Aibu nightmare child in dd class

[mussymummy]

So will try to keep this brief, dd was at nursery for 3 years with child, let's call him Bob who physically hurt her and other kids from age 2 when he bit another boy in the face. Nursery did not do enough (they have admitted this since) and the mother keeps making excuses for her darling Bob.
So now they are both in P1 in same class, I did request a class change for my dd but did not happen. He is a nightmare, punching kids in face, at afterschool club he has bitten and kicked one of the workers, his mum still refuses to accept responsibility for him and makes excuses
So this week he told my 5yo dd he was goin to kill her mummy and daddy as we slept. Cue tears, my heart breaking as my dd made me lock every window and door in house as she followed me doing it. She woke 3 times.that night (always sleeps right through) convinced child of chucky was trying to break in.
Ladies what do I do? The mother (aged in 40's with 2 older teenage ds) refuses to do anything about his behaviour because she has already raised 2 sons and there is nowt wrong with them.
I am struggling to know how to handle this. I spoke to the school who told me they have a behaviour plan in place for Bob and the last time I contacted the mum directly it did not go well (when we thought dd had a broken nose after Bob smacked her in face with toy car, there was lots of blood)
Any advice on next steps / how I handle this would be much appreciated

He is a nightmare, punching kids in face, at afterschool club he has bitten and kicked one of the workers, his mum still refuses to accept responsibility for him and makes excuses

I'd get ss involved.

Bellaxx8 the sensible thing if you are really concerned about your child is to put them first and move them. Not give them an example of how to be thug.

The sad thing about all this is the fact that so many people are excusing the behaviour as ASD or a bad home life.

There was a child in DS's class who lashed out sometimes. Kids would get hurt. The reason why no one was up in arms about it was the way the child's mum dealt with it. She sought ASD assessment, she worked with the teachers to come up with ways to stop him hurting classmates. She apologised and engaged with the parents of the children who got hurt. Eventually he got his diagnosis and now gets all the support he needs and as a result, he's calm, he's happy and he's an absolute treasure. A lovely, joyful boy who hasn't hurt another child in years. All because the mum didn't cover her eyes and ears and ignore it. She got involved. She took action.

Our "Bob"s mum doesn't care. She would watch him as a toddler snatching off other toddlers. She never said anything when he would push babies over. She'd carry on sipping her tea watching him whack other kids with toys. Once she even lifted a child off a ride on toy and left the crying child on the floor because Bob had wanted the blue car and not the exact same one in red.

She isn't even a "rough" type. She's actually quite well to do and works as a teacher.

I f be tempted to contact SS, (perhaps other can comment if completely incorrect).

The extreme levels of violence are cause for concern in a young child leading to injuries beyond the usual playground head bashing from chasing etc.
The fact the child doesnt respond to teachers is ab issue and suggests there are greater problems on some level be they SEN or home based.
The fact the parent cannot see any issue with what is clearly very extreme bad behaviour far outside the normal naughty spectrum either means she is completely ignoring it or possibly ot could be being learnt from an abusive home situation.

All of these mean SS should he aware in my mind and be making further investigations. With more agencies in place there may be a greater chance of something being sorted out sooner.

I really feel for you @mussymummy.
Good luck.

The OP is highly likely to be in Scotland, I don’t know if they call it P1, P2 etc in NI or Wales.

So knowing the education system as it is up here you need to provide the Head with a chronological list of incidents Bob has had with your daughter.

Honestly (and I do mean this if it were ME in your shoes) I would send the same detail at the same time to SS as I truly believe there’s violence in the home the way he’s acting out... unless it’s DEFINITELY SEN but you’ve not mentioned it so I have to assume it’s not.

I would also contact the next school you’d consider sending DD to, detail the matter at hand and request a place after Christmas or Easter. Only you know how to balance the timeline of giving the school a chance to fix it and your kid being in danger vs taking her out ASAP for her safety and her heart breaking as she’s going to be separated from all her friends. This assumes you can actually get a place somewhere else and you’re not on Barra or something

It’s so unfair and I feel heart sorry for her and you OP.

If school have concerns about homelife they will contact social services. SS do not have the capacity to get involved with every 5 year old that hurts others in school.

I’ve spoken about this before on here but my ds was in a similar situation with a Bob.

