Safeguarding called me today regarding DD4

Yes , agreed, no leading questions.

This is absolutely correct, the question here was totally out of order and the member of staff needs re-training.

Any questions put to the child need to be in a calm, private environment and be carefully phrased so as not to illicit a particular response.

Yeah. The best mate thing obviously comes from a place of love, but at that age they need pretty strong parenting and guidance. OP can be more 'mates' with her daughter once she's a young adult. And can make her own decisions properly.

Well you'd have grounds to bring it up with the DSL as the leading questions shouldn't have been how she went about it at all. That's not how you ask about incidents like that, so it could be useful to let the DSL know and then they can follow up on it. But on the overall, the school getting involved etc, that's what we should be expecting and it's good they did.

What exactly are you trying to say here that's relevant to the OP's concern?

The number of times a child has said their parent has hurt them in my direct experience is higher than you’d think. It is very common - most of the time no further investigations are needed other than a conversation with the parent, but sometimes there needs to a Social Services referral.
This incident will be recorded on CPOMS and be transferred to her new school.

But why? I just feel you're making this into a bigger deal than this is, thanks for the correction but another child saying x does matter. Many children don't report their abuse or neglect, they may say things to friends or peers, we should always be teaching children that bad secrets or secrets which might keep someone in danger should be reported.

The teacher shouldn't have asked too much of a leading question, though she is young so sometimes harder to get an answer with a very open question, but still shouldn't have asked the way she did. However on the whole, it's all over, it took a few minutes, maybe next time it will be a child who does need the help. I'd rather prioritise that then you feel hurt over something thinking you could do x (that shows you're a good mother but they can't be certain and so should always check).

The child didn't ask your daughter about where she got her hurt etc, so even if she didn't mention the arm it doesn't mean her saying that to the teacher would be a lie (it is clear you aren't harming her but imagine in a different situation). Would you rather the teacher ignorened it? Or what would you wanted her to do instead? Other than not ask a leading question, as that isn't good practice but about the other stuff, what would you have liked instead?

I think they asked her a leading question, lots of children would go along with what they said. It’s good they are taking it seriously but I would be upset with how they asked the question too. Also some children make things up. I remember a little girl in my son’s class going up to another boy saying my son said he was sick to death of him. She’d made it up completely out of nowhere or heard those words somewhere before & just came out with it. I hope you are ok OP, not a nice thing to go through.

No one who has had any safeguarding training should phrase a question like ‘did mummy hurt your arm?
‘How did you hurt your arm or can you tell me what’s happened to your arm?’ Would be more appropriate.
I had a teacher speak to me at the end of the day about a safeguarding incident when mine were smaller. My youngest child had gone into school saying he was starving, he hadn’t had breakfast and there was no food in the house….
Luckily he has an older sibling in a different year so they went and had a chat with the older child.
He was most perplexed to be asked if he had eaten breakfast that day, to which he replied yes and they asked him to tell them what he had had (porridge).
They had asked him what everyone else had eaten and he said that we’d all eaten the same, but that his little brother wasn’t impressed because it wasn’t his favourite but I had run out of the chocolate pancakes and cereal he liked so the choice was porridge, toast or crumpets….
They asked if he was packed lunch or school dinners that day, he was packed lunch as younger brother was entitled to free school meals because of age. They asked if they could see it, so he went and got it.
They soon realised that my youngest wasn’t in fact starving and that I did have food in the house…. They mentioned it to me incase my eldest child came home and mentioned the interest in his breakfast 🤦‍♀️
i said I would much rather they checked then just assumed the little one was exaggerating, little ones to say random stuff.. I wouldn’t worry too much about it the school do have a duty of care, but they do need to be careful how they phrase things

It is a horrible thing for you to go through but they have to take it seriously. The staff will realise 4 year olds live in cloud cuckoo land 99% of the time but they must follow the protocols.

Once it all blows over though put a Subject Access Request in to the school to check what they've been saying about you and if anything is untrue you can insist they correct the information.

If she's changing schools on Monday it is unlikely to follow her there. It's just a storm in a teacup, I would ignore it and move on.

My DD’s nursery do this also and it annoys me. They also really take note of your reaction..

Kids talk all kinds of rubbish OP. Safeguarding teams are trained to identify what is a genuine concern and what is crap. They just had to follow up on what your DD said to make sure nothing was amiss, especially as they don't know her well yet.

FWIW I walked out of school in my first week, saw my mum and said no way am I coming home with you hahahaha I had just had a great day and didn't want to go home but it was mortifying.

Did you tell Joanne your arm is sore? Yes
Can you remember how that happened? Or just why is your arm sore? Or has anyone hurt you? A 4 year old would be able to answer that.
Did mummy hurt you is an awful safeguarding question, children are likely to agree if given what they perceive to be a right answer, especially from a teacher. What if someone was hurting this child and it wasn't mummy? Was mummy hurting your arm, no, oh ok then.

You should be thankful that they're taking such care over her safety. It could save a child's life.

If they are genuinely concerned about a disclosure the teacher should not be asking your child direct questions, nor advising you that they are doing so. There is a specific process to follow which will be on the school website.

You're overthinking this. Lots of kids will say things to school/nursery that the staff have to follow up on whether or not they think there's any basis in them. My personal experience of this was when my older one had a gigantic bruise on their temple, a really nasty one, and told the staff I'd hit them with a metal shopping basket. Strictly speaking, that was true, but what DC1 failed to mention is that they'd come up suddenly behind me just as I was turning (and DC1's head was just at the height of the shopping basket 😬).

They have to check because, as shown by this thread, some people purposefully hit their kids and they think it's fine. And unfortunately behaviour like this often escalates.

Agree. She should have said “did your arm get hurt? What happened?”

Id report it to the head. Just so they can refresh their training etc.

It's not nice. But it's necessary. Almost always it's nothing, until you find the one kid that actually is getting hurt. And one child over hearing can put a stop to their suffering.
Don't take it personally, they're just trying to protect children. They've had safeguard training, they know what they're doing.

True but the child only pointed to her arm when asked before. The teacher only overheard her saying her mum hurts her, she didn't say where until promoted so a question asking in general about whether she gets hurts is better.

OP just because bruises cannot be seen on the skin they can see it doesn't mean physical abuse can't be happening. It may be from a while ago and bruises have faded (its hard to report abuse), maybe it's on a location they can't see, maybe the kids skin is darker and so some bruises aren't prominent, maybe it's emotional abuse. My point is there are many things that could be happening and it's important that we don't only ask if we see bruises as many children would be missed if we operated that way.

Meh, I don’t think this is a given. I used to get a smack for bad behaviour, as was the norm in the 90s. I never feared my parents for a minute.

I don’t smack my children though. I can honestly say it has never really occurred to me. I don’t think smacking was ever a good thing and it surprises me that it happened but it’s not necessarily the case that smacked children fear their parents.

Yes it did…..it made you beat your own child. He must be petrified of you.

Well, it did, because it taught you that it's acceptable to hit smaller, weaker people.