To worry about the effect of other children on mine?

[Fernie3]

I know I will probably get flamed for this but perhaps I am overdue one anyway so here goes.

We live in, to put it bluntly, a not so nice area. The local school are rough - and I speak as someone who grew up in the south wales vallies . The teachers are good, the school buildings are adequate and tbh I have no worries about what I have seen so far of the teaching etc (oldest child in yr1).

However, the behaviour of the other children (not all but from what I have seen I good proportion of them) is well beyond what I would consider normal.

a few examples (plucked from a possible list of many!)

There are the normal tears at my sons nursery (at the school) children not wanting to go in. In this nursery, however, you also get 3 year olds (mostly 2 boys but sometimes other seem to copy) attacking, biting, punching and kicking the teachers and shouting " fuck off" - every day.

A brawl in the school yard between two fathers.

I was one of only three parents to turn up for parents evening (the others had appointments they just didnt come).

parents at pick up time swearing not only at the teacher and each other but at their children - yesterday someone I was casually talking to turned round to her 5 year old and called her a cow.

A few months ago a woman (who i didnt know)randomly came up to me to asked me if I thought she should abort her pregnancy because she didnt want to tell her partner - wtf?

I could go on but I wont because I am aware I sound like a right bitch but I do spend a good deal of time worrying about my children picking up the behaviour and when my husband and I were watching jamie olivers dream school he made a joke about how the parents at the school were basically slightly older versions of the kids - he thought he was being hilarious but I had an inner screaming fit imagining my children on jamies dream school 2020.

AIBU to worry about it? should i just relax and keep my head down.

And x post candleshoe , sorry. I avoid the state vs private debates on here as I have a feeling they turn nasty and that's a really interesting point. You sound really level headed and calm! And how lucky your DS is to live so close to school .

toerag not sure the origins, I was told it at a Socialist Teacher's Conference (something I'm not in the habit of attending but they had a couple of really interesting speakers!). It was being used to illustrate the point that Ofsted and the government can beat us with a stick as much as they like, it won't change the fact that it is predominantly external factors that effect exam results.

That should be affect!

Fernie3 - so your kids will be fine then! Problem solved - you are the only influence that really matters.

Amm a bit that kids who are 'rough' aren't worth making friends with. I went to a primary school where I was the only one not from the council estate. I'm sure there was a bit of teasing - I was the 'posh' one (though realised later I am not at all posh ). But I got on with everyone and had lots of lovely friends. Point being that it is not necessarily about the school but about individual children. Maybe your son is getting the message that these children aren't worth bothering with.

FWIW I also credit my primary school experience with making me the the liberal socialist i am - and it made me appreciate the stuff I had too.

Well the some of the 'rough' kids round here that I was refferring to are actually really violent, definitely disturbed and actually criminal. Obviously I'm not writing off all the kids of that type ... I realise there degrees of roughness!

My two dc go to the not as popular school in the area but it was the one we chose as there were things about the others I didn't like. The catchment has a mix of children from different ethnic groups for many English is a second or third language. Lots of the parents don't seam to care what the children are learning in school. WE have a lot of children on free school meals so we get extra funding. One of my girls is in gifted and talented she is bright but as it is the top10% of pupils in the school in a different school she may not be. She gets extra time doing more challenging work with a ta. My younger one is only in reception so to early for g and t.

No school is perfect, but the only thing I don't like is that children don't really go on play dates but I think thats the parents not really wanting to let on that they don't have any money hardly the school fault. My girls do rainbow, brownies and badger(st john''s)and marching band so not much time now for play dates anyway.