To think being spat on and hit isn’t part of my job?

[BarbaraBeast]

Just a rant really I suppose but I need it tonight.

I’m newly pregnant (my boss already knows because of the nature of my job) and work with young children; a job I love and am highly qualified in.
We have had a child with us for the best part of a year who has severe behavioural issues (I won’t go into too much detail for privacy) but the problems are essentially now out of control and we don’t have the child’s parents on our side because they insist the behaviour isn’t an issue. The issue isn’t deemed by involved behavioural teams to be an underlying condition, the child simply does as he pleases with his parents’ consent.

For months now my colleagues and I have been punched, kicked, bitten, sworn at, smacked and spit on (child aims for the mouth/face area specifically) on a daily basis and just when we feel there has been progress made, the child will come out with new, more outrageous behaviour.

My manager isn’t particularly helpful in these instances, choosing to stay in her office and complete “paperwork” instead of giving a hand but she is well aware of the stress we are under but I’m seriously pissed off with her after a comment she made today.
After this child had finished hitting me for implementing a time out and after I’d been spat at twice (yep, In the face. And yep, he has a streaming cold), I said to my manger (who had come to see what the commotion was about) that I can’t be doing with this everyday and that we are all exhausted of this child’s behaviour and I was quite blunt in saying she needed to do something more productive because the team can’t keep themselves and other children safe without some serious intervention. Her response to all that was “just remember you’re quite hormonal with being pregnant”. WTF?
I was fuming that she completely dismissed me and the situation by passing it off as an overreaction on my part essentially.

I want to have a word with her about it tomorrow because I can’t spend the rest of this pregnancy being hit and spat on by a child who needs serious intervention which she needs to put in place.
WIBU to set her straight and tell her the team is at breaking point because of this behaviour and tell her not to dismiss my frustrations for pregnancy hormones?

The child should be excluded. Let the parents deal with it, as they don't see there is a problem.

Wow, if I was you I’d be absolutely fuming with that response. How dare they suggest it’s your ‘hormones’ - that’s a deeply misogynistic response.

I also work with small people and recently had an incident in which I felt the safety of my baby was threatened. I kicked off and no longer have to do said unsafe activity. I think pregnancy changes your attitude - I couldn’t care less if people think I’m overreacting, sensitive whatever - I’m protecting my baby and that’s what matters to me.

Absolutely contact your union if they don’t sort it out.

Are the other children at risk from this child? Is it worth threatening to report the situation to the safeguarding team?

Does the child have an EHCP?

Are the other children at risk from this child? Is it worth threatening to report the situation to the safeguarding team?

I really, really worry how aggression is just seen as normal in SN settings. It’s horrifying having a SN child myself. It’s like it’s just seen as part of disability and it’s not.

I know is difficult but bad behaviour can be reduced to near zero. There are some great examples of places which have done this. It does take looking at a completely different curriculum though. The more OP emails and flags this is up the more we can change. No one, pregnant or not should ne subjected to this regularly. I understand flare ups will happen. But they can be managed.

Also strongly feel that you don’t then put the behaviour back on the parents. I know they should be working with you, I know they should be doing more. But the school setting should be able to manage behaviour without this - it’s what happens in class that is key.

There are plenty of studies that show teachers in SN blame the child for bad behaviour, and not the school environment. It’s not a SN child’s issue. It’s an environment issue.

Does your child to to a SEN school @Warmfirechocolate? Because obviously there are different degrees of special needs ,my son goes to a SEN school all the children have significant learning disabilities and some also have autism many have great difficulty with communication and a lot are non verbal it's a lovely school and a very nurturing environment but when you have a school full of children with complex learning disabilities sometimes they have challenging behaviour and whilst the school work very hard on this some children can be aggressive it's about managing the risk and working with the child to reduce those incidents .

Yes she goes to a SEN school, and I know that challenging behaviour is there I do. Half the children are non verbal. However I just feel that we need to raise the bar massively. My child’s school are not totally on top of it but they are as good as it gets where I live.

I do not blame the OP at all she is so right to say this is not on.

I feel it’s time we realized that it is possible for almost zero violence to occur in a SEN setting. It really is. I’ve seen places and I’ve also managed this with my own child. Yet I’ve had to fight tooth and nail for other professionals to also manage this with my child. My child needs very sensitive and professional managing otherwise she will kick off massively. And once it starts, the behaviour then is very difficult to pull back. I go in at the first sign of bad behaviour from my child and work with the teacher. One thing is that that once one child does it, other kids can also copy or get distressed.

Incidents do happen. But they should not be the norm. It does need a whole different look at how to help that child cope.

I guess what I’m trying to say, not very succinctly, is that SEN does not have to equal aggression and extreme behaviour.

We seem to just see the challenging behaviour as ‘the SEN’

Rather than what happens when ‘the SEN’ is not adequately managed and supported.

Yes I see what your saying ,I think part of the problem is that one size does not fit all in SEN school,s my son goes to a generic LEA SEN school and range of ability is wide there are more ( private) specialists schools for more complex children with specific needs but the we are very expensive and LEA,s don't like to pay for these schools .

But back to the Op regardless of how the child is managed ,the Op should not be getting involved in any incidents and her employees are failing in their duty of care towards her to keep her safe at school.