AIBU to think mother of son’s classmate shouldn’t have grabbed him?

[MissOlivier]

My son has shown some spiteful behaviour towards his class. He has ADHD and ASD. His behaviour is definitely getting harder to manage in a mainstream setting.

Am struggling to understand why he does not have a full time LA when the hubbub of the classroom and irritating distracting kids can trigger him.

I get no aide time for my student who physically attacks me if I don't pay attention to him. I've currently got a bandaged arm from when he attacked me with scissors earlier in the week that will permanently scar. Scissors are normally banned in my classroom, but I had a relief teacher earlier in the week and they must have come in then. But he has no funding, so no aide time and it's up to me to manage his needs along with trying to teach the rest of the class. It's just not working.

Schools need more funding to be able to provide provision for ALL students. The situation is simply not sustainable as it is. I'd happily pay a heck of a lot more in taxes if it meant that schools were given the money they need to keep all students (and staff) safe.

I remember though in the early 00s there was a huge drive from the parents of children with SEN themselves for inclusion and moves away from special schools. So it might not have worked very well, but I don’t think that means it was purely cost driven or not what was wanted at the time.

Midnitescribbler the child you teach should have an EHCP, fully specifying his needs and the provision that MUST be put in place to meet those needs. The school or the parents can start the process. Please don’t buy the “there is no funding” story. Regardless of budgets, the local authority’s legal duties remain and they trump any budget.

So OP's son is pleading with the other children to stop the distressing noise and being mocked in return?

That sounds so heartbreakingly familiar DS doesn't lash out physically at other children, but he does become extremely distressed when they interfere with what he's doing, and will beg them to stop and leave him alone. The number of children who seem to find this amusing and will carry right on is disturbing to me.

(As I say, he isn't violent towards other children but will pull his own hair hard enough to rip chunks of it and will hit himself on the head. I'm "lucky" I suppose, that at least he won't be labelled a bully )

the important point here is that if the powers that be want kids with learning disabilities to attend mainstream then their needs should be catered for so that they are included and nurtured. This does require additional resources but it is a certainly cheaper than a specialist school. My son is Y6 and is being considered for an EHCP - hope he gets it so he doesn't fail at 2ndry. Academically he is very bright and can do well with the right support. The system is letting both children down. :(

Midnitescribbler the child you teach should have an EHCP, fully specifying his needs and the provision that MUST be put in place to meet those needs. The school or the parents can start the process. Please don’t buy the “there is no funding” story. Regardless of budgets, the local authority’s legal duties remain and they trump any budget.

I'm not in the UK, so the process is different here. These parents will not acknowledge that their child has any problems and will shut down any conversation about it, so he has no diagnosis. Without the parents on board, we cannot put anything official in place and we cannot apply for any funding. All that can be done is to be assigned a classroom aide but they won't hire another one.

Wow, reading this thread has made me realise how horrendous it must be to be a parent of a child with special needs.

Frustration is the all encompassing emotion. Sorrow, anger and everything else comes with it.imho. the urge to shake up the system to fund sen properly, is also hard to disguise. Every child is entitled to an education. Every child has the right to do so in a safe and secure environment. Sadly, one or the other fails because of either lack of education or understanding of staff in the requirements and/or massive underfunding. Mine only received the support as needed from day one, in y11 just before GCSE by which stage it was just too damn late. I remember speaking to one teacher of a core subject and asking why I had not been summoned to attend multiple crisis meetings at all that year as previous years. She was shocked and simply answered because it is my job to find a teaching method that works not yours. I just wish she had bèen there from day one!

Have you thought about changing schools? Not to a 'special school' but another mainstream. Another school maybe better able to support your son.
My friends son who has autism moved to an amazing mainstream school, after being in a horrendous one. He was not violent but boisterous and the school didnt know how to handle him. They actively excluded him from things such as school trips.

Your sons school is failing him. For it to get to a point in the classroom where your son gets up from his seat to say please stop. How is the teacher allowing it to get to that point? And then in some instances for it to continue that your son then shoves.

I didnt think you should have gone to the police. But after reading your last update, i urge you to. The mother KNOWS your son has autism and his triggers and management etc. To follow him, lay her hands on his face and grab him. Hell no. shakes head

@MidniteScribbler I'm shocked that a pupil who has physically attacked you with scissors is still permitted to be in your classroom! I had a student who attacked me - he was removed from my classroom for the safety of myself and other students, and was instead given 1 to 1 tuition by a large male tutor who could handle his violence. If I was the parent of another pupil in your class I wouldn't be happy with my child being exposed to a pupil with a history of stabbing people in the classroom!

