Re DS dunking child at swimming

[sezamcgregor]

DS is Y2. They are going swimming with school. It's on Thursday afternoons. There are 24 in his class.

The class is known to be "lively" with "lots of big characters". School have also identified Thursday and Friday afternoons to be hard work as children are becoming tired and harder to keep concentration.

So, children split into two groups of 12:

Group A - Non swimmers, armbands on in shallow end, swimming teacher plus two school staff members

Group B - Swimmers (can swim without armbands) at the deep end, swimming teacher

Two incidents occur towards the end of the lesson, one of which is DS pulling a child under the water as he over took her.

Pulled over by Head Teacher today and put forward my mitigation that a) there was one person to 12 children who school know can be challenging b) it was Thursday afternoon which school know is a difficult time slot.

HT totally dismissed my comments.

She said that she will also be speaking to the swimming instructor as she should have alerted school staff earlier that she could not cope with the group. (Surely school staff would have noticed if she were not coping and offered to help??)

DS is missing next week's swim as a consequence - which is fine. I have no problem with that and agree that there should be a consequence.

But AIBU to think that she needs to look at the whole picture? I have a kind of "well, what did they expect to happen" view of it

Yabvvvu.

You have blamed the school, the swimming instructor, the other dcs and Thursday afternoons.

Your dc has done something wrong and will be disciplined by missing the next lesson.
What is he doing to make things right?
If one of mine had done that they would be writing an apology to the other dc and the ht for letting down the school.
There would also be chocolates for both out of dc pocket money.

One of mine is being assessed and did silly things when that age, this is what we did and he learnt from it.
Saying you have no input in the iep is an abdication of responsibility. You need to discuss your view on his needs and include these in parents comments. Only sign it when you are happy.

"Saying you have no input into the IEP is an abdication of responsibility"

Not really, if the school are obstructive and you're still new to the world of SEN and SN so don't know the guidelines.

What your son did was awful. Now how can you work with the school to make sure it doesn't happen again?

As best she can I would think, considering she won't actually be at the lessons. And you can say what you like to a 7 year-old before the event. Doesn't mean they'll remember it all at the time.

I think that 'mainstream' mumsnet really struggles to talk helpfully about kids who don't obey on the word.
You have my sympathy OP. I too have a child who requires particular strategies to manage their behaviour.
They are not 'naughty'. They are lively, intelligent, desperate to be approved of and strong willed. Get them on the right path and it's a breeze, wrong path and total misery ensues. It is immensely frustrating as a parent to talk about what makes your child tick and then hear about a situation which could so easily have been prevented. I have sometimes thought I should pack in work and just homeschool my child. Two things stop me - my child is improving all the time and is happy at school and me stopping work would have major financial consequences for our family.

In this case your child knows this was wrong. He has been excluded from the next lesson quite rightly. However you are also right to be asking how this situation came about. Because knowing what the school know, then they should also have known this kind of thing was a risk. Whatever strategy was employed to manage that risk it wasn't adequate so they should be putting more in place - which they clearly won't do.

saying there should have been more supervision of a challenging class (this was not an isolated incident after all) is not seeking mitigation it's acknowledging that one of the reasons the incident happened was because the children were not being supervised adequately. If there had been adequate supervision the splashing etc would have been stopped before it got to a point where children were pushing others into the pool and a child got pulled under water.

Let me ask this: Let's say that worst case scenario, a child pulled another child under water and the other child drowned. Let's remember at this point that these children are six years old. Would people be saying to the op that her son was a murderer, that he was responsible for the death of another child and that he should be suitably punished? (six year old we're talking about here), or would people perhaps be questioning wtf the supervision was that enabled such an incident to happen?

It's very easy to sit in judgement when there haven't been hideous consequences to actions, "what if" is an easy line to use. But reality is that six year olds are not yet mature enough to be responsible for their behaviour in isolation. Yes they need to learn through consequences that certain actions are wrong, but the reason we as adults supervise them more closely at this age is because they lack maturity in many instances and then behave irresponsibly. It's our job as adults to ensure that their behaviour does not reach a dangerous level, and when the op isn't there to do that that responsibility falls to the school.

if supervision was so crap that a child was left to drown, yes it would ultimately be the fault of the school/swimming school

luckily, supervision was fine so a dangerous action did not lead to serious consequences

altho actually 'fine' is probably not true as it does sound like there was another incident of pushing in as well

MiscellaneousAssortment
"Oh dear. I wonder what's changed at the school for the ht and other teachers to have developed this collective amnesia/ massive change in approach?"

Why do you believe that the change was/is at the school?

Boney because that's what the OP has said in a number of her posts? There has clearly been a change from one school year to the next, and the OP needs to find out what's happening.

Maybe it's because of no diagnosis, or because the school have become sensitive to misunderstandings in communication between OP and teachers, or because theyve had budget cuts and cannot support the boy as before, or or or... No point in speculating really is there?

Your child sounds like a nightmare.

You are justifying his behaviour.

Take a long hard look at your famil, stop excusing poor behaviour and work with the school.

Miscellaneous

Yet the OP has pushed any wrong doing towards the school (or other pupils), has said that the teacher shouted (by her mother) yet told by another parent that the teacher raised their voice has continued to use "shout" to describe the interaction.

She has continued to state that she will not put sanctions in place as the schools sanctions are enough, and when other children who are equally as tired has done nothing wrong continues to either blame the school or deflect by saying another incident happened.

Yet all of this must be because something has changed at the school even though the op refuses to sanction her child.

toobreathless So you've either not read the part where she said he's been referred to a paediatrician, so there's obviously concerns that there are SNs involved, or you've ignored that part and are just being judgemental.

That's helpful. Oh wait, no it's not....

No alice I have not had the time to read all ten pages, I do not think that should preclude me from commenting personally. If you always have time to go through every post great.

I have zero sympathy for drip feeding, especially when people have the time to write a long and detailed OP.

References to 'lively' with 'lots of big characters' just make the class sound badly behaved.

Well, perhaps in future you might find it beneficial to reserve judgement until you have actually read the thread and have all the relevant info. Some of us have zero tolerance for people who pounce on a thread without having read it and making snide judgements. Just saying...

OP
It seems to me that you are trying to justify your sons bullying behavior. You can't blame the school for that. Take a look closer to home.

Oh for goodness sake! Calm down. This is an internet chat site not a court room! I am not a regular poster but a busy mother who occasionally likes to read/comment.

Right I am off to finish my cooking.

OP: if my comment was unhelpful in the light of apparent SEN or whatever I apologise. I do hope your son settles down and gets the opportunity to enjoy the rest of his lessons.

FFS - more supervision ,even 1:1 supervision, wouldn't have stopped your son dunking his class mate.

really OP you can't understand why the non swimmers have extra staff? Seriously?!

no 1:1 wouldn't prevent it. If he is swimming his arms are forward so he can still easily grab a passing child. Unless he swims separately from the group, which would make tuition rather tricky , he is likely to be close enough to act impulsively just out of the reach of any accompanying adult. Extra adults may make it easier to keep him focussed but this is an activity which has inherent risks.

Would anyone like some peace and love? A mild ahemming? Anything?

A recently released picture of Tom Selleck and George Clooney naked in a Sauna, perhaps?