My 5 year old injured a child

[Soworriedtoday]

Posting for traffic. Name changed. Feeling sick.

My 5 year has injured another child at school. Other child has required urgent hospital treatment and is requiring ongoing treatment.

I don't know who the other child is and I imagine that the last thing the parents want is anything to do with us.

I don't know what to do. What am I supposed to do? My child "lashed out". We are a caring family, lots of opportunities, not exposed to anything like violence or substance, travel around the world.

What do I do? Will anything happen to my child?

OK reading all your posts it seems clear this older child was rough playing / bullying your child, who rightly defended himself hence why no punishment etc. And the older boy fell awkwardly and got hurt, his own fault for picking on a 5 year old.

Wow, this thread has been really quite nutty but this lunacy might be the winner.

It would almost be funny, except it’s such an odd response that I can only assume this poster gets a kick from posting mean things about young children online, which is a bit unsettling really.

What was a 5 year old doing playing with a much older child? Are they supervised? What does your son say about the incident? If he lashed out so uncharacteristically I’d be incredibly worried that he was being abused (bullying or worse) and this accident was just the first time the teachers realised.

Even the Old Bailey doesn't issue punishments until all the facts have established! Until the OP knows exactly what happened she can't take steps to punishment her son, if it were entirely his fault she can take that decision.

Some of these replies are making me eye roll massively!
Seems like a lot of MNers have already written your kiddo off as a future serial killer! 🙄

i hope today school have given you more info.
A few kids at my sons school have been injured quite badly whilst innocently playing and this includes broken bones (wrists/collar bones etc) and concussion… (being tripped over playing football/ tag)
Pretty sure it will be an accident and your child has just unwittingly been caught up in it.

@occa If only all parents had your mentality! Keeping a level head in these situations is nigh on impossible even for those of us in jobs which require some degree of levelheadedness!

From what you have said it could possibly be an accident. If they were playing roughly etc the other child may have landed awkwardly for example and broken a bone from a sheer accident. It's difficult to comment without knowing the details but it sounds quite possible it was an accident due to a game of rough play getting out of hand.
I am a teacher and on occasions see children engaging in rough play and can see it could easily end up in a horrible accident and obviously tell them to stop. Sounds like this may be it.
You sound like a v caring parent.
You definitely need to get more details to hopefully reassure yourself.

Because OP doesn’t know the facts of course. How is she supposed to punish her child if she doesn’t know what’s happened fgs? Could be self defence. The much older child may be the aggressor.

@Soworriedtoday all the best op, and why was the older one not behaving better than they were ?

Is it not just an accident? Accidents happen. Small children are well known for viewing bigger children as they would an adult and are therefore prone to being a bit rougher with them than someone their own age. If your child hasn’t been punished I would just assume accident. Make a card for injured child l, apologise and move on.

This is very bizarre to me. It seems like your child played a rough game with an older child. Older child got hurt. That's it.

children do play rough I'm afraid!

I’m a teacher and have at least 5 sharp intake of breath blimey that was close incidents a week! Tripping over and just missing table corner/narrowly avoiding crashing into each other in the playground/car shot off of tough tray sailing past eyes etc. children are very unpredictable.

I think she does. She sounds absolutely horrified and traumatized by what her kid.has done to the other kid.
I think Ur comment is actually rather nasty. She feels bad enough. Lay off her.

So from your posts and the limited information available, two kids were playing, one got hurt.

Unless.your kid actively purposely did something knowing it would hurt them, I don't see the problem? It's horrible and unfortunate sure but kids get hurt ALL THE TIME in the playground, it's life, and doesn't mean just because your child was playing with them, however rough, that they're to blame.

Geez I hope the OP doesn't have a big family, she'll have a nervous breakdown at this rate! This is just an accident, it sounds like.

Geez I hope the OP doesn't have a big family, she'll have a nervous breakdown at this rate! This is just an accident, it sounds like.

Is your child a boy and does he have any older male siblings? I ask because I had a girl first and then a boy. I was very used to my girl being all lovely and sweet and docile with her friends and obviously when my son was younger he was the same. He didn’t have any other boys to play with and was close to his sister. When he started at primary school I invited a few other boys over to play with him. They all got into the garden and it all went a bit Lord of the Flies. They basically went feral and started wrestling hard. Honest to god I had never seen him do that before- it was such a shock as I was used to girls playing quietly. Even though I’m going back years I can still remember thinking what on earth are they doing?! Was a complete eye opener on the differences between boys and girls and I was oblivious. Even though they are older now I find boys will wrestle when given a chance and it can result in injury. I honestly think it sounds just like a bit of rough play that went wrong not that your kid is somehow violent. Obviously I broke it up and distracted them until they settled and your school should have done the same.

My son had a fight at school and knocked the boy out. He was taken in an ambulance and my son didn’t tell me. He was weird all evening but insisted nothing was wrong, wouldn’t go to school the next day, insisted he was sick which he didn’t usually do so I believed him. It was 4 days later that I found out from another parent.
The boys had a fight, unlucky punch, and he hit his head and was unconscious. My don was petrified, that was probably his first and certainly his last fight. He’s a lovely passive 25yr old now. No action was taken. You don’t know what happened, maybe he just tripped him into an unlucky fall. Can’t your child tell you what happened? Did he use anything to hit the other with?

Sounds to me like your child has accidentally been involved with an older child breaking a bone in a play accident. I really would stop the dramatics it was not your child’s fault, they are not in trouble at school and have not been told it was their fault so why the histrionics? Accidents happen and you haven’t been told it was on purpose and malicious have you?

Were they really being violent or just in some sort of 'fight playing'?, and what happened might have just been an accident?

My son (6 at the time) was once playing with another kid a year older in a very active way, they were pushing each other, running one after the other, etc, but this was not in an agressive manner, just being playful. He was pushed, fell, bumped his head on a table and had to go to the hospital to get stitched.

IT was an accident, the other child was not being agressive, they were both enjoying interacting, but unfortunately it ended up badly. Might have been something like this?

OP, have you talked to your child about what they were doing with the older child immediately prior to this?

The school failed to safeguard and who knows what the older child was doing to the 5 year old. Someone mentioned maybe he is being bullied, quite possible as the UK schools seem to
ignore it. Maybe the 5 year old has violent tendencies, but nobody knows.

I’m shocked at all the feral behaviour I’m reading on here, especially the baseball bat incident. I didn’t think this sort of behaviour was the norm, certainly wasn’t acceptable when I was in school but seems children can run riot in school these days and that’s ok. And no not talking about the accidents obviously.

Very informative thread, and sheds a bit more light on why some children are running amok feeling completely unaccountable for substandard and often violent behaviour.

Surely your answer lies within what the HT is saying to you?

If it was a "we have to advise you that this happened to X whilst playing with your son, and X required urgent medical treatment, however it was an accident etc etc" or;

"we have to advise you that an incident occurred between X and your son today, X required urgent medical treatment and we will now be conducting a full investigation as to why your son did this"

If it's the former, then you do need to accept it's an unfortunate accident and apologise - to the parents and their child.

If it's the latter then you have some hard and difficult times ahead.

What is your son's demeanor like after the incident? Is he quiet and withdrawn? Seem his usual self?

A punishment for what? So far the OP knows that her DS was playing with a much older child and they got hurt. Nothing to say that anything untoward went on. Do you often punishment your kids without knowing the facts?

Perhaps you need to “travel around the world” a few more times to completely eliminate this preposterous behaviour because clearly people that don’t/can’t must be violent 🙄