To be furious with this teacher.

[AlarmBells]

Sorry this is a bit long but I need a rant!

So, but of background, ds who's 8 has had a difficult relationship with school. We've been in a few times to talk about behaviour. (Attitude, talking back, arguing in class)

Every time we've been in I've tried my best to be supportive. I don't agree with punishing children twice for offenses, but I have a stern talk with him when we get home and we talk about what's triggering it, and how me and the teacher can help him.

We were called in again today, another frustrating session. Apparently DS swore and shouted at a boy in class, who (and the teacher admitted it) had been annoying him by sticking his tongue out and making noises at him.

She says he'she's often rude and talks back consistently...he says the other kids in class are always annoying him. I asked what was being done about that and teacher smiled patronisingly, rolled her eyes and said she's had a word with the parents and the children. She then turned to DS and said 'we are talking about YOUR behaviour though' with another smirk.

Anyway, we left, I again promised to talk to DS when home. She saw us to the door. However when she turned back I realised we'd forgotten his book bag, so I caught door as it was closing and nipped back in (DS stayed outside).

I was just outside the class room and heard this exchange.

' Do you have a brick wall I can bag my head against'
'Is it xxxxx again?'
'Oh God, he's just so rude! And his mum thinks he sh*ts gold, that's the problem! He just gets home and whines to mummy he's being picked on and she laps up every word! Funny how he only does that when he gets a bollocking. Little shit'
'What are you going to do?'
'She sounds like she's making screechy sound from psycho, they laugh'.

I quickly and quietly get out, but I'm still fuming. Totally unprofessional, yes? I know they thought I was out the building, but still. I now know a few things:

1. She has talked about my son like this before.
2. she refers to children as 'little shits'
3. She is completely two faced
4. she has no regards for ds's feelings during all this.

What's my next move? Feeling distraught. May email head tonight/ tommorow morning.

I think it's pretty clear that your ds behaviour is abysmal. He then complains that other children are winding him up when he gets in trouble. She was right to say that the meeting was to talk about his behaviour when you tried to make it about other people. Hard though it might be to overhear when you were eavesdropping, you need to think about the actual problem your d's. What are you going to do about his behaviour? If you don't start being much stricter with him, you will have a big problem on your hands when he gets to secondary.

What is his behaviour like at home?

Has his behaviour got worse in this class with this teacher?

Re swearing. I saw an episode of supernanny where pocket money was reduced by x amount for each swear word. After the first week of proved rather effective.

Did the school give you any suggestions for ways to deal with it? Books to read, websites.

Have you had stern words where you just bollocked him, or did you say Mrs A said you were rude today. Could you tell me what happened? Do you think that was a good way to react? What do you think would be a better way to handle it.

OP as a teacher I'd be furious with you, that's probably why the teacher was blowing off steam.

You sound like "that parent".

I feel like banging my head off a wall reading this thread.

Only dealing with something once? what are you on about

Sorry. You are being very unreasonable. The teacher is not picking on your ds. You really need to change your attitude as ultimately your ds is losing out. When he's playing up he's not learning. . I come down very hard on my dcs on poor behaviour and always discipline them at home not just the once. There are strategies work with the teacher not against. For example; see if you can have your dc moved in class

My child has aspergers and is easily 'provoked' as he sees it. I don't let him use other children's behaviour as an excuse for his own behaviour in most circumstances. He knows he needs to react appropriately if someone is winding him up (although he doesn't always do the right thing, but hopefully some day).

I try to teach him strategies on how to have more appropriate responses - we do role plays of situations which might happen and then talk about the different ways he responded. I make him think about how others view his behaviour.

I do definitely punish my child at home if he misbehaves at school and this is one of the reasons he is managing a little bit better to control himself at school. He is always working towards a particular rewards like a toy or a trip to to cinema. He knows too many issues at school means he's risking the reward.

I think it's really important to re-enforce the need for good behaviour by punishing at home in your DS's case. You're kind of letting him down when you fail to do this, although I'm sure you mean well. Just punishing at school is ok for more compliant children.

gandalf456
While his behaviour is obviously questionable, this is an eight year old she's talking about and the teacher seems to have written him off.

If the teacher had "written him off" she wouldn't have had asked for yet another meeting with the OP.

