AIBU to think no one has come out of this looking great?

[ilostdoryintheocean]

Really need help. DS is 11, and has been excluded for swearing at a member of staff. I don't condone his actions AT ALL - but I have been concerned about this TA for a while and I feel awful as I feel I should have spoken up for him earlier.

So here is the situation, DS has had a lot of early childhood trauma and he shows many autistic traits but has not been formally diagnosed. He colours in as a way of calming himself down but knows he needs to stop colouring and start work when the teacher has finished talking. Sometimes he refuses. The teacher then sends him outside to calm down (it's pointless confronting him.) The teacher has been really good with him.

The TA hates his colouring and shouts at him to stop. He then shouts back. It then turns into a shouting match. On Friday he told her to fuck off and that her breath stank. she is understandably furious but AIBU to wish she'd just back off him a bit, she really does seem to have it in for him a bit?

DS1 finally got a diagnosis of ADHD this week. It has taken a long, long time. He is in year 6. No doubt many people over the years have classed him as nothing other than a badly behaved, disrespectful child (or as someone from a private school bubble upthread said so delightfully, a 'brat' ). Ds1 is no picnic to parent. He can be bloody hard work to teach. But he is a suffering child. He wept during the CAMHS session this week. Bitterly. He described the feelings of isolation and shame and worthlessness that come with constantly being in trouble, of being known as a badly behaved child, the appalling self image, the hurt, the fear, the sadness. It sickens me that there are so many adults who would probably describe themselves as compassionate people and whose posts imply that they are of at least reasonable intelligence, who choose to write off children with these problems as naughty and in need of a harsh discipline response. And it makes me even more scared for my ds, and op's, and all the other dc like them. How are they supposed to thrive when so many people sneer at their parent's concerns and dismiss their very real issues?

He is allowed to colour in!

alltouchedout: Honestly, I do sympathise with you and with your DS. I teach several students with ADHD and I see their struggle, daily, to manage their difficulties. I help where I can by both implementing and suggesting strategies that allow them to remain in the classroom accessing education long after I would have sent out another child for poor behaviour. But there are some behaviours for which ADHD isn't an excuse (I think telling adults their breath stinks and to fuck off falls under this category. Some elements of their behaviour do warrant a disciplinary response and sometimes the interests of other students and staff have to be prioritised. It is difficult for schools to navigate this.

And you really can't treat emotionally damaged children like this and expect then to do well! Oh no of course that doesn't matter. What matters is the staff!

Italiangreyhound: I didn't say otherwise. I said if you are looking strictly at what 'caused' the problem, it was him colouring in. But you can't look strictly at what 'caused' the problem. You have to look at culpability. The TA may well have shouted/raised her voice but unless she has been clearly managed so that it has been made clear to her that he has an IEP saying a) he is allowed to colour in and b) she should speak on a level tone to the boy because of his SN, or unless she really did intimidate him in an aggressive manner, she wasn't doing anything wrong. The boy's case is different - it is always wrong to swear at and insult someone.

Italiangreyhound: The staff do matter. No-one goes to work to be personally insulted and sworn at. Where there is a clearly recognised need and plan for dealing with that need, staff need to take account of the plan and adjust accordingly. But you can't run a school well by accepting every claim that a child can't help their aggressive behaviour; it needs proper investigation and school policies have to be applied in the interim. It is simply not fair on the community as a whole if some students can get away with this sort of behaviour without sanction.

Trifle, I agree with you.

I agree, fully, that my son should be punished, should be dealt with and needs to know this was unacceptable.

But, it really could have been avoided by not "getting in his face" (I asked the teacher to demonstrate what had happened.)

DS was sitting at his desk which faces the front of the room. He had been colouring while the teacher was talking. The teacher finished talking and then went to help somebody on the other side of the room who had not understood. My son didn't start work immediately. The TA started shouting at him "stop that colouring and get on with your work." He ignored her and put his head down, sort of into his arms. She went and stood right in front of him and pushed her head near his and shouted again.

My feeling is, the teacher doesn't agree with the TA's methods but is loath to criticise her in front of the children or parents.

His teacher this year has been a mini godsend. He likes her, trusts her and she's even sometimes managed to make him laugh when he's upset.

Our son is adopted (I had a private message and can't remember if I mentioned this or not) we also have an adopted DD who is his birth sister. You wouldn't know she was adopted. But our son is so very troubled but when he interacts with his teacher, it makes me think, there is hope, he can do it. with some understanding. Then it all went wrong.

Okay, OP, I can only accept your side of things as that is what you have been told. She may indeed have behaved completely inappropriately. I hope you are successful in seeking proper assessment for your son. Good luck again.

Alltouchedout great post. I am so sorry for your sons struggles.

Yet you still somehow manage to convey complete disbelief, Trifle

I am starting to get some understanding of why some children struggle not to lose their temper at teachers.

How did the teacher manage to see this interaction in such great detail if she had gone over to the other side of the classroom and was helping another child with their work?

Do you think the teacher might be exaggerating about what happened? You did say you believe she's intimidated by the TA and if this is the case, she may want to paint her in the worst light possible so she's moved to another class.

Of course. She must be lying. She and my son have obviously concocted this tale between them both.

She moved over to help when she heard raised voices. Do you think that's perhaps a little more likely?

