School rewarding 8 yr olds for bad behaviour

[Pugwash2005]

My ds and his friends have been complaining because the 4 'naughty' children in their class have a tea party every Friday afternoon if they get over 12 'smileys' in a week, 2 'good' children are also picked to go along. There was an incident in school with one of the challenging pupils but he was still allowed to the party. Ds & I along with other mums think this party is making other children feel they are not rewarded for their good behaviour along with the fact that even when naughty these 4 kids get rewarded. Your opinions on this would be great

YANBU, this is why I could never teach primary.

I still remember when I was in year 3 and got hit by a chair being thrown across the classroom, causing a trip to the hospital with bruising around the eye. The child who threw it then got given Star of the Week at the end of the week, while I was left shaking every time he came near me.

He was later excluded at least twice at secondary school - once for dealing weed, and then for threatening a student with a knife during a drugs-related fight.

Maisy- I'm not condemning the whole profession , I am very pleased with DDs current school. However the treatment of dd at past school was bordering on abuse, in fact one member of staff was dismissed due to her treatment of DD, which I can't go into but has left me feeling quite bitterly disappointed in that school.

I understand the stress and pressure teachers are under and don't envy them. Our local mainstream can't possibly get to know the kids individually the staff turn over is huge, TA's being made redundant due to budget cuts , pressure for offsted results.

In my experience mainstream aren't often equipped to support students with SEN

Maisy many teachers make assumptions. Dd has ASD,she is rule bound so has never misbehaved in her whole life, she follows every rule to the letter. She was known as Little Miss Perfect in Primary on the quiet , it still took six months in Secondary before her TA's and teachers finally accepted that all their preconceptions as to what a child with ASD and a statement looked like was nothing like dd and that was in spite of having a very good statement and having had a very comprehensive handover from Primary and a protracted transition process.
I really get fed up on these threads and others where it is always assumed that every child with ASD is going to be naughty.

Sometimes I think most on MN have forgotten what it is actually like to be a child. Does no one remember that sometimes it is funny to be deliberately naughty?

Children with asd are no more 'naughty' than any other children. They may have behaviours caused by their condition but they are not being naughty.

Watching my son repeatedly punch himself in the face when he talks about school definitely shows he is in it for the Lolz

FFS I am very far from saying all or even most children. But it is a fact.

Dixie my two with ASD have been at opposite ends of the spectrum I have ds who had extreme challenging behaviour and dd who is rule bound. Ds was diagnosed at two and a half but even so some teachers viewed him as naughty even when he had a lot of diagnoses and none of them said naughty. Ds was my fourth child and the older three had been exemplary students and yet still my parenting was called into question even though ds had 1 to 1 in school at all times whereas I could manage him better at home with fewer incidents as 1 of 4.

Sorry but many children do play the reward system. I know I did at school the rewards/trips/time out of lesson was brilliant.

I got took horse riding, mc Donald's, time out cards so I could leave a class when I wanted, the best part was getting a 1-2-1 who would do all my writing for me and a reduced time table.

I still went on to college after and passed my course with the highest possible grade, married with children etc now.

Yes some have disabilities and difficult home lives but a lot just don't like school and enjoy the rewards. Hell there have been threads on here before where children have said to their parents they will just be naughty a little then go back to being good so they are finally the one getting the reward.

brasty:

This is the problem, isn't it? Lots of people have started to see poor behaviour as proof of SN rather than a possible sign of it.

I used to look after kids with severe SN. I remember the training we had, which yes included the understanding that sometimes, being naughty is fun. The training focussed on not putting children in that situation if at all possible.
Children misbehave for a wide variety of reasons. And the same kid can misbehave for a variety of reasons. The teenager I looked after for a bit 1-1 screamed as a result of distress. But would revel in stealing cakes and eating them.

Yes exactly. Bad behavour is not proof of SN.

I think a lot of people see distressed behaviour as poor behaviour.

Is it better to punish everyone just to make things fair? Will that improve school life for everyone? Or better to assume kids are not so manipulative, treat the kids in need with kindness and accept that few of the manipulative kids fall through the net.

Teachers are not taught how to deal with special needs - some teachers we've experienced have been amazing, others have been shit, we had a child in my dc's year who clearly had severe issues but the school insisted he was just naughty, they punished him continuously and he got worse not better - it took them quite a few years and a training course or two before they caught on, they were so obsessed with blaming it on poor parental discipline - I wouldn't suggest that being a teacher makes you any better at sussing these things out.

Or better to assume kids are not so manipulative, treat the kids in need with kindness and accept that few of the manipulative kids fall through the net.
Definitely Bensyster because I'd assume that the manipulative children probably had their own challenges. Indeed the one manipulative child I knew who played the rewards system probably did it because it got them the attention they craved and didn't receive at home.

My DD is one of those kids, she gets rewards and special treatment a lot. She's almost certainly going to be diagnosed with ADHD. I worry she could be singled out by other kids. I worry she will struggle at secondary and later on in life. I don't want her to need this special treatment, I'd rather she was normal and not given extra treats.

I am so grateful that I have two very easy kids, kids who go to school everyday, do their homework, comply with school rules, work hard - I had one year of constant complaints from a teacher (Year one) about ds's lack of concentration and listening - at least once a week often more and it ground me down, I have no idea how other parents cope with the constant negative feedback from teachers when they are doing the best they can.

This happens at many primary schools. But the same kids usually get expelled by 2nd year of high school. So am not sure it does work.

This happens in my ds school. The naughty kids get far more rewards than the good kids.

My ds has said to me he would get loads more fun stuff to do if he was naughty all the time.

It's a shit message to give to the kids who are well behaved.

I also think there's a huge amount of talking at cross-purposes here, agendas from all sides. I am obviously speaking from the point of a mother of a child with additional needs, others are speaking as teachers, others as the parents of foster or adopted children who have had dreadful beginnings, and finally are the parents of NT children who see a disparity and an unfairness.

Lots of noise from many vested interests.

I think we could all do with taking a step back sometimes and listening what others not in our situation have to say. I know I'm guilty of this, but as a parent your default position is obviously the needs of your your child.

In the interests of full disclosure, I was one of those people, that thought bad behaviour was down to bad parenting. That was before I had children and life, as is has a habit of, swiftly disabused me of that notion in the most brutal way.

In ashamed of the way I used to think, but, I do understand who people think that way. I wouldn't wish the baptism of fire I had on people and I like to think I would probably have matured and come to a different conclusion eventually, but I honestly can't say.

Dixie sounds like you have a similar mix to here.I have one with dyspraxia, one highly gifted, one gifted, ds with ASD and dd with ASD. At one time I had five in five different schools and three of them in three different schools were assumed to be only children It's nothing if not interesting anyway