If you have a child with autism that can be violent..

[Colouroutsidethelines]

How do you feel when you find out they have attacked school staff? How do you respond?

I am a teaching assistant. I was playing in the garden with another staff member and four children who all have an autism or ADHD diagnosis.

The child I was playing with in the construction area is in year 4 and very articulate. We were conversing nicely, talking about his favourite cars. He then got up and walked off and before I stood up, he had gone behind me, picked up a large wooden log and cracked me hard over the head with it.

It caught me completely off guard and I did cry with the pain as I ran inside to seek first aid.

Curious to how you would respond if this was your child.

We would never use the word naughty.

Very naughty boy is a bit abstract, for a start.

What does naughty mean, why is it naughty, what if I don’t think it is, why is there a scale of naughty and I’m at very, is it okay to be a bit naughty but not very?

I also don’t think “scared” should be the desired outcome. Scaring kids into submission won’t get you far. Particularly if they’re not scared.

We never call children naughty. they aren't 'naughty'. We tell them their behaviour wasn't ok, and that they hurt someone, and that they can't do that.

We can try and help them empathise, and ask how they would feel if so & so hit them, and would they be upset and like to be apologised too..etc.

It's about labelling the behaviour, not the child.

But it's clearly not working if, as OP says, people are leaving in droves.

Maybe they should be "told off" so that it's uncomfortable and unpleasant to hear.

As have I. Many, many times.

I was talking about the reaction of a parent that I found unacceptable.

@Rainydayinlondon

Shouting at disregulated children just leads to being shouted back at and heightens things further.

IMO, if you need to shout then you’ve already lost the battle and have no control over the situation.

Some kids don’t care if you shout at them.

Some kids actually would just see it as gaining attention and therefore a win.

Not all kids know what naughty even means. You could try telling my son he’s naughty, he’d probably just ask you for porridge.

Some kids won’t understand that much language. We have to use “No! No hitting.” Or “No! Biting finished.” There’s no opportunity or value in a chat.

Who wants to go to work to get injured though

we have risk assessments and health and safety nowadays, where did it all go wrong

When did I say anything about shouting?

Children have risk assessments too. And behaviour plans.

Ours says to not turn your back on him, wear long sleeves or arm guards, keep your hair out of reach, keep his nails short, wear comfy shoes because he’s a runner…. Etc etc.

Those risk assessments exist (or certainly should!) and they’re long.

unfortunately the school can only do so much. It HAS to be backed up by the parents and reinforced at home.

I'm guessing by the fact they laughed, that the OP's kids parents aren't the kind that will go home and do the homework of reinforcing how not ok hurting someone is.

I ALWAYS did. and i did it without shouting at him. we had age appropriate conversations about it, and i always made him apologise, he now does it himself without prompting.

i still do it now with them both as Teenagers, and encourage them to do some hard thinking about their feelings, their emotions and how their behaviour impacts the people around them.

All parents want that for their children but then some people also complain when parents of SEND children fight so hard to try and get that for their children because it rarely comes cheap.

I agree that all children are being failed and staff like you too who shouldn't be in the position of supervising 4 SEND children shoved in a garden because what happened to you is unfortunately what ends up happening.

My apologies, I assumed when we were talking about making children uncomfortable and frightened, it would involve shouting.

Laughing in your face is obviously an odd and unacceptable response.

but…

why on earth were you the one telling them about the incident? Senior leadership team should have a better support structure in place for their staff. You should have been sent home or on your way to get checked by a medic surely

I think that it was also unfair on the parents that it was the injured person telling them. It’s laying the guilt and responsibility on them- when they weren’t there. They are not in charge of how school have chosen to risk assess their pupils Most likely, they are dealing with lots of challenging behaviours at home. And as someone else said, it is schools responsibility to manage the risks whilst children are in their care.

i find the whole way this is being managed odd tbh.

this... good point thinking about it.

It was NEVER the injured/hurt/assaulted staff member who spoke to me, it was always the HT or one of the DHT who dealt with it.

I am a really relaxed parent, but I do think an element of "fear" with a small "f" is useful in a school situation where there isn't the luxury of chatting and modelling good and kind behaviour as there is at home

I wasn't a goody two shoes, but I certainly "behaved" at school because I didn't want to be sent to the head teacher for a "telling off"...

In society there is often an element of being "wary" either of criminal sanctions in driving or in societal judgment and this promotes us to behave in a way that is acceptable to others

We have become so used to banging our heads on the wall we’ve probably become apathetic to a degree.

The support staff have complained numerous times, moral is at an all time low.

What else can we do though? The SLT tell us the same thing about funding, the governors think the behaviour units are a wonderful advantage and it’s mentioned like a badge of honour at any given opportunity. So much so that we’ve been told people are sending their ND child to our school as we have a fantastic unit 😂 Not that it’s the old library with two TAs running it.

Op I’m sure you are doing your best, but I find it a bit worrying that you don’t seem to appreciate that the parent is likely to be autistic too.

Theory of mind and appropriate social reactions are not things that autistic people tend to excel in. My dp is autistic and so are both our dc. My dp might appear “fine” to people who are not in the know, but he really isn’t.

You seem very focused on blaming the parent who is probably just disabled as well.

I have 3 sons
one is autistic, he has a wonderful life now because I fought for him. My other 2 are completely different

how DARE you suggest I used autism as an excuse, and the rain man analogy is pathetic

you have no idea and I am deeply offends by your post

I'm assuming you were in appropriate education which you could cope with and met your needs though so it was easier for you to behave in the first place.

The children are collected and dropped off at the Nursery garden gate. All handovers are done by us. It was just in the normal run of the day. SLT were informed. We were told they were in meetings.

She isn’t disabled.

With respect op what are you basing that on? I’m sure many people we interact with think my dp is normal. He has an autism diagnosis.

You already know she exhibits apparent inability to understand how you feel and inappropriate social reactions. Those are autistic flags, no?

Would you send your children somewhere that frightened them?

I should add that my own dc has been injured in school by a violent autistic dc and that the parent behaved inappropriately in response to me. At the time I was clueless about autism and I didn’t realise she was also probably autistic.

We know the family very well.