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?

OP, lots of teachers raise their voices. It is not always the best way of dealing with a situation but it doesn't justify abusive language. How do you know she gets 'too close'? What is too close?

I am sorry but Harsh speaks with some degree of truth. Early 'trauma' is no excuse for bad behaviour. Plenty of well behaved kids have had much to deal with. Excusing makes the behaviour acceptable and it clearly is not. He needs to apologise and be helped to accept responsibility for his behaviour - or he will grow into a spoilt, inconsequential teenager and adult. 11 year old colouring may be tolerated by a weak teacher but won't get much acceptance in high school. You are doing him no favour making excuses.
At 11, if he had marked SEN the school and health checks should have picked it up. If not get an assessment - if you have known he has problems earlier why wait until a crisis - you should have addressed formally sooner. Let's remember even kids with SEN can be naughty and need tighter structure not freedom to do as they please.
You should support him in apologising (even if it means a battle). At 11 he needs to learn fairly quickly who is in charge and what acceptable behaviour looks like. TA may have done you a favour. Spoilt kids often turn into aggressive youths.

Yep I know trifle.....

Naice school in a naice area.
It takes a hell of a lot of a child to be excluded there (both dcs say there is some regular fights between some of the pupils as well mayhem in a few classes)

It isn't a weak teacher, it's letting him do something to reduce his stress levels and calm and focus him. She gets too close by bending in front of him when he's trying to put his head down and look at his work and shouting in his face.

Unfortunately exclusion often results in increasingly poor behaviour and school performance There is no simple solution here/ Teachers have a hard enough job without dealing with insults or verbal abuse. Equally, children having difficulty coping with the daily classroom routine, for whatever reason, require an inclusive education that tolerates difference within our communities. Special needs children have feelings and do care about their mistakes and feel shame, and they are not created with equal coping mechanisms.

OP, you need assessment and possible diagnosis. Easier said than done. The TA sounds hostile, poorly trained/informed and frankly, in the wrong job.

I'd ask to speak to the SENCO. Does your son have an individualised education plan? This setting may not be the best for your DS if they can't do better than this.

crums I know plenty of children who ar diagnosed with autism or dyslexia or whatever once they arrive at secondary. Without anything having beeing raised during primary years.

The fact nothing has been said before doesn't mean there is no SN or SEN.

You need to work with the school and you need to get a diagnosis. Otherwise distressing situations will continue to occur and your son will not get what he needs.

For example, if the TA was inappropriate was it because of her personality or a lack of agreed routines within the classroom (or both). If a child has a special requirement to be allowed to colour then any staff member who walks in to that classroom needs to know that as all staff members will be responsible for classroom behaviour and it is outside the ordinary. For example, it should be on the supply notes if his usual teacher is ever away.

You might want to discover whether his colouring was disturbing anyone else. My daughter can certainly colour in a disruptive way if she is angry! Also discover if it was really shouting. My son tells me I am shouting if I am ever remotely disappointed. Because if the colouring was "loud" and the shouting was not, then again, this needs to be noted and understood. Your son could certainly have rules within the class around the type of colouring that is OK. And staff could know the best way to reprimand him if needed.

I am interested to know what you mean by intimidating? What have you seen which suggests this? What would you like to change there? If you say she was "In your son's face" then it sounds very aggressive, I agree, but if she was in a classroom situation has his misinterpreted her ducking down to talk to just him and not disturb the others? Again, if he prefers staff to be further away, that needs to be in his school notes and communicated to all staff.

Staff are not mind readers and can only be expected to work with differing rules and provisions if they have been agreed and communicated.

I think the exclusion, in the end, may be a good opportunity for you to make the school see his needs are very serious and get some processes in place that support your son but also the staff. Good luck.

I'm absoloutely shocked that the OP is justifying this. Your DS is aggressive. The exclusion should have even permenant.

He was not colouring "loudly"

The TA did shout and get in his face.

She gets too close by bending in front of him when he's trying to put his head down and look at his work and shouting in his face

It's her job to look at his work. 'Shouting in his face' - maybe, maybe not. I have had students say the same thing when I have shouted, but I would disagree that k was 'in their face'.

Absent an assessment of SN, this sounds like the punishment was fair but you need to agree some strategies to go on the Inclusion plan with the school IF they agree that these will work. You can't expect teachers or TAs to let your son get away with doing what he wants in the classroom, which is what it sounds like to me. His work will need to be looked at. He will need to stop colouring in. Etc. If strategies are put in place as a result of an assessment then the school staff will need to follow these. At the moment it's not clear to me that the TA has done anything that any other member of staff wouldn't do with any other student who wasn't following instructions.

