Safeguarding called me today regarding DD4

I would email a soft complaint about the way the question was done, taking the line with another child could have the evidence ruined for court if a teacher asks such a leading questionn

There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for a teacher to directly ask a 4-year old child if their mother hurt them just because another four year old says they overheard them say that to yet another four year old child. That’s just a farcical game of Chinese whispers, thanks to the teacher’s idiotic leading question.

The school staff should be trained to not ask leading questions.. They handled it badly and unprofessionally.. It's good that they are proactive but they didn't follow procedure.

The first rule in safeguarding is to not ask leading questions. OP is now walking on eggshells because there’s now a report about her DD. The teacher should know better.

Totally agree. There is absolutely no place for leading and/or closed questions.in these situations. Only a professional who has been trained in this area should be in charge of finding out the situation. If I was the OP I would be seriously taking issue as this could happen again if this particular teacher is allowed to continue with their inappropriate approach.

OK fair enough, I'm out of date and didn't realise that about the software.

Why would changing schools be a red flag? Presumably OP must have set that in motion months ago - she mentioned a waiting list. You don't just decide to move schools and get a new placement on Monday.

@AloeVeraAloeFred

I appreciate what you're saying about 4 year olds and their reliability but the reality is, in a safeguarding context, you have to accept every disclosure at face value and then do what you can to establish the facts before making a decision about what action to take. It is not up to the person hearing the disclosure to judge whether the disclosure is true or not, and safeguarding 101 is clear that we always treat every disclosure as if it's true until we can know with 100% certainty that it's not.

In your example, by saying 'what did you say to X just now?' you're confusing the child as they could have said a multitude of things as part of that conversation. How do they know what you're referring to? You'd get nothing useful out of such a vague question.

If you need to establish whether a child said a particular comment, it is not inappropriate to ask a direct, closed question. Small children in particular are easily confused and using vague wording in questions to skirt around topics can end up in children not understanding what you're asking and therefore not being able to tell you what's really going on.

In this circumstance, there is nothing leading about saying 'X said you just said Y. Did you say Y?'

If the answer is yes, then you go into more detail with follow up questions. An experienced teacher with proper training in safeguarding would know how to then tease out whether the 'yes' is the child affirming reality or the 'yes' is the child just going along with an imaginary conversation or wanting to please the adult.

Ultimately none of us know the approach the school took because we are hearing a four year old's version of a conversation filtered through the OP. As you have pointed out, a four year old is not the most reliable of witnesses, so assuming that the school has dealt with the situation inappropriately is jumping the gun somewhat.

I disagree about the appropriateness of the question. If nothing else, it is entirely closed and it suggests a subject matter (mummy hurting the child) to the child, from an adult (when it remains possible that the child never said such a thing spontaneously at all). I feel an establishing question has to follow a topic which the adult is sure the child has introduced themselves.

It would be much less suggestive/leading to the child, to ask a more open question such as:

"What did you say to X just now?"

Or if that really prompted nothing, then in that context (the child not recalling anything worth saying about the conversation with X) they could be asked something like

"Did you speak to X about getting hurt just now?"

Or even
"Have you been hurt?"

These questions could have given her the opportunity to say something like "I was bitten by a shark on my face" that would have de-escalated the situation.

In your example a 4 year old has basically said "yes" twice in a row. In my experience that's the likely outcome of virtually any two closed questions asked in a row.

I recently spoke to a 4 year about her day at school. The conversation went like this:

"Did you enjoy your first day at school today?"

"Yes!"

"Did you get to meet your new teacher today?"

"Yes"

We then discussed who she had played with and what she had done. In fact, she hadn't been to school, she was just enjoying my attention. That's 4 year olds. You start a conversation where they only have to say "yes" at first and they may well get into and continue it with a whole load of nonsense. That's why 4 year olds shouldn't be asked leading closed questions in a safeguarding context.

And in this case, thankfully, it seems that everyone does understand that the "yes" doesn't mean very much, as nothing has been done to safeguard the child short of noting the incident and speaking to mum. Those actions could still have been taken, without the asking a 4 year old a question to which they are bound to answer yes, revealing absolutely nothing because that's 4 year olds for you. So we have added upset to mum for no reason. It could have upset or confused the child and made her more likely to repeat something that isn't true in future (seems unlikely, given she can't recall it!) but these small risks are worth taking into account.

I don't think it is worth feeding back to the school. Teachers aren't going to be perfect all of the time and clearly the interaction is well intentioned. But I can understand the OP's irritation.

I think quite reasonable of them to investigate but it does sound as though they may have used leading questions and not handled the situation very well.

The OP states clearly in her first post that the teacher asked 'did your mummy hurt you?' not 'does your mummy hurt you.'

The OP then later on changes this to 'does your mummy hurt you' - which is indeed a very different question.

If the OP herself can't report accurately what was said by her child, then I don't think she's really got a leg to stand on when it comes to complaining to the school.

No, it wasn't.

If you see the child has hurt their arm, and they've not said anything about it, that would be the right course of questioning.

