Year 1 child excluded - help please

[ncforschoolhelp]

Hi all

I have a previous thread about my year 1 child's behavioural issues almost exclusively at school. He has now been temporarily excluded and I am really hoping for advice from any parents of young children who have been through similar, any teachers who could give any advice and any governors who might be able to shed some light on any appropriate next steps for me or from the school.

The reason given today was his level of disruption wasn't feasible for him to stay in the building and he wasn't calming down with the usual interventions the school give.

Happy to answer any q's and apologies for lack of insight so far.

Is this a formal suspension? It is worthwhile reading the statutory suspension and exclusion guidance so you know what should actually happen. For example, depending on the length of the suspension, although the governing body must take into account any representations from you, they are not required to arrange a meeting with parents.

What support is the school providing?

Has an EHCNA been requested?

Just good luck.

School kept doing the stuff that made Ds's autistic behaviour worse. Then blamed me.

My child was excluded near the start of Y1 and has similar behaviour

School got a behaviour psychologist to do a report and referred her for ND assessment. They put a bunch of interventions in place. We are also proceeding with Right To Choose via GP as it may speed things up. We have the school report as evidence, as well as the exclusion. It's a bit easier to make a case for ND given family history and behaviour present at home.

Be pushy, get things in writing. It's difficult.

In your shoes you should open a R2C with your doctor - do not be fobbed off, mine tried so hard to get rid of us. Do the SAR first so you can compile your own evidence.

Some years ago, EPs had a group of schools they were attached to and there was a meeting in each school when it was decided how to prioritise EP time. It wasn’t always observing individual children and reporting, but it usually was. Sometimes there were training sessions for staff.

Now that budgets are squeezed even more, EP time is even less, so many in your position OP, go down the private route.

How long is this exclusion for?
Have you been given a letter detailing the circumstances and a date for reintegration?
Are there other triggers, as well as his dislike of losing?
What does the school put in place to try to avoid triggers and what plan is in place if he becomes upset?

You can, as a PP said, request an EHNCA yourself. It doesn’t require a diagnosis, but there is evidence of need. I believe that IPSEA has model letters etc, that you can use.

Goodness OP you sound like a tough cookie and i mean that as praise that you're reaching out. I've seen it all too often that parents are seeking support and the school brushes it under the carpet so I have my fingers crossed that this leads to support for you and your child. I'm wishing you and your child the very best of luck.

I used to be a TA for years so saw lots of behaviours. There was one kid let’s call him Thomas who when you spoke to his Mum she’d say he was a delight at home, but he was a nightmare at school. We did lots of interventions and the only thing that worked was him being able to do the work on a table by himself, then just play afterwards or read quietly. He was super bright & just liked calm, peaceful classrooms. Could the free flow of your school be quite noisy a lot of the time?

Is home schooling an option?
is paying for an Ed psych yourself an option?

Not everyone functions well in a class of 30 kids. He sounds overwhelmed.

This reminds me a lot of a child I taught. He was so insanely bright at maths, he did A-Level in junior school. I think he was completely bored at school and thought we were all stupid!

Does your son have any siblings/ cousins or other children that he plays with regularly out of school. How does he negotiate sharing/taking turns/ not always being first with them. If he is ok with this, what causes the issue at school

I have no idea whether your son is autistic or not but you could try some interventions that help autistic children.

Have a read up about social stories and/or ask the SENDCO about them

Some social stories on line are aimed at those with learning disabilities but they can work for those without these too. Sometimes they can have an almost magical effect

Key things are to write in the first person, name feelings , say if something is ok, read it repeatedly.

So something like:
My name is Daniel and I am 6 years old. Every day the teacher ( put in name) asks us to line up to go and wash our hands before lunch. Some times I am fist in the queue to do this. I enjoy being first.

