Yle has found several hundred reports of children attacking staff in early childhood education and pre-school in Tampere, based on safety incident reports from 2024 and 2025. The number of reports has grown considerably in recent years.
Staff have been kicked, hit, scratched and had objects thrown at them, including forks and pens. One report described a five-year-old child strangling an adult. In another, a child kicked an employee hard in the chest and a fractured rib was diagnosed days later.
A child also poked an adult's left eye with a finger during lunch. "From the occupational safety perspective, violence is a problem in Tampere," said Petri Vuorio, occupational safety representative for early childhood education in Tampere.
Eeva, a nurse in early childhood education who has worked in the field for 20 years, said the violence has left bruises and affected her mentally. "Frankly, I've sometimes been scared," she said. Yle is not publishing her real name or workplace to protect the children's privacy.
She said police or an ambulance have been called a few times to calm an aggressive child, and that Yle did not get police confirmation of this.
OAJ's work-life barometer, published in August, shows one in three respondents has faced violence from children at work. OAJ legal affairs director Ulla Walli said three percent of respondents reported two years ago that violence led to sick leave, against seven percent this year. "Over the last 10 years, work accidents related to violence have increased tenfold," Walli said.
Vuorio said about 20 reports were filed across the city per month eight years ago. Today a single unit can produce 50 a month, and more than a thousand have been logged this year. "A large part of my working time goes to going through them," he said.
He called for legislation to bring more adults into groups and for separate calming rooms in new daycares.
Autismiliitto expert Jaana Anttila said violent symptoms among children on the autism spectrum often involve elevated stress. "When load and stress accumulate, behavioural symptoms can increase," she said. Under the law, a daycare group may have at most seven children over three per educator, and four children under three.