I’m very emotional over this and need some help to word a complaint as the way I’m feeling I will just rant and I need this to be taken seriously.
I have an autistic 7 year old son. He has no school place currently. Today we were at the farm park in the soft play area. There were schools there on school trips. I was settling baby to sleep in the buggy and did not see it happening.
My son tells me he was in the soft play just sitting in a specific area he likes to sit in sometimes. Some boys from a school trip came and started building a castle with the blocks in the area he was in and told him he was being mean because he was in their castle. (Side note the blocks are from the toddler area and should not have been taken on the large frame). A girl from the school said she was going to get a teacher to stop them being mean (it’s not clear from what my son said if she was telling on my son or on the boys being mean to him. I’m aware for these boys to describe my son as mean there may be more to this story than I’ve been told. However my son is autistic and he experienced it as these boys came up to him and started being mean he says he didn’t do anything he was just not leaving an area they wanted him to leave. He does usually own up to provoking others so I do believe that he believes the story he has told me).
Anyway a member of staff arrived and told the boys “let’s do what he asks and leave him alone”. So I know an adult saw my child in distress asking to be left alone and told these kids to leave. The kids pretended to leave the area. The teacher then left the area. The boys came immediately back and attacked my son. He says there were 4 of them. He’s not being clear what was involved in the attacking but he has bitten through his lip and had a gushing nose bleed. The first I knew of it was my son coming running up to me covered in blood and crying. I calmed him down asked what happened and at that point he said some kids had attacked him I asked which kids and he said he didn’t know but they were wearing the school uniform. I took my son over to staff from this school and said my son says he has been attacked by children from your school. The staff member said it wasn’t children from their school as the kids from their school had come over to tell them there was a kid in soft play with a nose bleed. I took my boy to the toilet to clean him up and he vomited from how distressed he was. He wanted to leave and was scared to even walk past any children in that uniform. There was enough blood to soak through his jumper top and trousers.
I get kids get over excited and rough in soft play. I also understand my child doesn’t always read a situation correctly and there is a good chance he was annoying these kids trying to join in with their game when they did not want him to. If I had been made aware of the situation I could have distracted my child. He was unsupervised by me for less that 5 minutes while I attended to baby. I’m absolutely furious at the reaction of the school staff. My child has school trauma, he was picked on for being different when he was at school and had violent meltdowns as he struggled so much meaning he was restrained and traumatised. He’s had no school place for almost 3 years while I fight to get him an EHCP and acknowledged he needs a place in a special school- still no school place but one day he will have a place and be able to attend school again. He’s made massive progress at home and I’ve been trying to get him to understand when he goes back to school it will be different as they will know how to support an autistic child and instead of reacting how he does he should ask children to leave him alone and/or tell an adult he’s struggling/someone has been mean to him that way they will help him and he won’t get in trouble for the behaviour he got in trouble for before. I’m immensely proud of him that he didn’t attack these kids back or attack them when he was called annoying and mean this is massive progress for him. He did exactly as I've been teaching him to do he asked to be left alone and an adult was made aware of the situation. But on the drive home he’s sobbing begging me not to make him go back to school. I’m absolutely livid.
I spoke with the farm park staff on my way out and as it happens the staff member has seen my son every week for 2 years and knows him. He was really lovely to my boy and he said to me they have cctv so they will check that to see what happened but there is not much they can do really. I just feel the school should do something. They were in uniform so I know which school it was. My child’s story has an adult involved at one point so the school will be able to identify which children did this. I feel there should be a consequence they can’t be allowed to physically attack another child without consequences. They need to be taught if a child annoys them get an adult not beat them up. Even if it’s just a firm conversation with these kids that is better that nothing.
As you can see from this post I use a lot more words than needed to get a point across. I don’t want my email to school not to be taken seriously because of how I write. I also want to acknowledge my child is autistic and may have misunderstood but don’t want it dismissed as his fault because he is autistic as always happens when he was bullied at school previously. regardless of what provoked the situation you do t attack another child. It wasn’t just a shove to cause the injures my son has.
Can anyone help me with wording? Am I handling this the right way?
Thanks!