Often though another child is first in the queue. This is OK. Everyone likes a turn at being first.
When this happens i feel sad and angry. This is not nice but it is okay. Sometimes when I feel sad and angry I hit and throw things. This is not ok

Instead, if I feel sad and angry about not being first I can...( talk to ( named member of staff) about my feelings/ write about my feelings in my feelings book when I get home/ go and sit in the calm corner and take 5 deep slow breaths/ - whatever other strategies you and school work out to help him manage the disregulation) .

It may be, if he has some kind of neuro- diversity that a noisy open classroom is quite stressful for him and his window of tolerance is "used up" dealing with this. Then he just doesn't have the tolerance to cope with otter stressors - like not being first.

Personally, I wouldn’t deregister and electively home educate. It is often easier, although not easy, to get support when DC remain in the system. Crudely, remaining in the system means you are someone’s ‘problem’. Whereas, it is easier for professionals to sweep DC’s needs under the carpet if you EHE.

It sounds like he's not coping. What would be really telling is, what strategies have they tried? Does your child like the teachers? Most importantly... Does he think they like him?

I'm a reception teacher and often children are 'on the edge' and it seems like some years they are just completely off the scale and then other years functioning OK within the class, often, I believe this is down to how they perceive themselves in the school setting. Is it a nurturing place or an angry, punishment focused setting?

Just reading the words "mixed 1/2 year, year group in an environment without walls made me want to curl up into a ball. I'd say your first intervention is to change schools to a more traditional environment. Your second is to involve your local CAMHS service for Ed Psych. Follow up every referral and letter in writing with a clear audit trail.

I thought the environment you have just described disappeared after the 70s.

I don’t know if it would possible to play games with him at home and not let him win. Explain that it is good to play but we don’t always win. Praise him when he accepts losing but just try and ignore the tantrum when he loses.

A year ago I was on this exact position. .one exclusion led to another and another and then 121 learning.with little classroom time, then part time timetable so I was part time home schooling.
My child clearly had ASD and ADHD so I had already started the SEN process so was a little further ahead but these are the things and people to try that I found helped me get a diagnosis, and EHCP and a specialist school for my now year 2 child :

Speak to and build a relationship with your school SENco. They can help you arrange an Educational Psychologist report, assist you with all aspects of the journey ahead (if they are good, sadly I know not all are)
Speak to your GP about the Right to Choose process for diagnosis if your child is showing signs of ADHD or ASD.
Speak to the health visitor for guidance and information on how to help the situation
Join any local SEN parent forums on Facebook or see if there are any parent carer groups locally as these were invaluable for me.
But the key thing is an Ed Psy report with school and an EHCP as this will look at your child's educational needs and what can be offered to support them educationally.
If I can help any more, do let me know. I'm not going to lie, it's a minefield and you'll need support so grab it everywhere you can and push for it where necessary, but it is all achievable with the right support.

What does he say about school? Do you talk about what he likes, doesn't like, why he gets upset, what the teachers are like? Just by chatting not grilling.

your child has very likely sen, home educate until you have diagnosis/find a place in sen school. It is very unfair on a sen child to be sent to mainstream school

Ok. Mother of ridiculously clever DD here. Also couldn't cope with losing. We were lucky in that she ran away rather than threw stuff, but otherwise snap. She's autistic. I would bet the house your kid is too. It's not a bad thing. She's yr5 now and while things aren't perfect she's happy, learning, engaging in school and has friends.

Ideas.

A) Apply for an EHCP now. If you can afford it - spend the 7k ish it will take to get tribunal level SALT, EP and OT reports. Far far more useful than diagnosis.
B) Explosive child techniques to help him develop the skills he hasn't got. Single best thing we did.

This is because MN have completely changed how the visibility of the SEN boards work - it used to be you could opt in to see them in Active Convos, which made sense because it meant anyone who actually had experience/understanding could do this and see the threads when they came up, while avoiding the issue of people responding to the thread not realising it was related to an SEN issue.

If the SEN boards had an option to opt-in to appear in Active again then the topics would get views from people who have opted in to view them. Rather than the current situation which is that they are completely hidden out of the way and you have to actively go looking to see if someone has posted on them.