As for those saying the teacher isn't dealing with the other children, she isn't allowed to say much more than she told the OP

Wow. The comment about John smith being a cunt and atleast his mum's love of wine meant she didn't have any more children, made uncomfortable reading.

Obs2016

Perhaps, but the point of it was that 8 year old 'little shits', if allowed to continue by parents who don't back the teachers, turn into horrible 16 year olds and even the nicest people in the world will be delighted when they're no longer part of their professional lives. Alternatively, by working together, the OP and the teacher(s) can sort this out.

What on earth is the John Smith comment? I thought I'd rtft but can't see that one.

Sorry, but there's something very off about a teacher calling a child a little shit, and her attitude towards him sounds as though she's written him off, as another pp said.
What makes it worse is the fact that it was straight after talking to him and his mum, which is quite two faced behaviour and not really professional for a teacher to do is it? AND it was said on school grounds. Imagine if the headteacher heard her....

fancy

She probably was talking to the head

We were called in again today, another frustrating session

AGAIN , ANOTHER - well at least the teacher is trying to do something .

You have a STERN talk with Ds - well its obviously not stern enough and good on the teacher for at least trying to help and create harmony in the class.
She was blowing off steam as obviously she feels that you are not listening and willing to help your child .
I would go back in with a different attitude and listen to what she is saying nad try different strategies as the stern talking is not helping.

Sometimes supporting the school can be as simple as telling your child that you support the school. Dd3 (7) came out of school with a bit of attitude a few weeks ago, dumping her belongings on me. I immediately gave them back and asked her to correct her attitude. She walked away to see friends. The teacher said 'are you having this at home?' I said 'Oh all the time!....why? Are you having this at school??' The teacher said 'well I've noticed the difference from the last time I taught her.' I immediately called DD3 to us and told her what I had just been told. DD3 was not impressed and said that she didn't even know what she was doing wrong so how could she possibly fix it? I told her that if she was bring polite to her teachers, doing as she was asked first time, friendly and kind to her classmates, there would be nothing to fix, so stop making excuses. I then told her that her teacher and I were in a team and it's our job to help her to be the best she can be. I told her I'd be checking with the teacher to see how things were going.

When we got home she had a tantrum about it and I told her again what I expected and said that if I hear that she's had attitude in class, her heeleys will be put away until it's sorted.

I've checked in with the teacher 4 times since then and each time I've been told that she's back to the girl that she used to be.

I dont have a problem with what the teacher said in what she thought was private

The other children probably were being dealt with but i agree it would be more helpful if the OP was told that ....she didnt need the details

alarm i Hope everything goes well for you and your son moving forward

This could be your blessing in disguise - because you have heard the truth has the teacher sees it - not pleasant - but now you can take it more seriously and deal with him.

He's getting away with his behaviour because he can.

The others are getting away with it because your son blows up - takes the attention away from them - if he stops - they'll be the ones in trouble.

Stop the cycle and you'll see the real problem

The problem with "having a serious talk" about his bad behaviour after every episode is that you are REWARDING him for the behaviour by giving him attention. This is classic psychology stuff. Most children find exclusive, focused parental attention in the form of a discussion rewarding, even when the parent thinks the content is negative. Stop rewarding him for bad behaviour!

@captaincrunch

At the bottom of my post.

herecomethepotatoes Thu 05-May-16 04:16:03

focused parental attention in the form of a discussion rewarding,

I'd agree with this! Ignoring is painful for them - as is making them apologise-

My children earn their Xbox wifi parties friends round - you aren't taking it away - they haven't earnt it!

AlarmBells Wed 04-May-16 22:08:51

"Yes it's only school friends, I know then all. But sometimes one of them will try to be cool and start swearing or boasting. Unfortunately he's not the only one with a bad mouth."

As the parent of a rather older boy, it seems to me that this is the aspect you need to address. You are still thinking about what other children are like and that is weakening your impact.

He needs to know that you don't give a monkey's about how the other children behave, or how many swearers or boasters there are in the class: your job is to parent him and teach him what is good for him.

My son, towards the end of secondary, has got to the age where children around him take drugs, he goes to parties and the parents serve alcohol, other children his age are impregnating their girlfriends. The only way he will stay safe is by having internalised the idea that he is responsible for his actions. And that started early; it started when he complained as a 4yo that "James was doing it too" and found out that I am not in the slightest bit interested in what James does because I am not James' mother and teaching James to behave is not my job.

