And furthermore, to be clear, I'm not some softy, let-the-kids-run-riot parent. But 'behaviours have consequences' only ACTUALLY works if a child is neurotypical and their executive brain function and delayed gratification centres are working properly.
I can say to my child 'you need to take a deep breath, not let the the kid that pinched your pencil for the 5th time today wind you up, and put your hand up and ask the teacher nicely for another pencil and explain why'. But a child with ASD might just thump the other kid and take it back, even when Mum at home is saying exactly the same as me (plus 'you can't hit people, it's not acceptable' EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT.) But just not getting through, because in those moments, the overwhelm is instantaneous.
I can say to my child 'it's really important that you listen to the teacher at the start of story writing because they'll tell you what they want you to write/draw about, and they've told me twice now you've not written anything after 20 minutes'. The parent of an ADHD child can say the same thing and the kid DESPERATELY wants to do what the teacher wants. But there's a man in the playground up a ladder, and then Class 2X went down the corridor to PE and all he could hear was them talking about playing dodgeball, and now all he wants to do is go and play dodgeball, so he gets out of his seat to follow the children in the corridor and....
Now this might be the 10th indication since starting in September that little Johnnie has some attention issues. But if little Katie in the same class had type 1 diabetes and went down like a sack of potatoes in PE in week 3 and had to go off in an ambulance because her body doesn't make any insulin, you can guarantee she'd have a diagnosis, and medication and as much help as she needed pricking her finger and dripping blood onto the paper every lunchtime - well before Christmas.
But poor disruptive little Johnnie, he can't sit still, and he doesn't listen properly, and he fell out with the red table (where the sunlight through the corner window makes him squint in one eye at 2.55 in September and thumped his neighbour to shove up so he can shuffle out of it), then at 2.35 a couple of weeks later, then he can't even make it to 2.15 without squirming and putting his chair one centimetre away from his neighbour by half term). Then in November he fell out with blue table after he was moved there, because one of the kids always taps their pencil on the desk while the teacher is talking and it's not loud enough for her to hear, but he's so distracted he can't take in a single word she's said.
And a GOOD Year R teacher will ask him what's wrong, and confirm there are no troubling home circumstances, and hear that Mum has noticed he is fine concentrating for hours on building lego on his own or with friends, but when they go out to a busy pub for lunch with family, he's just away with the fairies the whole time and never answers any questions from Granny, so Granny thinks he's rude, even though he clearly loves her to bits & talks to her very nicely at her house.
And so teacher pays more attention to WHEN he's twitchy and interfering with other children, and WHEN he's not following instructions and starts writing it down, and calls him out when she sees frustration in November and there's no more hitting; then the SENCO comes and observes; and by February the beginnings of an ADHD referral are coming together. And Mum & Dad are asked to fill out a behaviour diary. And by November of Year 1 he gets an assessment with CAMHS. And the school is working through some management plans with him to try to help his focus. But by the time he starts a titration trial for medication it's June of Year 1, he's already fallen far behind his peers & has produced less than 1/5th of the written work (even though he's clearly sharp & his phonics when they stand up & do sound actions is spot on).
But his body doesn't produce dopamine, so his brain can't screen out peripheral activity that the other children can easily identify as trivial and ignore, so following what the teacher says when they are all sat down & supposed to be still & concentrating is LITERALLY the hardest task in the world for him in a busy & distracting school environment.
And his treatment for a chemical his body can't produce took 5 and a half terms longer than diabetic Katie to diagnose & receive trial medication for, because you can measure blood sugar with a drop of blood on a bit of paper, but you can't squeeze your brain to measure dopamine.
And the 'behaviours have consequences' teacher would have him sat on his own table for most of Year R, so he doesn't interfere with other kids (or get a nudge from them to say 'hey, we're supposed to be doing this') and hasn't even clocked (or care, because at least he's quiet?) that he still spends 80% of his time looking at the alphabet frieze above the corridor window, so he's still not making the progress he could be.
And he'd be utterly behind and still undiagnosed by Year 4 if he had a string of these kind of teachers. And his Mum would be at her wit's end, even if she did manage to get through that 'no biting, no hitting' was an absolutely golden, unbreakable rule - the same as it was at nursery, no matter how many other rules were different - and after the first half term of Year R it never happened again.
So please be careful in who you're prepared to write off at such a tender age! I understand everyone's first instinct is to protect their own child - but every school should be paying attention to HOW and WHY incidents have occurred to fast track an appropriate response plan & prevent repeats. And for children who have special educational needs, or difficult home lives, school is literally the only place some of these issues will surface or can be addressed promptly.
It is just as important that the 28 or 29 other neurotypical children in an average classroom understand that being autistic, or having ADHD, or missing an arm, or wearing hearing aids, or Daddy dying from cancer, or managing Type 1 diabetes, or whatever, can make life harder (WITHOUT endorsing biting or hitting). Sometimes for a little while, sometimes forever.
But with the right support, a struggling, overwhelmed 4 year old can turn into a self-regulating 14 year old with a set of strategies they know they can reliably apply to help themselves, can turn into a functional member of society that those same neurotypical children can work with, and learn FROM, as an adult.
Some of the posters here might do well to model that to their children, instead of demanding the ejection of a
four year old, one-occasion, biter!