Is he an only child?

I am both a SEN parent and a parent governor. My little boy is also year 1 and he was excluded for 2 days in January. He had a meltdown and trashed the room and was violent towards staff. They excluded him due to the level of violence.

At the reintegration meeting the school should tell you that they have conducted a risk assessment and what the outcome of this is. It is to protect the child and staff. They should have a list of procedures in place to meet your child's needs so this doesn't happen again. Think about what you see are the issues. Tell the school your views and how you think these can be resolved.

Try not to be too concerned at the moment. The exclusion reset my little boy and calmed him down as he was in a really unsettled period.

If the school aren't pushing then apply for a parental EHCP (Ed psych will be a part of this) you don't need a diagnosis for an EHCP. This will outline all his needs and whether his current school can meet them.

Unfortunately the NHS wait for diagnosis can be years long, if at all possible to pursue a private diagnosis I would look into this (both sets of grandparents helped us out with the cost).

Well, as an Ed psych, I would assume he knows intellectually he can't always be first. It's just hard for him to deal with those feelings. I rarely use social stories and never targeting emerging behaviour. Most kids know they shouldn't bite/kick/ scream if they aren't first.

I tend to think that these situations arise in possibly ND kids where the expectations outstrip the child's ability to handle them. So you have useful information - he struggles to cope with disappointment and turn taking in a macro way.

I would be doing relationship building work, probably with the TA or teacher. 3 times a week, for 10-15 mins, of game playing, probably 2 kids or 3 kids including yours. Turn taking games. Activities he enjoys (say he loves cars, they play cars on the car mat). TA does lots of commentary style stuff. Once a child has trust that they are liked and valued it's much easier to work on gentle redirection and moderation of emotional over responding.

TA and you as parents also need to Model being frustrated and how they handle it. Talk about the size of a problem and working out how big a reaction you need. A level 1 problem is a minor frustration. A lot of ND children also don't understand that they don't need to be ashamed for thinking bad thoughts - we all think things that aren't kind. We might think "I am really cross about losing that game, I wish I had won, for a moment I wanted to punch Timmy in the nose for winning" - BUT we don't do it. It's just a thought, that we can rationalize - "but actually punching someone is never ok, so I won't, and anyway I might win another time, it's just a game it doesn't really matter". Kids who are BD can be distressed at the shame their thoughts cause them because they are told "that's not kind/not nice" and they (being literal) begin to think they themselves are not kind or not nice - then they get in a cycle of shame and distress. That kindness is more about the way you act than the way you think.

It's also really important to praise process not outcome in bright ND children. Praise effort not skill. And introduce the idea of handling ambiguity right now while he's young - that not all questions have a "right" answer and that it's ok to not know. Philosophical questions are good for this - things like "is lying ever a good thing?" Or "why do we like stories?"

Retired teacher, in my last school setting in Recepton we had 2 excluded, one repeatedly, the parents had to sign a form allowing deputy head and manager to team teach if needed, it meant a lot of paperwork and I felt totally unnecessary ( I left as I hated it there). But what observations have they given you? As in what happened just before and during these meltdowns. We had to several write ups with pictures to show parents what the children are doing have you seen them?, if they know he has issues with being first etc, what are they doing to support? I used to play little games in a side room, simple games such as snakes and ladders, and if the child lost and became angry I would ignore until they were calm and explain sometimes you lose and play again, one thing I did do which was seen by outside agency as a good thing was give them a job so they were at the back of the line, when moving to lunch etc,told them they were helping me. It took away the having to be first, they would choose the next person to be last and he would be second to last and they worked the way up the line, I just wonder what are they doing to help him

Hi im a senco. It differs between authorities but to get an educational psychologist in to school for us we have to first request an EHCP assessment. Only if this request if accepted (and this really varies) will an ed psych visit the child. It used to be the other way round and the EP would write a report before we requested an EHCP. So if this was my setting for instance I wouldn’t be able to get an Ed psych in xx