What should I do?

[SENsupportplease]

Looking for advice from other parents about a situation at my daughter's school. I don't know if i'm out of order or the school are.

Sorry it's so long I don't want to drip feed.

On Friday my daughter (10) was involved in a nasty incident, group name-calling and nastiness to another child, which she then continued after being asked to stop by her class teacher.

When this was reported to us via telephone, we took it very seriously. Told the school we would deal with it, support them dealing with it, and offered our apologies to the student and parents on DD's behalf. They seemed happy with this and thanked us.

Explained to DD the possible consequences of bullying (teacher did not call it this but we did), started restorative justice (recommended by the school) by getting DD to write an apology letter, and removed her pocket money that week. DD seemed genuinely apologetic.

Later that day was the school fair which we attended as a family, before leaving DS and DD to enjoy it with their friends - normal and acceptable behaviour at our primary.

DD saw the other child at the fair and went to apologise, which he accepted. His mum told DD to go away, which upset her. We explained that it is fair enough that the apology isn't accepted and the mum must be very upset for her son.

Then (we had left by this point) DD was watching the orchestra performance with 2 friends and they had their phones out to record another friend performing. The boys mum and grandma surrounded the three girls, grabbed at DD's phone, shouted at them, told them to "piss off," leaned into their faces, and physically pushed my daughter. By this point one of the other girls was inconsolable.

Not sure if it's relevant but the other girls had not been involved with the initial bullying incident that day.

The girls reported it to their class teacher who told them to move away, which they did. When we went to collect DD we saw how upset her friend was, asked what was wrong, which is when the girls told us what happened. We decided to go back up to the school and report it immediately.

On the way up to the school we passed the other family - DD pointed them out to us, which they overheard, and they came up right into our faces. Shouting "it's been three years of this" and "NOT TODAY". I (bearing in mind i had three upset children there) stayed very calm, acknowledged the awful bullying situation but pointed out it was not appropriate for them to have behaved that way. Grandma in particular was very proud of her behaviour and said it was her who was swearing at the girls. We said we were going to let the school deal with it and left.

We went to the school to report this, the head teacher kept saying "well IF this happened" despite me explaining that the adults had admitted it. She also repeatedly said that she didn't see anything. It felt like she didn't believe the children - or us - at all.

At no point did she acknowledge our complaint about the other adults; instead she started telling the girls off for having their phones out. To be clear, their recording policy is that recording is ok but no uploading or sharing to socials. If they have a different policy for children, they have not made it clear to us as parents, on our website, or to the children. The head almost used it as a way to justify the behaviour of the other adults.

My daughter already struggles with feeling like her teachers don't believe her, and this has made it so much worse. She's now also worried about seeing the aggressive adults outside school.

I've made a written formal complaint to school against the parents, and i've raised my concerns about how the school initially dealt with the report. I've also asked if it has been three years worth of bullying / nastiness involving DD, as the first report I've had about this child and DD was on Friday.

School have come back to me today and said there is no method of making a complaint against other parents. They have ignored my other comments.

Am I overreacting?

How would you expect your child's school to handle something like this? And what should I do now?

DD is Au-DHD and has huge SEMH and impulsivity issues. This is NOT an excuse. Just avoiding dripfeed.

Answered.

school were implicitly ok with her attending (said see you at the fair)

she was on a stall - scheduled, by school (years five and six do a dragons den style endeavour where they make products to sell

she was spoken to by school and me
Wrote her apology letter
had her pocket money removed

You haven't seen your daughter/gd being broken by bullying during 3 years. Not saying what they did was right, but it's relatable. They probably thought the girls were filming the boy and that was it for them (btw can you be sure they weren't?).

If I were you I would explain to my dd that while it wasn't a good way to react, they are all impacted by the ongoing bullying and thought the girls filming being another bullying act. Try to forgive them and maybe they can forgive your dd for bullying if she never does it again.

Think about how upset you are now and at the fair. Imagine your child being bullied for 3 years. I think all the kids taking part in the bullying should have been forbidden to come to the fair.

I’m hardly raving

I can see their perspective; that doesn’t make it right. I’ve never gone on the attack to another parent or child.

I think my perspective on the situation is fine and is not what I asked about! What may not be is my expectations of the school and how I feel about how they responded.

and it’s not that I believe it’s the first time. Her ELSA support confirmed it was! DD repeated the question after the group was told to stop - for all I know it was her echolalia.

that doesn’t make it ok, IT IS NOT OK SHE SHOULD HAVE WALKED AWAY, but she is not a bully!

she is not nasty, not malicious, did not understand why what she said was hurtful and I still don’t think she understands despite explaining. However she does understand that she hurt someone’s feelings which she is very regretful and sorry for!

And the parent and grandma should have walked away! Why do you have lower expectations for two adults than you do a child?

I can be sure yes as the boy wasn’t in the orchestra…

and it’s irrelevant but I have seen DD broken since reception and I would never dream of dealing with it the way these parents have

if the school had forbidden the attendance we would have respected and supported that. They didn't.

should the school now forbid these parents from attending the next event? It’s tomorrow.

