Well there is actually a disproportionate number of neurodivergent people in the criminal justice system. I’m pretty sure that gang leader could have had unidentified needs and certainly social ones. He was first given a criminal record at 11. 11 a child! Are you going to be so obtuse as to not even acknowledge that is tragic and a systemic failure.
Children with ADHD for example have so much negative feedback that sometimes they stop trying. If the initial feedback is being told you need to sit still stop distracting people, stop forgetting your things and then gets into a negative cycle why not up the ante. It’s a losing battle. Or you end up with adolescents who are depressed and anxious with internalising behaviours/self harm etc because there self esteem is on the floor from being told they aren’t doing it right day in and day out.
Autistic teens who are more able academically and have been trying to manage in the system with inadequate understanding often end up self harming and suicidal by secondary school (or earlier). These are not uncommon scenarios and given that there is an increase in understanding of neurodivergent individuals (in some sectors at least) when we know better we need to do better. Please try and reframe and think about the far reaching consequences of perpetuating ignorance in your own circles and to your children.
I realise it’s probably easier to say a child needed a good smack and proper discipline though as we wouldn’t want to inconvenience anyone with critical thinking. I’m glad the OP has left. Many of the initial accommodations for neurodivergent children could benefit most neurotypical children if they’re offered universally.
Yes there are training and resource implications but the long term gain would outweigh much of the initial resourcing and the system is so stretched everyone is scrambling reactively to ‘problems’ rather than putting things in place to prevent these. And what was described earlier as a teacher noticing patterns and triggers are all fairly common predictable triggers for autistic children. Of course this should be included in teacher training. It’s not unreasonable to acknowledge that children aren’t robotic vessels eagerly waiting to acquire knowledge. Relationship is the basis for successful teaching surely? Especially KS1/primary teaching.
Need for decreased sensory input need for demands to be decreased. Need for sensory input and movement. It’s not actually impossible. The difference between schools who can’t manage some children and schools who find that same child can be accommodated is sometimes a good Senco and school ethos. If a child presents with difficulties at school the first thing would be to look at how so better adapt school to meet needs it’s not removing children or taking them somewhere to fix them. Neurodivergent children often struggle to generalise skills or interventions if they’re not done in situ (understandably really it doesn’t make sense managing school difficulties in another context for the purpose of changing how a child responds and feels at school).
It isn’t always enough but usually in the schools that are inclusive everyone is benefitting even the precious little darling children who are victims of these monster children who are clearly malevolent and malicious 🙄. Sometimes schools need to be able to be honest and realistic and say we aren’t meeting this child’s needs but it’s not the first step.
Give it a few years and it may become evident that some of the ‘victims’ of these ‘awful’ children are picking up on the intolerance of their parents and perpetuating all these awful ableist attitudes. Meeting needs benefits all its not taking away from the perfect children who supposedly ‘deserve better’. I’m not sure why I’m still plugging away maybe I still have some hope that perspectives can change.
One child who did leave my DC’s school was talked about like this amongst other parents. The poor child had so much stacked against him socially and developmentally and it was disgusting that adults behaved like this. I’m sure I had some unpopular views there too. Yes he didn’t know how to manage himself but surely explaining why and how he was struggling to children isn’t that hard for a parent.