different day cares and preschools have different rules. Most day cares say that if a child hits or bites, or any thing like that, more then 3 times in one day, they will have to find another daycare. Although I work at a daycare in a very small town, we put the child in time out when they hit or kick. If it because a problem, we try to separate the kids that keep fighting. We always let the parents know what's going on, and if it continues to be a problem, and tell the parents they need have a talk with their child.

[TotalRecipeHound]

Depends on the daycare and the incident that is causing the hitting. Ask the one you are considering.