But in this circumstance, the child has already told another child that their mummy has hurt them.

So the first thing to do is to establish whether that is true.

Once you've established the facts, you can then ask for the child's version of events.

When it comes to safeguarding, we have to operate from the assumption that what has been reported is true and investigate accordingly. As such, our first job is to establish whether it is true or not, and then we go from there. We can't dismiss things as 'hearsay' until we have all the facts and it would be dangerous to do so.

"Does your mummy hurt you?" has a very different meaning to "Did your Mummy hurt you?" The teacher should know that. I bet the child does too.

That was completely the wrong wording for the question. "Is your arm hurt? Can you tell me what happened" would have been much better.
They acted on hearsay evidence from another child - they should have been more cautious.

A child reported to the teacher what they heard the OP's child saying.

That is in safeguarding terms, a potential disclosure. You need to establish whether that potential disclosure is true.

To do so, you will need to ask the child a series of establishing questions.

'X told Mrs Y that she heard you say mummy hurt you. Did you say that?' - Establishing question.

Child says yes.

'So you did say that mummy hurt you. Is that true? Did mummy hurt you?' Still an establishing question, as the teacher is using the words the child themselves has used.

This is, in all likelihood, what the conversation at school actually looked like. The teacher would have had to ask these questions in order to find out whether the report from the other child was true. There was no other way to do so.

The OP emailing the school criticising their safeguarding procedures based on a bunch of people on mumsnet not knowing the difference between an establishing and leading question is going to make her look rather foolish.

But she hadn't offered the information to the teacher, or very possibly at all. This was hearsay reported 2nd hand by another 4 year old.

All the people on this thread saying the teacher has asked a leading question and they know this because they've done their safeguarding training seem to have no understanding of what actually constitutes a leading question.

'Did your mummy hurt you?' in these circumstances is not a leading question because the child had already told another child that her mummy had hurt her.

The teacher asking the child 'did your mummy hurt you?' is therefore an establishing question. The teacher is looking to establish whether the claim the child already made was true.

It's only a leading question if a child hasn't already offered the information and you are putting words in their mouth. 'Your mummy hurt you, didn't she?' would be a leading question in that circumstance.

The school has done nothing wrong here.

The teacher was trying to establish the truth of a claim the child made about their mother hurting them. The child affirmed that their statement was true. This then meant the parent had to be contacted.

It's basic safeguarding procedure.

OP, would you rather they'd just laughed it off?

As a teacher of many years, I could tell you many horrific stories of what children have come to school and told me about things happening at home. Often this has been behind the doors of seemingly very 'respectable' homes. We can't as teachers risk making any assumptions. If a child tells us something that concerns us, we have to report it. With little children, nine times out of ten, it is nonsense. But that one time, it's a child who really is getting abused, and that teacher's intervention could save their life. We've all seen stories in the news about children who slip between the cracks because nobody in authority did anything or the assumption was made that the parents weren't the 'type' to do such a thing. Children's safety has to come before parent's feelings, every time. Just be grateful the school was seeking to care for and protect your child and let it go.

Quite, other than stressing innocent parents, I'm not sure what their procedure achieves.

When my son was in preschool he was terrified of flies. There was one on the wall one day when I was collecting him. He shouted please mam get your gun out of your bag and shoot him. He then started rooting through my bag looking for "my gun". Had no idea he saw me as a sniper able to take out a fly with ease.

My son told his school I locked him in a cupboard when he was a baby 😂

@CC943

"Does your mother hurt you" [etc] is what is known as a leading question!

I absolutely want safeguarding. I’ve been asked about things to do with my children. I’d much prefer that 99%, or even 99.9% of time that it’s innocent and for those times they catch abused children. Sadly the stats aren’t actually anything like that, abuse is for more common. So suck up that sometimes good parents get questioned and rightly so because it’s not always obvious who is abusing children and this is about protecting children not about not parents

I understand how you feel. My granddaughter's nursery notified Social Services when she had a tender spot which, when asked how it happened, said her brother did it!. He's just two years older than her and they regularly wrestle about, and on this particular day she'd refused to get off his back and he'd elbowed her off, not realising he'd hurt her. Not only did they alert Social Services, his infant school was them notified. This caused horrendous stress in or family. Luckily, the social worker quickly understood the situation, but it took weeks for the family to settle back down. I sometimes wonder if my son's earlier complaint to the nursery for arbitrarily introducing a totally vegetarian diet for all children, triggered them reporting this before speaking to the parents.

Absolutely this. All safeguarding training should be this - don’t ask leading questions as kids can (and will) answer in the affirmative if asked a direct question.

I was going to say the same thing. Yes they had to ask but that is the wrong way to do it .

So I would be upset about that, but I would probably report it back to the school tbh without making a huge fuss.

Also the new school won’t judge you on this! Try not to worry as horrible as it is. You’ve done nothing wrong!

You haven’t been trained have you. Safeguarding practices are clearly explained and non leading questions are safeguarding 101. Especially important with young children