to demand a child is excluded from school?

[Tubemole1]

I will try and keep this as brief as poss. My daughter is in Y1 and one of her classmates, a boy, often harrasses her. She has been pinched and hair pulled during carpet time and put in a headlock during playtime. I have asked for this boy to stay away from my daughter and her teacher has made efforts to do so.

Today, the same boy attacked four girls. He bit one on the neck and drew blood. Another girl was bitten on the arm five times, no blood. My daughter was attacked as well but she managed to escape with no injury. Obviously my fellow mums and I are outraged. Nothing was done to discipline the boy, so he can't grasp the enormity of the fallout of his actions. My daughter, certainly, was left shaken, trying to make sense if it. This boy has a fascination with vampires, but we all wonder what has he seen to act this way?

I am all for complaining to the school, but dh wants our daughter to just kick him in the balls if he tries again. What message will that give, when she has to fight back to survive?

My daughter is a toughie, and can defend herself, but she bottles up her true feelings. The teacher doesn't see that she's upset, because she only lets it go when she's home, and we have a blubbering child needing our care and understanding. Is it unreasonable to ask the school makes sure our kids are safe thru the day, and this boy is either excluded, or has some sort of intervention?

mrsmind - I think we need to start from the place that is is unacceptable for children or teachers to be assaulted at school.

Then we decide what can be afforded.

It would still be more expensive to exclude children with a history of violence, so we'd be talking about "we can't afford to provide special schools".

Nobody should ever be allowed to use cost as an excuse for leaving children in significant danger of assault.

The hand wringy "oh nothing can be done" about this drives me bananas.

All children have the right to an education without fear of assault.

That's a pretty basic thing to ask for.

Saying it is too expensive to supervise children you know pose a threat and just leaving them to hurt other children is utterly immoral.

The kids that get most hurt by this attitude are poor kids in deprived areas who are often educationally disadvantaged to start with.

Am stepping out of this thread if it's going down road of kicking 5 year olds in balls and excluding on cost grounds.

Don't feel like huge bun fight today.

mrsmindcontrol Thanks for replying to my question. If he has been on the same medication for 2 years without improvment, then I think your doctor has let you down.

At most 6 months should be enough to decide weather to change course.

My ds is also on medication and we have seen improvement.

Good luck with finding the right medication and the right dose. Also, I recommend you get an assessement done by and OCCUPATIONAL therapist who specialises in sensory integration.

Would agree that it seems unlikely he could have attacked 4 children in succession without an adult witnessing or intervening especially if at least 2 needed attention.

op , Nothing was done to discipline the boy, so he can't grasp the enormity of the fallout of his actions. You don't actually know that as fact. Speak to teacher/head on Monday but the focus of the conversation should be your dd and how this has made her feel.

And we still don't know where the OP got her information from.

I find the biting a child's neck until he drew blood quite hard to believe, for one thing.

Seeker the sentence I've quoted above sounds exactly like something my 5 year old and her best friend would tell me. I dont believe a lot of what they tell me. Its not because I think they're lying (or mean to lie) but children IME dont always tell the entire truth of an event exactly how it happened. They embellish.

Yanbu at all, I bet your poor dd is at her wits end with his constant nastiness. I think schools need to do more to tackle bullying.

Do not form a gang with other parents.

Go in and tell them of your concerns about your daughter, and that you feel more needs to be done to protect the other children in the class and to address this boy's behaviour for his won sake as well.

But don't go in all guns blazing until you're sure you've got the whole story.

My toddler DS is going through a punching phase and is having HV/LA intervention in nursery...

I'm struggling to believe a child drawing blood in Y1 has not been disciplined at all,

You haven't mentioned if you have ever approached the boys parents?

"WHAT is the answer cos sure as hell, tit for tat is certainly not it."

Well, it shouldn't be it, certainly.

But if we're saying to parents that we can't afford to keep their children safe, and they should expect physical assault from pupils with behavioural problems as a matter of course, some of those parents are going to encourage their kids to fight back.

If we accept violence in our schools as a fact of life and allow people to use the cost of adequate supervision as the excuse, we need to be aware that we will very soon lose control of the situation.

The idea that inclusion is too costly is bullshit. It was a money-saving wheeze in the first place.

But regardless of costs, the idea of including children who lose risks to their peers without adequate supervision to minimise that risk is dreadful.

The attitude of some seems to be that inclusion is an unalloyed good and that any (deprived) children who suffer physical injury and fear to keep it going are acceptable collateral damage.

It baffles me.

Actually biting and braking the skin can cause infection. This boy needs to be told he will be excluded if he can't behave respectfully to others. The parents need to know that their child is a danger to others and they need to address this. You could write to the school to say that this child is a danger to your daughter and you want him to be kept away from her

Go ahead. It wont do any harm. It probably wont get him excluded but complaints from parents do put a rocket up the school, and you might get some reassurance that they?ll protect your DD.

Why would a Yr1 not get excluded? I was told in no uncertain terms in Yr1 that if we didn?t agree to get my DS psychologically investigated and provided with appropriate support then he would have to be excluded. As it happens the threat was unnecessary, we were as horrified and worried as the school were, but they wanted to make sure we understood how serious the problem was. But it still took time. DS was on a waiting list for months, and the help wasn?t in place until the start of Yr 2 ? and that was an emergency case for support!

BigBlock - I think that's pretty unusual TBH

I don't think that level of assistance is available everywhere.

Are you happy with what they are doing? Is it helping?

I don't know many toddlers who haven't been through a hitting or biting stage, although I presume his must be more prolonged, or serious.