How do you know she shouted in his face? were you there?

He isn't "doing what he wants" he is colouring in when the teacher is talking! Is anybody reading what I am putting? She got right in his face and yelled.

Answer the questio OP. How do you know she shouted in his face??

Pension that should be formalised into an official plan and shared with all the staff who deal with this child. If this is a year 6 child then that is especially important. A formal plan with clear strategies should be passed onto his secondary school at the end of the year. If not this child is going to have an awful secondary transition. I don't know many teachers at my school who would tolerate the colouring in from a child who arrived to us with no SEN and no Behaviour Support Plan. It's not good enough for the individual teacher to do this informally. He should be going up to secondary with the right formal support in place so that his new teachers know exactly how to deal with him. For the primary school not to put this in place could create serious issues for him in the longer-term. A formal plan also means that the TA would be expected to accept the strategies and use them.

Harsh...clearly an appropriate user name! Children who 'lash out' verbally or physically rarely do so for no reason. The OP has made it clear that her child has issues. As professionals we have a duty to look beyond the behaviour and try to support children and their parents. That doesn't mean giving in. I do exclude, but have never permanently excluded a child. Dealing with children is not an exact science and one size fits all doesn't work. I'm so glad that private schools, harsh, don't have 'bratty' children - contradicts much of what I've heard and read!

He shouldn't have sworn at her but there is no way that the TA should have shouted at him, firm yes, shouting no.

OP- I don't think the TA is dealing with your son in the right way but I really do think your issue is with school management. They need to issue a plan that states that your son should be allowed to colour as a coping strategy and then deal with the TA if she does not fall into line with the plan.

I have lost count of the number of children in the primary school I work in who claim teachers shout at them.

OP, you need to find out what actually happened from the school. As I posted upthread, if the TA actually shouted specifically at your son, the whole class and the teacher will be able to confirm that that was what happened as they will all have heard it.

Sorry, OP, I really don't mean to sound rude - I am sure you think you are doing the best for your DS by supporting him - but I simply can't agree with you here. You say you aren't condoning what he did but it sounds like that is exactly what you are doing. You weren't there to see the TA shout in his face or get too close, but you are accepting this version of events from your son, who accepts that he was (very) verbally abusive. He is 11. Unless this behaviour is completely outside of his control there is no excuse for it and the best thing for him and his future is to understand that. Otherwise he is going to continue to get into trouble and struggle, with or without a diagnosis. It's not too late to get the assessment and diagnosis underway, but not is it too late to teach your DS to behave appropriately. Good luck.

This is why some schools have CCTV in classrooms. Maybe there's one in your DS's classroom OP and the school will look at it to see what actually happened!

Who witnessed the incident and reported to you what you have described as happening?

Is he in primary or secondary?

The teacher must have been lying when she described the TA getting in his face and shouting, then.

Where do people live that an ASD diagnosis appointments are available just like that?

Took two years following an urgent referral from paed here. And that's after the initial referral to the paed, and the delay for that too.

Early trauma isn't an excuse for poor behaviour? Nice that you can contain things so easily.

Early trauma can damage a child in a huge number of ways, one of which is that the "fight or flight" drive stays on hyper alert all the time. Couple that with possible autism, and you have a fairly explosive child, who can find ordinary every day stimulus overwhelming.

Given that colouring in has been agreed by the teacher, it sounds as though there is already a support plan in place; I highly doubt this is the first conversation op has had with the school.

So what I'd see here is child getting overwhelmed, escapes into colouring because that calms him down. Starting to lower defences. And is then abruptly interrupted by someone intruding into his private space and demanding his full attention immediately.

It doesn't actually matter at that point whether she was shouting or using a very firm no-nonsense voice. His perception was that his calm space was suddenly shattered, and he reacted to it. Her breath may not have smelt bad bad, but it probably smelt of breath, which is an additional sensory intrusion on a child already experience sensory overload.

Yes, I think exclusion is overkill here. Of course he shouldn't have sworn at her. But it sounds to me as though she is quite "old school" and thinks he should just pull his socks up and get over it, that letting him colour in in the first place is pandering to him when he should just behave. A better approach would have been to give him a couple of minutes, or to gently remind him it was time to move on. Not because children shouldn't be disciplined, but because this is a child with a particularly difficult set of circumstances, and a mainstream classroom can be an unbearably overwhelming space at those times.

Op I've known some children have a series of cards which they can hold and put out on their desk as a signal to the teacher. Yellow would be "I'm finding this difficult" and red would be "I need to leave the classroom now for a bit."

Would something like that help prevent the overload?