Why on earth is an adult intimidating a child. You can imagine how she parents her children behind closed doors. Disgusting. I would of had her by her throat

Not defending the woman who grabbed OP's son, but did she actually know he was autistic? Did her daughter? I have a Year 7 DD, and until she read "The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime" and we had a chat about autism, she had never even heard of it - despite actually knowing several autistic children.

The OP said that the mother does know that the DS is autistic.

This is why I home ed my ASD DC, not because they were violent, but because they were badly bullied by their peers at school. The school were fucking useless. I agree that inclusion policies don't work and that there needs to be more specialist schools for specific disabilities.

there was a post about how children can get others into trouble and then play the victim. I was pointing out that that's clearly not what's happening here.

Yes and did that post say it justified The violence if she was winding him up? No. It didn’t. So why are you implying people are saying that?

So she tried to talk to him and he ignored her and walked away, so she grabbed the back of his blazer as he had his back to her? That's a whole different ballgame to her marching up and grabbing him by the scruff of the neck?

No she marched up to him, touched his face to move his head up and he tried to walk on then she grabbed him by the scruff of his neck via his collar. So pretty much exactly as described. Not sure how you read that any differently.

Bigpharma
When there simply isn't any budget left, and at the end of the financial year many schools literally don't have enough money for printing or soap, then how do you expect to get around it? Are you expecting TAs to work for free? If there's no money to pay them then there's no money. What is your magi

Pressed post too soon.

What is your magic solution. It sounds like you'd be better to target your anger at a national funding campaign rather than an individual school.

I am noise sensitive (not on the spectrum- to my knowledge) it’s like someone taking 2 pencils and wiggling them around inside your ears, back and forth, side to side, jabbing them all over the place with no rhythm or pattern. It’s just chaos inside your brain where you can’t think. It affects me more when I’m stressed and/or trying to concentrate. I struggle having a simple two way conversation in a restaurant with all the surrounding noises. I have to concentrate really hard. I have to ask my children to wait until I can find somewhere quieter for them to tell me something that require more than a “that’s nice” response. I explode at times (I have worked really hard on this) and have to walk out of rooms which looks astonishingly rude. The alternative is to scream at everyone to stop making noise. Which obviously I don’t do because I can’t remove myself from the situation. Many children can’t leave the room. They have to stay where the chaos is. So they explode.

Jesstjoking, there is no magic. But there is the Law. If the LA were held to account and to their legal duties then SEN services wouldn’t be in this mess.

I’ll be brief cos I’ve got to pick the kids up in a min but:

Children with SEN who need support/provision outside of the usual teaching that most kids get, should be assessed for EHCP.

EHCP assessment draws up the child’s needs and provisions required to address the needs and crucially the LA is responsible for ensuring this is delivered, not the School. The schools leadership are not told this and hence there are all sorts of myths around SEN funding, including that it’s only for special school/severe and complex needs etc, and that the school can’t afford it. It’s gross misinformation and not the schools responsibility legally. Yet getting this message over is incredibly difficult as so many teachers think “cuts = cuts to SEN.” They don’t. The SEN kids have legal protection but only if the LA are made accountable.

Springnowplease at my son's special school the children that are loud but capable of being quieter are encouraged to be quieter when they are with children who struggle with noise because it is the kind thing to do.

Springnowplease at my son's special school the children that are loud but capable of being quieter are encouraged to be quieter when they are with children who struggle with noise because it is the kind thing to do.

We don't know she was loud. She may have been using her normal voice. Classrooms can be quite noisy industrious places, as a teacher I liked it that way. If the lad can't cope with normal classroom noise he should leave the classroom to a quiet place until he has calmed down, he should have a 1 to 1 to help him with that.

You cannot run a class around the needs of one child. 29 others have a need to learn as well.

Bigpharma

From my limited experience the 2 problems that we came across were that EHCP just took so long for the LA to administer and also that they underestimated the support that a child needed so that the funding didn't match the level of support required.

We also had some problems with parents using personal budgets to buy in support that they considered a priority but didn't always match what the school considered a priority. This didn't happen often but it just illustrates the mess that the system is in.

Funding is the number 1 barrier to adequate support IME.

Sweetiebaby it’s a horrible system but there is a way through, especially if the LA know that you know your rights and are willing to threaten judicial review. There are time limits that the LA must adhere to, and the only way to get them to do things sometimes is to stand your ground, often at a time when you feel like fighting the least.

Ipsea are very useful.

To continue, we ensured that all our reports were very specific about what was needed and it gave the LA no wiggle room. The first step is (in my opinion) the realisation that the LA are the opposition.