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

Behaviour is communication

Not everyone agrees with this. www.assistiveware.com/autistic-behavior-always-communication

Yes rail they are, which is where we all started, I think.

Then you certainly can't blame daily abuse of a chosen victim on an extreme distress.

From a point of view of a NT child, why they should be accepting abuse?

From a point of view of a NT adult, if some thugs continuously assaulted you, you'd want police to deal with them, not instruct you to invite them to dinner.

I don't think we are that far apart in general, zzzzz, it's just with specifics.

A class teacher has to be aware of the needs of all the children. In my view children with SENs can't have automatic priority, sometimes someone else has greater needs. You can't split yourself into 2 or 3 pieces.

I agree that often behaviour is communication but that applies to NT children as well as those with special needs.

I found it much easier in Special Ed because there were always enough adults in the classroom and the classes were small. I'm an advocate of such schools because of the small miracles they worked with children like my DN who would never have coped in a MS school. That's why I went to work in one.

There were never fewer than 3 adults per classroom in the school where I worked. Sometimes more, plus medical staff on call. I know it was a rarity in the current funding climate.

Watery, some additional needs can be easily catered for within mainstream, though. It is beneficial for the child with the additional needs and those without. You must admit, it is good for wider society to have experience and understanding of diversity and disability. It is unfair not to let people with disabilities integrate into wider society and have the greatest sense of autonomy they possibly can rather than been hidden away in institutions.

There are a wide variety of additional needs which can be easily catered for within mainstream. All that is often required is a bit more flexible thinking and reasonable adjustments. It is sad that some posters on this thread have gravitated towards equating additional needs with violence which does not at all accurately reflect the sheer diversity of additional needs that exist.

Yes, allowances have to be made. Additional needs are additional after all. However what kind of society do we live in if the able resent some small allowances been made for individuals who are less able than them? Remember any able minded and bodied person might get sick or injured, would they really want to be resented for it?

And I also think it is unfair just to categorise those with additional needs according to their additional need. They are a whole person. My DC had some additional needs when smaller. However they were overcome and managed. My DC also has areas of great talent, whereby less teacher/adult input is needed in order for achievement to reach over and above what would be considered 'normal'. I hate it when this is not acknowledged. Overall, my DC's needs were only deemed 'additional' because they were different to the norm. They required different a type of planning and teaching. For example, my DC could read fluently and understood what was read on school entry - there was no headaches with teaching phonics or spelling. The concepts and conventions were immediately understood. Yet lining up for extended periods of time was difficult.

To me behaviour is communication means that I should try to understand why certain behaviours are happening.
Even when a child may be deliberately hitting others, there may be lots of reasons for that behaviour including being distressed because they cannot cope.

Watery, some additional needs can be easily catered for within mainstream, though.

Absolutely. No argument from me about that, most can be catered for in MS, with sufficient funding and staffing.

Rockpebblestone, do you think we didn't want it to stop? I don't care, sorry I had sympathy initially but after 2 years and a suicidal child I just didn't, what the bullies problems were, I don't care if they are on a special plan but I do feel that good, quiet, ignored children need some recognition as well and they need and deserve to be safe even if that upsets the child who is attacking them.

I would be interested to know what job deems it acceptable for an adult to be hit, have the personal belongings stolen and subject to verbal abuse by their colleagues? My back ground is two careers, the police and mental health and in both staff sometimes got hurt by service users and that wasn't considered acceptable but it would certainly have been a disciplinary for a colleague. Attempted murder would have been a police matter and fairly obviously a dismissal for gross misconduct. One of my kids works in the NHS and two in education and again in no way would they, or their unions, accept that they should go into work every day and get hurt, let alone attempted murder, and then watch the attacker get worker of the week award.

If people who have children with challenging behaviour want some support they need to think about the victims as well.

I expect some people here would be foaming at the mouth at DD's special treatment. She doesn't have to do as much work as the rest of the class, she can go out for a walk whenever she wants, she gets one-to-one attention every week and plays with a special adult. She gets given sweets and little treats just for doing what everyone else is doing.

She looks 'normal' and doesn't have a TA so obviously doesn't have SEN.

Except she has severe anxiety because of her experiences for the first 5 years of her life in her birth family (before I adopted her). She has very little self-belief and plenty of toxic shame whenever she gets the slightest thing wrong.

When she's given less work it takes the pressure off (and she then often does the additional work as she gains confidence). When she goes for a walk it is a huge step forward because she has learnt to recognise her feelings before they are overwhelming, knows how to help herself calm down and trusts the teacher enough to feel safe letting herself stand out instead rather than hiding in the 'herd'. The special adult is a counsellor. When she can't cope she hurts herself - she's never hurt anyone else. The sweets etc are to acknowledge when she has managed her feelings, and/or when she has done the additional work by choice etc.