OP, I think that is really harsh to be honest. I don't disbelieve you. I believe you believe what you were told. But if you are determined to see people as being against you no matter what they say, you will find them less sympathetic towards you.

That's because I am fed up of the constant inference that I, my child, or the teacher (or all three) are lying.

I have been told what happened by the teacher and by my child. Their accounts are pretty much identical. Yet still, the "but how do you KNOW" comments keep coming.

At any rate, the point is my son was very much at fault, I do not excuse or condone his behaviour, but his behaviour happened for a reason and whilst as you can see he is an angry little boy sometimes he also is withdrawn and quiet a lot - he wouldn't have just shouted at someone to fuck off for no reason. I think he was scared and really felt his space was being invaded and that fear came over as anger.

OP, why are you using the word "lying" when I said "exaggerating"?

Triffle of course teachers and TAs matter, of course the school needs to run properly. No one is dispupting that.

Of course adults and children in school have the right nor to be sworn at. But don't they also have the right not to be shouted at?

My son is adopted, no special needs diagnosed (but very emotionally volatile). If anyone shouted in his face, as the OP described (and why would a teacher lie in relating the message to the OP, so it is almost certainly true) my son would crumple into a mass of tears and upset. But then he is 6 and hopefully doesn't know many swear words yet!

The TA was in the wrong, clearly, and she needs some sort of sanction for causing a situation that got a vunerable child excluded. If she cannot work with children without shouting in their face, she cannot work with children.

Op your son swearing is one issue, he has been punished. This TA is a problem, either she has a problem with your son, or with the alternative methods being used or she just has a problem. This need scrutiny.

For the record ds has no issues at school. He gets on well. dd, birth child, has autistic tendencies and is very dyslexic and behind at school. She hated primary, which failed her massively despite numerous meetings and letters from me and professional input to school via me!

She is now in secondary and doing so much better. She was very well behaved and would have been devistated to be shouted at. At 11 she might have sworn at teacher too.

I am not surprised he swore at her if he has experienced early childhood trauma. She's triggering a fight or flight response and isn't going to get anywhere that way.

I understand why you are fed up. Honestly though? I would want to hear the TA's side of this as well. The teacher was on the other side of the room so the first thing she saw was your son being shouted at. She probably (undoubtedly in fact) missed the interaction that went before that. I have never seen a TA start shouting at a child before asking and repeating an instruction. And he was colouring in but as you point out above, this was after the students had been asked to start work, not whilst he was focusing on listening to instructions.

So yes, if you are sensing scepticism in my posts it is because I am sceptical about what you have been told, not because I am sceptical about what you are saying. I'm sure you believe what you are saying.

Italiangreyhound: No, they don't have the right not to be shouted at. There is no policy I am aware of that says a member of staff in a school can't raise their voice to a child. Obviously there are degrees to everything (I have seen staff cross the line) and some people would argue it is never necessary, but it isn't disallowed.

The idea the teacher is lying is rubbish. The only possibility is the teacher has it a bit wrong but her story and the OPs son's story are the same. So it is true.

Trifle if you feel the Op had been harsh, what are you talking about? Harsh in that she sees correctly her son was wound up to explosion point by an unpleasant and unprofessional TA?

Why does anyone want to defend this TA?

If the OP sees people as being against her, it is because that is exactly how some posts are coming across. To suggest otherwise sounds s bit gaslighty to me!

OP please meet with the teacher and the TA
Calmly explain to them both that the teacher's approach to handling your son works better than the TAs.

I agree that many people, myself included, are puzzled about why the class teacher would describe an unacceptable incident to you in great detail, yet not feel she needed to do anything to address it.

And I'm also puzzled as to why, when you spoke to the head teacher about the incident, she was apparently "not perturbed" about it.

In my school, if a TA was regularly (you say upthread it's something she tends to do) getting right up close to a child and shouting in their face, there is no way any member of staff would not be perturbed about it.

So I think it's not that people disbelieve you, it's that people are surprised that everyone in the scenario seems to be accepting of what happened without question and is doing nothing to put strategies in place to prevent it happening again.

I don't have special needs but if someone shouted in my face I'd tell them to fuck off

Trifle shouting at an individual, any individual, anywhere, in this way for this reason is wrong (take it as red all my comments are IMHO).

Why are you finding it hard to believe there is a TA who is so bad! It is hard work, low pay, potentially little training, why is it so hard to believe one TA is crap!

Every profession has a bad apple or two. It is not a slight on teaching or TAs to acknowledge one could be rubbish!

This forensic analysis of who might be to blame isn't helping anyone and questioning the teacher's account and motives is a route to madness.

We can argue over ideals but in reality the exclusion is within the schools rights and not worth fighting over. Similarly the school will not discipline the TA unless she has history of over-ruling the class teacher's instructions (and possibly not even then) so fingers crossed that either they get the behaviour management policy through to the TA (colouring in yes, raised voice no, arms-length yes, if in doubt ask the teacher for support) or that they keep her well away from the OP's DS in future.

Parents can get good advice on how to handle this on the SN boards. A lot of us have experience handling difficult situations with schools so we know there are different sides to the story and that none of us (including the OP) was actually there. We have to balance protecting our child right now with keeping the school onside.

I don't spend much time on SN myself any more because my DS is older and doing well at university. Not in prison so his teachers must have done something right despite not getting in a huge tizzy over his misbehaviours