The name calling and bullying is so very very bad , the children that did this should have been banned from All school activities untill Sept this year , one can understand the child's parents being mad l would have been . As for the parents being cross you can understand this bullying should be stamped on very firmly , We can't tolerate this , if any thing the abusers should be given school work for all the summer holidays and kept indoors as a lesson

Well she didn’t miss the school fair but considering how today is going, she will miss sports day tomorrow, so hopefully those who feel I under punished will be happy

It's not about under punishing, it's about your lack of empathy towards the other family.

Also, there is something not clear about this incident at the fair. You claim she was filming the orchestra and that's when the mum snapped her phone away and they yelled at the girls that they won't take it anymore, that it had been going on for 3 years. I do suspect that she was not filming the orchestra but the boy. That's the only thing that makes sense seen to their reaction and what they said. Kids can be very malicious, especially when smartphones are involved.

Firstly she didn’t get a chance to film only get her phone out

secondly they were at the front waiting to watch their other friend who was on stage

the boy was not in the stage not in the orchestra

He was with his family who came up behind DD and her friends

There is no logic to their actions

i have empathy for the boy, but no empathy for adults attacking children

I don't think it was very wise to leave your DD unsupervised at the fair the very day that there had been an incident. Did it not occur to you that there might be some comeback?

As I volunteer with the elderly, I'd like to bring to your notice that "playing knock and run" feels very much like bullying to the victim, even though you put it down to 'naughtiness', as if it's no big deal. It is to the victim and it would be nice if people made sure their DCs didn't go in for such behaviour.

Yup as I said take it up with the police.

No it never occurred to me that the parents might find and lash out at DD. Or that she wouldn’t be safe at school

i took the knock and run very seriously as I agree, it’s horrible, frightening behaviour. She was stopped from going to the park for a month for that. Again, she didn’t knock but she was there and that is bad enough. I don’t mean to imply it’s no big deal.

This kind of faux naïveté is very tiresome. If you really struggle to understand that OP's daughter is easily led into misbehaviour because of her SEN but nonetheless hasn't been bullying other kids for three years, then I'm not sure what to say to you. Perhaps you're very stupid, because it's pretty clear and easily understood. Not all misbehaviour or impulsivity involves bullying. Do you understand? Do you require shorter words?

OP I'm sorry to hear about this - a really difficult situation for you. You're clearly taking your daughter's behaviour seriously and dealing with that, and nothing justifies the way these adults behaved towards your daughter. All of this pious 'well that's what happens to bullies' from PPs is just sanctimonious shit. If an adult shouted in their child's face and pushed them around they wouldn't stand for it, regardless of whether it had been precipitated by a bullying incident.

I would report this to the board of governors or council and ask for clarification on their policies when it comes to the behaviour of parents in the school. If they can't commit to making the school a safe environment for children then there needs to be some kind of reckoning.

"No it never occurred to me that the parents might find and lash out at DD. Or that she wouldn’t be safe at school"

Interesting response. I suggested that there might be comeback. That could have taken many forms, but you respond as if the only unacceptable form was 'parents might find and lash out. Or that she wouldn't be safe at school'.

No worry that her classmates might not be safe? That your DC might be drawn into an escalation? Or a retaliation from other pupils? It seems that something had gone on between the pupils and I would have been concerned that there might be some kind of continuation of that. Particularly if my child tended to be lead into poor behaviour. I would have hung around to ensure that nothing like that happened. And that every child was safe, at least those in my DC's circle.

As it is, a family who seem to be very distressed got involved. The family of the boy your DC had had an altercation with. And you only have reports of what happened. You weren't there to either witness it or intercede.

Literally no worry about anything as the school seemed happy with my response and didn’t indicate that the situation was ongoing. There is not typically escalation or retaliation, I’ve never seen that before, and school/parents deal with situations and move on.

I did not imagine at all anyone would be unsafe at a primary school event.

please note those reports come from the family themselves as well as 3 girls and at least 2 witnesses, nothing is in dispute about what happened.

I’ve just found out the other boys mum works in a school

I’ve had it confirmed once again, this time by her class teacher, there have been absolutely no reports with DD and this boy ever before.

the school have also acknowledged that it is a safeguarding issue as it happened on school grounds

Update for anyone who is interested

LA school governance team have advised a change in the complaints policy and code of conduct to allow for parents to be complained about / spoken to

school have agreed

the mother has withdrawn both of her children from the school

the three years of bullying has been confirmed as a boy with the same name as my DD

the mother facebooked me and apologised

DD did not go to school her final week

CORAM confirmed the behaviour was assault and we should report to police and LA safeguarding as the mother works in a school.

to be honest I’m past caring I have a kid refusing to go back to her primary where “no one believes [her] or likes [her]”

a result she did not deserve

Thank you for the update op
You must feel vindicated at least? And it seems that the outcome is as good as you could expect - I appreciate that doesn't undo the damage done, but you have the summer holiday now (I assume?), maybe things will look better to your DD by September.

I think the school have done as much as they can though I did forget to say that they were meant to treat this as a safeguarding issue and as such did not follow their own policy when the girls reported the situation. I’m not sure what is happening there.

They are also implementing no phones at school events unless you are a parent who can sign the photography policy, which I think’s a good idea.

Other than that I just hope that DD can start to have more confidence in them when she goes back.

I’m not going to report the other mum she must have been in turmoil. However I really hope she learns from it. Even if DD had been the 3 year antagonist it wouldn’t have been ok