She (and I) would far rather she could cope without those allowances, but she can't.

But yes, totally unfair that she has all this special treatment.

Allington, don't know about anyone else but I wouldn't have a problem with what you daughter is getting as support. She isn't harming anyone else.

granny many children with physical challenging behaviour will never have jobs.
Bullying isn't challenging behaviour. The term challenging behaviour has been misappropriated to mean any anti social behaviour but that isn't what it means.

granny you seem to be equating additional needs with violence. This is unfair and inaccurate.

Challenging behaviour, as an additional need, especially that that is dealt with in MS, is often likely not to involve violence at all. Sometimes children with additional needs will hide under a table or lay on the floor if distressed (as mine did but only on a couple of occasions in the whole of primary). Some will find it difficult to stay still in a line or change their clothes due to fine motor skill difficulties. Some find concentration difficult.

Yes additional needs can cause extra stress that lead to violent outbursts, however those who are considered NT are certainly not immune to sudden violent outbursts either.

Spikeyball I agree that the term has been misappropriated but many schools seem to be failing to deal with bullying by excusing the bullies.

Rockpebblestone, no I have said that I don't think these kids had SN or additional needs. If you want me to spell it out I think they were badly behaved brats and the school failed to deal with it. They went on to the same grammar school as my daughter. It was made clear within the first two weeks that the behaviour would not be tolerated and it stopped. Do you think that was a coincidence?

Are you going to tell us what sort of work you do so that people will know where bullying, physical assaults and attempted murder is deemed as acceptable between colleagues?

And no one has to believe that anyone would accept the behaviour from a colleague that my daughter was expected to accept.

Ds had challenging behaviour, he couldn't cope with demands placed upon him,he couldn't cope with social interaction, he couldn't cope with noise or the strip lights or some peoples voices.
He hurt very few pupils in school and it was never premeditated always as a reaction when they perhaps startled him, got too close and tried to interact when he was trying to get away.
None of them should have happened,most of them happened when the TA who was there to support him had been asked to do something else and she wasn't where she should have been.
It wasn't until a parent who was incredibly supportive of ds complained to the school and the LA about her child being hurt because of the misuse of ds's support that it stopped and ds never hurt anyone again.
Ds wasn't at fault in that situation,it was entirely down to the school and it took the insight of a parent who was able to see the bigger picture to get results (I encouraged her to complain) because believe me I had raised the misuse of his support on many occasions previously.

zzzzz, this thread started about well behaved children having to watch badly behaved children getting rewards. My daughter is an extreme example of that. I stated that no adult would be expected to put up with that and Rockpebblestone said she has been attacked and bullied and she put up with it. I still don't believe that any adult would put up with that from colleagues much less that any employer would tell them they should put up with it.

Hope that helps.

granny, when I said I accept children (and adults) can have violent outbursts that does not mean there should be no steps taken to prevent them. Quite the opposite. I accept that it happens and we all, society has a whole and every individual, has a responsibility to find out the causes and take steps to prevent violence.

Your posts seem to suggest you are very angry yourself. (Name calling such as 'brats' you use in your posts does not suggest a calm demeanour).

As for my careers, I worked for a children's charity for some years and came across some children with very challenging behaviour. I have family members who work for CID, the Probation Services, Children's Services and in the Mental Health Services. Yes, they experienced violence, during their roles but the overriding sentiment, I got from them, was compassion for those involved.

1nsanity, exactly your child was let down as well as the child/children he hurt. I believe my daughter was let down but so were the children who were allowed to behave like that. It is clear that those girls, unlike your child, just needed to understand that it wasn't acceptable. They must have found it really funny that not only could they bully other children but they were the ones who got sympathy and rewards.

Rockpebblestone but you and your relatives were subject to violence from service users and were paid for that work. The comparison with my daughter would be you being attacked by colleagues as she was attacked by fellow students. Can you see the difference? When teachers told my daughter she should feel sympathy for them it wouldn't be like your relative in the probation service being sympathetic it would be like the victim of the crime being told they should be sympathetic.

Too true I'm angry, you spend years trying to deal with your child being deliberately hurt until they reach the point where at 10 they want to commit suicide and tell me you wouldn't be angry.

The sad thing about the attitudes we experienced and the attitude of some people on here is that children who have genuine problems will get less sympathy and understanding because children who just choose to be naughty put people's backs up.

Ironically my daughter's best friend had learning difficulties and my daughter supported her with her school work and she supported my daughter with her problems. The funny thing is that little girl, who had quite a difficult homelife as well as learning difficulties, didn't get anywhere near the help and support that the bullies got.