The Bob in ds’s class actually really liked my ds through primary school and wanted to be his friend. Ds was still scared because of the way he had behaved towards him at nursery. The difference was that Bob’s parents were at the end of their tether with him and tried hard to stop his behaviours.

The child was pretty much despised by everyone and wasn’t invited to parties etc but we did invite him to one around age 7 where he pulled his pants down and peed down the slide in soft play. Never again.

My ds was diagnosed with ASD age 8 and I always suspected something with Bob. He was finally diagnosed at 13 with ASD/ADHD and MH issues. By this point the boys were in separate schools and were friendly.

He was failed somewhere along the line I believe as his mum was adamant something was wrong but his dad reduced to accept it.
They’re now 16 and in sixth form college together and he’s like a different kid but will forever be known by most as a little shit.

It’s rough, we had several meetings with school because at one point in Y6 Bob was threatening ds and sent him horrible messages via phone which we kept and said the police would be involved as over the age of criminal responsibility.

Whilst I’m not suggesting Bob has ASD or similar, something is going very wrong in the child’s life and the other 30 children in the class are suffering as a result. Sadly it will probably take an extreme act of behaviour for someone to take action.

Good luck op

Underhisi
This doesn't sound like every other 5 year old who might have hurt someone at school.

This is a child who is persistently violent and had made threats to murder another child's parents. This isn't typical 5 year old pushing and shoving or snatching. It is a very concerning pattern of behaviour.

@avocadoincident

The child was expelled from the school. I believe his parents were told to wait and start him again at the next school year to see if he was able to adjust better when he was a little older.

Yes it is concerning but it will there will be a referral to social services by the school if they believe there are homelife issues. The op's 'job' is to ensure that school have all the information. Going to social services directly about something that happened within school is not the efficient way of dealing with this.

Put everything to the school in writing.
Go into them with a letter every time there is an incident. Tell them you want it kept on file for school inspectors to see.

I had this with Ds from 8-12 which set off a series of MH issues. His ‘classmate threatened to rape me’ Ds has only now at 18 gotten a handle on his anxiety and chronic fight or flight response.
CAMHS and other professional councilors traces it back to this child.

The school didn’t do enough and we regret not doing more or moving him.

Some children are so damaging to others.
My ds has 2 older brothers so wasn’t a ‘soft lad’.

Good luck OP

These threads rarely go well for mothers of ‘Bob’ type children who speak up, but here I go.

DS1 was eventually diagnosed with untypical ASD. Untypical because he failed to tick quite a lot of the boxes, as well as being extremely capable (though that applies to quite a few people with ASD). In the meantime, he had been involved in minor aggressive incidents at school which got worse as he got into secondary. In primary, he told one child that he would cut him in four. That sounds like the kind of thing an ogre in a fairy tale would say, but probably counts as a threat to kill.
I was lobbied to take him out of school. There were no suitable alternatives so I refused. I did however get him to a child neurologist and a psychologist and between the medication and the therapy something must have worked because by age 12 his behaviour was acceptable and it remains so four years later.
OP, I am very sorry your child is going through this and agree that you should use the term ‘safeguarding’ when talking to the school. The mother cannot go into the classroom to restrain Bob, and the school needs to develop an appropriate management plan.

@Teachermaths if it takes 2 years to get an ehcp in your LA then something is really going wrong, if a child has or may have SEND that may require an ehcp the process from request to completion of an ehcp must be no longer than 20 weeks, if the LA refuse to assess they must inform the school/parents of their decision within 6 weeks, if it then goes to tribunal then it will probably be a further 20 weeks until, if the tribunal agree that an ehcp is required then they will usually state that completion must take place within so many weeks.

The onus is on the LA to complete any relevant assessments, not for the school to provide months and months of evidence. Yes some evidence is required, a diagnosis is not.

Check the school’s policies (usually online). Put everything in writing e.g. if they invite you to a meeting: THank you for agreeing to meet to discuss the incident on (date) when my daughter received an eye injury...
Copy to Governors and Lea. or Trust if you don’t get a reply. YOur local authority will have details of SEN SUPPORT available under Local OFfer - look for Sendiass who should be able to advise.
Sorry - keyboard not working! Don’t be too quick to move her - there is a BOb in every school. It is the school’s job to keep everyone safe, including Bob, so don’t approach his mother.