It may of course be that the other children are bullying your ds and if so that needs addressing. But he needs to understand that there are only two options here: ignore or approach an adult. Mild winding up should be ignored, so you can teach him some technique for doing that (basically think about something else, count to 10 etc). Proper bullying- show him what it looks like and how to approach an adult for help. In any case, make it clear that you will never accept bad behaviour on his part in this or any other context.

Having speed read the thread here's my opinion (for what it's worth)

I think you need to be punishing at school, but with clear reasons for why, and you need to back school up.
When your son is at home (and I gather from one of your posts that he doesn't behave like this at home?) use quiet moments to talk to you son and explain that his behaviour in school isn't good.
Someone recommended the Dawn Heubner books - there's one called When your Temper Flares which would be worth going through with your Ds.

However, I think it's awful that the teachers were talking about him like that, private conversation or not, there's always a chance that a child or parent has forgotten something and might go back in to retrieve it. What if a child (and not necessarily the OP's child) had heard them talking like this?
I would say something, but not sure if I would take it further.

As for your son's behaviour in school. What are school doing to help him? It sounds like he has a very short fuse, and that's not going to sort itself by the fact that he's 8 and should know better by now. Some children need more support and work to get there.
With a short fuse it may not be that he's choosing to swear, it can be part of fight or flight mechanism (my son has ASD, he does this at home, we are working carefully to help him with this).
He's not an abusive adult, he's a little boy who clearly needs some help to regulate his temper, and this isn't going to happen if people are allowed to continue to wind him up. This isn't about making others walk on eggshells, this is about a little boy being allowed to learn more appropriate responses to ensure that he isn't seen as a little shit in the future, and he's not going to do that if he's constantly wound up and screeched at by his teachers.
If their punishments in school aren't doing anything, they're using the wrong methods.

One issue I can see with relation to what the other children did is the question of what made them behave in that way to your son in the first place. If it was in response to previous annoying behaviour of his that changes the dynamic, but often the child who starts something low level doesn't have the ability to see that they had begun the whole sequence of events. E.g. child A says " get out my way", child B sticks tongue out in response, child A swears at him. As a teacher you wouldn't say much more than 'manners' or something along those lines to child A in the first instance. Child B you might tell to put their tongue away, that's not how we behave in class, but you would understand why they did it. But the swearing can't be allowed, especially if the incident was triggered by child A in the first place.

This may be something entirely different to what went on in your DS's class, but it is a fairly common occurrence (though a very simplistic version. These things are not so easy to disentangle usually). I wouldn't expect the parent of child B called in to be told 'B stuck their tongue out after a child spoke to them rudely'. Child A may genuinely not be able to see the connection between their first statement, B's response and their own swearing. But they still need to be reprimanded for their swearing. (The initial action is just a point of manners that primary teachers work on with many children day in day out.)

And a word about swearing - my son learnt a whole raft of swear words when he was 6, along with all his classmates. Most of those children had a filter that made sure that they stayed perfect little darlings to their parents, who assumed they didn't know any swear words.
Ds (and plenty of other children) lack that filter and out they pop.
i think it's rather naïve to assume that swearing has come from home.

It's horrible you heard this but teacher is only human and I think she's got a very accurate handle on the situation.

I don't think what the teacher said means she doesn't like him, I sometimes vent (in private hopefully) about my students if they have been spectacularly annoying or incompetent, just as most people who have work colleagues also vent, but I rarely if ever really dislike my students, I usually just feel frustrated by a lack of engagement, or effort, or response after I've put a lot of time and effort in.

You have taken this on the chin, OP, well done. I'd now set out what the consequences are for getting called in again and any reports of bad behaviour - don't just take the X-box or internet away for an indefinite period of time 'til you behave well' as this doesn't give them an incentive to change or see the end of the consequence in sight. Plus do lots of positive things/notice the positive as well, so that when you do come down hard on your son for rudeness, that's not the whole of your interaction.

I agree with whoever said that all attention is good attention to some children, that's why I'd agree the consequences in advance (e.g. two days off internet for each time teacher reports rudeness) and then just don't engage, just do it. Hand-wringing and lots of stern talks just plays into this attention seeking stuff.

Good advice from Imaginosity at 7.06 today about how to work on this.

Good luck op.