Winding up the angry kid

[Heartshapedfairylights]

Hello.
My child has a learning difficulty that has had serious emotional repercussions. His mental health is in tatters and he gets very angry, sometimes lashing out.
The problem is that other children seem to have a radar for this kind of thing and deliberately seek to wind him up so that he lashes out.
An incident happened today when a number of kids managed to collectively wind my son up to the point where he lashed out and hurt one of them.
It breaks my heart that this is happening more and more frequently when other kids think they can get away with it.
We are trying very hard to work on our son’s anger and mental health. CAMHs are involved.
I’m at my wits end. To other parents, my son appears to be aggressive. They fail to accept the part their children have in the outbursts and vilify my child. We’re all so miserable. Any ideas?

[eelbecomingforyou]

School should be helping. They should see when other kids are winding your dc up. Go to them, explain, and see what they can do to help.

[Heartshapedfairylights]

It didn’t happen at school. It happened in a club that my son attends.
Fortunately, it doesn’t happen at school so much because they are on it.

[Heartshapedfairylights]

Sorry. I’m drip feeding here.
The club is run by parent volunteers, some of which have children involved in the bullying. They watch it happen and when challenged (like tonight) suggested my son went on a rampage, attacking other children for no reason.

[Numbkinnuts]

If it's a club for children they should have a safeguarding lead - speak with them.

[ProudThrilledHappy]

Does he need to go to the club for your working hours or is he there for social integration? If the latter I would suggest it is more damaging for him to be there in that environment. If he has to go there I would pursue a complaint with whoever is in charge of the club

[EricTheGuineaPig]

This is awful - and very common sadly. I know my kids have talked about it happening in their primary school previously. Do they have any policies in place for dealing with bullying or including children with disabilities?

I hope you can find a solution for your poor boy.

[Heartshapedfairylights]

Thank you for your kind words. I’m sure they do have policies. At the risk of outing myself, it’s a football club. He’s been going for the last 3-4 years but more kids have joined the team and his mental health (for other reasons too) has deteriorated over that time.
We could pull him out but he does have a couple of friends there so he says he doesn’t want to leave.

[eelbecomingforyou]

Football clubs should have a pastoral care person that you can speak to. They shuold also have anti-bullying policies. However, sounds like your coaches are part of the problem, not the solution. Maybe moving your son is the bet idea. Unless you can attend all training and always be there when your son is at the club, to supervise?

[Heartshapedfairylights]

Thank you eel.

I will be staying to keep an eye on him/them next week and in the future.

I have also let the school know seen as how some boys are in his year. Just in case there are repercussions.

[eelbecomingforyou]

Good idea on both counts. Hope things settle down for your son.

[Heartshapedfairylights]

So, an update on the situation..

We now have a new coach who seems much better at managing the children. The parent volunteers were not involved in the training, which I stayed to watch very closely.

The parents of the children involved have taken great offence at the fact I have highlighted this as ‘bullying’. They feel that my child ‘dishes out’ comments so should be prepared to get it back but on mass? They believe they were all sticking up for one another but there was no one sticking up for my child. I feel as if they want to dilute what happened and pass it off as ‘just kids’.

I’m not backing down on the fact that I have named this as bullying. Not that I really care about my own position, but I was completely ostracised by the other parents in the team. It all seems so ridiculous and after all this my child STILL wants to play!

[steppemum]

I do agree with you that it is bullying.
I have had it at home, and had it when I was teaching.

At home I have said firmly to dd, if you keep poking a tiger, eventually it will bite, then the tiger gets told off. But if you didn't poke, it wouldn't bite, take responsibility for your part in it. She really got that analogy, and a couple of times I refused to intervene and punish ds as she had been such a wind up merchant.

At school, as a teacher I had one boy who wound and wound up two other boys, all morning, until at playtime they flipped and punched him. Children were all 8 years old.
After the 3rd time I punished both, and told the wind up merchant firmly that he had to learn that when you wind someone up, eventually they will retaliate etc.
Wind up boys mum went mad. Would NOT believe that her little darling had done anything wrong, and was furious he was being punished. I was very clear to her that hitting was not allowed and the other boy was firmly punished, but her son had to learn not to be a pain.
She went off steaming and furious.
But her son stopped.

[Heartshapedfairylights]

Thank you step. I almost feel as though I’m going mad.

My child is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but when a number of children are deliberately winding one up, they are likely to snap.

It is all too common unfortunately.