Copy to Governors and Lea

THE👏OP👏IS👏NOT👏IN👏ENGLAND

@1DoesNotSimplyWalkIntoMordor I am SO SO FED UP of people saying "oh but the LEA has to do X" and "oh that's wrong, it's not in the timeline".
There is NOTHING that parents can do to force an LEA to produce a working EHCP in time. If the LEA won't assess: takes ages to go to tribunal. Refuse to issue: ditto. Issue one that's about as much use as loo roll: ditto.
So at every step if the LEA doesn't comply, all that happens is it takes forever to set things right.
Our LEA have just refused to admit the EHCP is wrong, 1 year after the school first set things in motion.
If the EHCP is badly written, it's hugely to their advantage as they don't need to pay for the help a child needs. An LEA has no incentive at all to write an EHCP in the first place, to write it on time, or to write it accurately. In fact, it's better for their budgets if they do none of these things.

Bob may have undiagnosed SEN and school won't tell you this (obviously).

Or he might be an ill-bred little thug in the making, they do exist you know.

Whatever labels get attached to him they don't solve the problem of his affect on other children.

makingmammaries
There's a fairly significant difference between you and Bob's parents though: you cared enough about your child to accept their behaviour wasn't ok and was problematic and pushed to get the support he needed.
Bob's parents, based on this thread, couldn't care less and are quite content for their child to continue being violent and threatening because it's not their problem.

Having a caring parent means your child's outcomes will be vastly better than Bob's.

I want to clarify i am not victim blaming, but you cant change Bob, and you might struggle to change the school. .so is there anything that could help your daughter feel more in control like martial arts classes, making sure she understands that she doesnt have to play in the same areas as Bob by helping her look at the playground and spot all the different areas and what she could do in them. A lot of young children stick to the same corner as thats what they know and it simply doesnt occur to them to move. They are only little and dont think like adults. Asking to make sure she is sat away from him in class, Making sure she knows how to tell a grown up that something has been said to her. It sounds silly but so many chikdren would struggle to approach a TA and say 'bob has said he will kill my mum and dad and i am scared' i know there are anti bullying courses you can do but the ones i know are in London so not much use here.

This violent child’s right to an education is seen as more important by the system than your daughter’s right to be safe from harm
This. I appreciate Bob has issues but that’s not your problem. Your priority is to protect your DD. If you can transfer or remove her then do so. Waiting around until Bob gets more support is not a solution because it may never happen and by then your DD may be mentally or physically scarred.

@1DoesNotSimplyWalkIntoMordor An EHCP can certainly take two years to be accepted, unfortunately. It absolutely depends what local authority your school is in, what age the child is and how much evidence you have to put forward. For example, in OP's case if the child was under 5 when the original application was made (nursery), then the EHCP will likely keep getting rejected until the child is 5, and has to attend compulsory schooling because of funding.

OP do not approach the parent. If you aren't
happy with the way that school are handling the situation then take DD out. Agree with PP about keeping a log, if you want her to stay there. But honestly, there probably isn't much more school can do, and chances are you have no idea of the full extent of the situation surrounding this child and his needs.
Shouting about SS to his parents is going to escalate things further and a child regardless of having Sen or not, does not learn things like threatening to murder someone in their bed, without concerning home life issues, which you may then feel the full force of if you choose to aggrevate the parents.

It's so sad that there aren't enough SEN facilities to support these children and their families, at five he is still just a baby, and you would do well to remember that. Next time you TTC it could be you with a child like Bob.

at five he is still just a baby, and you would do well to remember that. Next time you TTC it could be you with a child like Bob

Nasty nonsense @ginghamricecakes

Please explain how it is nasty nonsense? Anyone can have a child with needs, and OP would then, quite rightly, expect support and understanding from parents and school.

Report every incident preferably in writing so school are fully aware. There was a similar sounding boy in dd’s nursery with a mother in denial she used to smile indulgently at him as he was violent to children in front of her. He attacked dd one day and she told me in detail what he had done. I reported it to nursery manager and they were pleased as the more evidence they had documented the better from a getting him help point of view. Upshot eventually was His mum removed him voluntarily as she didn’t think anything wrong with him.

It's only nonsense to those who believe that a child having needs is always the parents fault - which is a nasty assumption.