Having help from someone who was an expert in childhood behaviour for early issues sounds very expensive. And potentially amazing.

Wow some pretty horrible people on this thread. Encouraging five years old to kick children in the genitals?

Most people have absolutely no idea what goes on behind the scenes when coordinating the care of children with additional needs. You will blindly go along in your own little bubble never seeing the constant meetings with parents, meetings with specialists, intervention sessions, ongoing planning, meetings between staff, and the times when a parent is crying on your shoulder because it all has just become too much. You probably don't realise just how often that child is being constantly shadowed in the classroom and the playground, and how many incidents are actually diffused and avoided because of intervention. But teachers are humans too, and when we're on playground duty, it's about a ratio of one teacher to 100-150 students. I've got eyes in the back of my head, but not 150 of them.

You want to protect your child? Then start lobbying your government and representatives for more funding to provide aides and additional support in the classroom to help children with additional needs. Exclusion is NOT the answer. Appropriate funding and support to help all children get a good education is.

"DS was on a waiting list for months, and the help wasn?t in place until the start of Yr 2 ? and that was an emergency case for support!"

This is the kind of stuff that gets savaged when cuts come.

It's less visible than upping ratios or cutting budgets for interactive whiteboards.

But it is absolutely crucial to a successful education system.

It is unacceptable that a little boy with a need categorised as an emergency should have to wait months for help.

I suppose part of the problem is that unless or until your child needs this service you don't realise that it is inadequate.

"Exclusion is NOT the answer."

Sometimes it is.

You can't really think that no school should ever be allowed to exclude any pupil?

The very least you can expect from a school is that it will keep your child safe. You hope that they will also educate them and teach them social skills, but the absolute bare minimum you can expect is that they keep your child safe. If they're not doing the bare minimum, then you've got a serious problem.

Midnite says there may be a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, but that doesn't help the OP or the other parents. All they care about is that their children aren't being physically assaulted. Corporal punishment is banned in schools - a teacher who hit a child even lightly would be sacked and possibly taken to court. Why, then, should parents turn a blind eye to physical assault from another child?

I think excluding children in early childhood is nothing more than a failure of imagination. There are many, many other ways of addressing behaviour than simply excluding a child. I'd rather a child in my classroom, learning and working with them to understand appropriate behaviour, than sitting at home playing computer games and learning nothing.

Why would a Yr1 not get excluded?

Because they have a right to access education as well, even if their behaviour is extreme.

I find the biting a child's neck until he drew blood quite hard to believe, for one thing.

Me too, and in my experience of working with children of this age, 'bleeding' often means a red mark. That's not to say that children are lying, but their perception of things isn't the same as an adults. Of course I'm not saying red marks from biting are acceptable, just that it probably wasn't as extreme as it was made to sound.

A Thing, I agree with your sentiments, but funding can't be found to help deal with every single problem there is in schools. Budgets are limited, but that doesn't mean we can't afford to provide support where it's needed. It just means that evidence of need has to be provided, otherwise teachers would be able to claim they need an extra TA, more school counselling sessions and interventions at the drop of a hat. There are many children that would benefit from these things, but that doesn't mean they can just be provided without evidence.

Why, then, should parents turn a blind eye to physical assault from another child?

They shouldn't, but they also shouldn't take matters in to their own hands and form a posse to demand that someone else's child is publicly flogged. Make sure the school is aware of the issue, accept that you may not be given full details of what really is occurring behind the scenes, and be prepared to follow up if things don't change.

Midnite, I do understand your point but on most of the occasions my son has been excluded I've been in agreement with the schools decision. Put simply, when it reaches a stage where he has attacked other children, staff & school property, scaled the fence and is taking up 2 staff resources to restrain him, what other choice do they have?
I think they could be better at stopping these incidents before they escalate to that stage but you're often talking about split second impulsivity & without permanent 1-1 support, it's just not possible to head every incident off at the pass.

I should say that I totally agree with all of you who say that all children have the right to be schooled safe from attacks. I'm not defending my son (or any other child's) actions in hurting their peers, I'm just saying that its often way more complex than just a case of bad behaviour.

Oh, and Time, my son has had occupational therapy assessment & has been diagnosed with sensory processing issues but am waiting for that to tie in with the other work we're having done in terms of treatment. And to thebody, yes, I do feel incredibly let down by CAMHS (his drs), so much so that I've made an official complaint.

mrsmindcontrol, I think it's entirely different when a parent agrees that it may be in the best interest for the child to be out of the school environment. I see the term exclusion as more of an arbitary "we don't know what else to do with you, so go away for a while" type thing. I also don't believe that it should be done because some other parents go up to the school and demand it.

Hmm. Have only read the first and last. All a bit odd. My DC in the infants only had to bump their knee and there was a note in the bookbag and anything more serious involved a conversation initiated by the school.

I would be minded to drop a note into the office on monday saying: I am concerned about an incident that happened last week and it's impact on my daughter. I would like and appointment with the head of key Stage 1 to discuss my daughter's progress, where I feel support might be required and to rceive your assurances that steps are being taken to ensure the safeety and early achievement of my daughter.

I haven't read the whole thread as it's very long.

We were in the same position. I would seriously discourage you to go en masse with other parents to sort this out. You also cannot insist on a DC being exclude. All you can concentrate on is your DC's wellbeing. If the school ask your DC to move, I would strenuously argue against this. Your DC is the victim so shouldn't have to change their behaviour unless they are teasing the bully.

You can only talk about your DC. It will not go down well if more than one go at the same time to talk about the bully. You can go individually. You cannot insist on any punishment. You can insist on your DC being kept safe.

I hope it goes well, whatever you decide.