Safeguarding called me today regarding DD4

Asking a 4 year old child a leading question is not safe guarding and it doesn't keep children safer. On the contrary. If you asked my four year old if taylor swift called him a poopoo head to his face he would say yes. If you asked him if a unicorn scratched him with his horn he would say yes. He says yes to pretty much any random thing. 4 year olds are probably the worst of unreliable narrators.

The problem however with Asking 4 year olds leading questions is that not only are you unlikely to get the truth but you also run the risk of implanting ideas into their head. If you ask with enough conviction or authority the 4 year old might actually start believing it.

Op I totally get why you are upset ahd contrary to popular opinion I don't think that the school handled this well or have a good handle on safe guarding.

This

Staff are right to ask questions if they hear something that may flag a safeguarding concern, but asking leading questions (“Did mummy hurt you?”) is inappropriate & goes against safeguarding protocols & training.

Actually there is, safeguarding training is no leading questions, no suggestion of who hurt you.
She could’ve been asked ‘what happened to your arm’ or ‘who hurt you’ or ‘how did your arm get hurt’.
These should’ve been the leading questions. Obviously they’re will be occasion to be more direct but this does not sound like one of those occasions.

The teacher took no care at all. If the child had actually been abused, the teacher's evidence would be absolutely useless and might well trash the investigation.

You cannot ask a child a leading question if you're following up a safeguarding concern. The child's answer becomes meaningless and invalid. That teacher needs re-training otherwise a child who is actually being hurt by a parent is going to be badly let down.

Yes they phoned me both times to tell me
they had done safeguarding reports to SS. New preschool were shocked. To be fair, SS didn’t seem interested.

I was incredibly upset and felt unjustifiably accused of bad parenting. I particularly couldn’t understand the bruising issue. There were a few tiny bruises but nothing out of the ordinary.

If they were planning to report to SS, they would have to tell you first.

The point is that they're NOT supposed to ask the question that the teacher asked. It's a leading question and that's one of the most important things that you're taught in safeguarding training.

The teacher was plain wrong.

What do you suggest ‘common sense’ is in this case?
I would not consider asking leading questions to be ‘common sense’. Safeguarding policies, procedures and training exist for a reason. And any adult who is unsure of what to do should consult their DSL/ safeguarding team / safeguarding policy to reduce their chances of making mistakes.

The teacher should not of asked her a direct question and to be honest im surprised you were called and asked outright as well

No, it's not a bit silly. This is absolutely what would be advised as a next step from a lower level disclosure like this. The parent's response helps inform the next step.

OP, they will have recorded it, but this does not mean that they think you are abusive, nor that the new school will think you're abusive. They won't be referring to social services unless they've told you that they will be.

Yes, the questioning doesn't sound ideal. But it is very hard to ask the questions to a 4-year-old. The school has done nothing wrong here, although it wasn't perfect.

Embarrassment isn't the term that pops into my head. Anxiety, fear is.

I think they have gone about this the wrong way. If they are concerned they need to look for an injury, have a brief open conversation with the child (is your arm hurt? would be a better start) and then respond accordingly.

Their response is just a good way to rattle families whilst doing nothing effective to safeguard children. Her answer to the question is meaningless because it is a leading question and she's 4. It's obvious that it has served no purpose as despite her responding positively, there's been no action besides the box ticking exercise of giving you the opportunity to fess up over the phone 🙄. As if. Really the only important determinant of the safeguard response here is that there is no injury!

I'd be annoyed by this but I would urge you not to be too upset and not to feel judged. I expect that everyone involved is well aware there's nothing to worry about, they know what 4 year olds are like. She's probably telling her truth because she didn't like the way you put her jumper on or something 🙄.

This is somebody at the school doing what they think is the right/mandatory thing because they're not confident about safeguarding and they've recently sat through the annual safeguarding training and listened all about those awful cases and how teachers could have done more. There's a lot of pressure on professionals not to be under zealous with safeguarding.

I think your daughter is too young to take much away from this experience. Moving school doesn't "look bad" noone will care about this ever because it's obviously a complete non event. (not to belittle your feelings about it which are v understandable)

Pic of app under review- because pics or it didn't happen, right. Stay tuned.

DS4 was arguing with nursery staff that girls have willies- because he saw them on our iPad. And proceeding to describe female anatomy. It was labias! They were thinking he'd been exposed to porn!!

I thought and said, the day before I had described seeing something similar on a colleagues screen at work- to my partner in the car when I thought DS was sleeping. Felt implausible but what else could it be?

Awkward safeguarding convo with nursery!

Go home and tell DP about it and he solves the mystery.

DS was obsessed with bones- like scapula, patella, ilium. We have an anatomy app and we'd bring up the skeleton page which speaks the bone names when you select one.

However, the actual entry to the app has other anatomy drawings- eg skeletal, brain, digestive, reproductive, etc. That's what he had seen.

I took a pick and ran back to show them. They were so relieved and knowing DS and his bone interest totally understood.

That was the end of it but it felt horrible and a judgement of our parenting. I hope it gets resolved quickly for you

DC2's preschool reported me to social services twice - once because of 'lots of bruising' and another time because DC2 wasn't properly dressed for winter weather.

I was extremely upset.

The bruising was totally insignificant and no idea why they thought it was significant. The clothing was because DC2 just took off anything they didn't want to wear - so for example they usually removed socks. Ironically they were actually wearing socks that day. We didn't know it then but DC2 is autistic and has sensory issues.

After the second report; I couldn't take the stress any more and moved them to a different preschool.

It can be upsetting when this happens but they do have to follow it up.
I agree they went about it the wrong way though.
A similar thing happened with my middle daughter when she was 4. She had been messing about with something and caused herself an injury and at school they asked her how she was injured.. she told them my husband did it to her! Presumably because I had told her before not to mess about with this thing (would be outing if I put exact details of what she was doing but she used to try and do it all the time) and so she thought she would get into trouble so made something up.
I knew this to be the case as the mark was very oddly shaped. It could only be made by this item and indeed she had given herself this mark in the past in front of my eyes so I knew for sure it was caused by that.
But it was upsetting for my husband as they rang him to speak with him about what she had said.
Obviously nothing came of it as we could explain.
They do have to investigate this type of thing tho.
Try not to take it personally or be too worried. They will know that often children that young are just saying random things which aren't real.

You should never ask leading questions, especially not when they’re so young. YANBU.

People fall over themselves not to ask “leading questions” everyone’s an expert on what to say but sometimes in the situation it doesn’t go to plan. Imagine some poor 4 year old unable to articulate because an adult is too scared to use common sense.

It’s very poor practice to ask a leading question like this, especially with a 4 year old who, as you say, might just agree with whatever was asked. It’s one of the first thing that they tell you in safeguarding training.

Exactly all this!

I’m a safeguarding lead. We can’t be sure that the teacher asked that question directly as none of us were there. But the correct protocol is no leading questions. The school can decide whether or not to raise a safeguarding and this largely depends on interpretation. For example a child may say “mummy hurt me with the hairbrush” because they had tangled hair, not because they got hurt intentionally. Teachers are trained to understand children. The process is that whichever teacher heard the disclosure will escalate it to the designated safeguarding lead for advice. The likely outcome is nothing, because you didn’t hurt your child, and when spoken to she will say that. I know it sounds scary but you’d be surprised at what social services actually do get involved with, vs what they don’t. Not many people understand how social services work. Try not to worry

I don’t disagree. I think I’ve just seen it said too many times on this site and it’s never in the context of a healthy relationship with pre-teens if you see what I mean?