DS keeps being moved at school

[Cupsoftea2]

Ds has recently gone into year 2 and has had a brand new teacher. He previously had the same teacher from nursery to year 1 and he was doing so well in school. He was getting star pupil every week loved his teacher and he was progressing so well.

New teacher keeps moving him pretty much everyday and the reasons he is giving us seem petty unless he is lying but I have no reason not to believe him. She hasn’t contacted us to tell us he’s been messing around or everything and we see her everyday.

We paid £100 for him to go on a school trip and when we picked him up he looked so sad my heart broke for him. He eventually told us that she told him he was being rude for kicking a paper towel and made him sit at the front of the coach away from his friends.

He went into school this morning and she said hi “DS” and he just walked past her. We also seen her on bonfire night and he didn’t even want to say hi then either. I have never seen him like this before ever.

Something in my gut isn’t sitting right! Surely if he was misbehaving so badly we would have some kind of contact? He is a good kid never had any issues with him ever.

Always someone else’s fault…

He was getting star pupil every week?! This doesn’t seem believable. And if it is true then it isn’t right or fair.

It is obvious that you need to have a meeting with the teacher and (calmly and politely) talk about your concerns re:your child. If it is true that he is doing nothing wrong and being moved for no reason then you need to get to the bottom of it. If there is a very good reason that he is getting moved (which is more likely) then you need to know so that you can help steer your child towards better behaviour.

re:ignoring his teacher twice, and at the age of 6/7!! This is incredibly rude and unacceptable behaviour. You need to talk to your son and make sure he understands manners and respect otherwise he will grow up to be an entitled & rude person.

re: kicking a paper towel. It sounds like the children were being asked to be on their best behaviour (as per any school trip outside of school where there are more risks etc). He wasn’t behaving. You seem to think that this is minor but you weren’t there. Maybe him kicking the paper towel meant the line of children was disrupted and potentially placed some of the children in danger near a road or vehicles, perhaps he was close to kicking other children, perhaps he had already been asked to stop and was deliberately ignoring his teacher. It was clearly bad behaviour and he was rightly punished for it. I think you need to stop making excuses for him and maybe not believe everything he says.

But the main point here is that if you are concerned about your son and his teacher then you need to speak to the teacher - don’t ask a load of internet ransoms on mumsnet!

So he needs to stop talking then. 🤷‍♀️

It's interesting. Many teachers talk about not getting the "respect" they deserve, and for the most part I think this complaint is justified. But I can't help noticing that some of the more vocal teachers on this website seem to have trouble understanding how respect is earned.

If your main approach to communicating with concerned parents is the condescending sneer followed by the direct insult, you may want to reconsider whether you are representing your profession in a good light. We evidently expect 6 year olds to play well with other children. So it's not too much to ask you to play well with other adults.

In the words of one particularly eloquent poster from this thread: "Do better."

Hi we had this with our son when he was in year 2. After a few week he told me on a weekend that he was fed up of his teacher calling him names now this shocked me as my husband was the site service officer at the school and we had lived on school site since our son was 18mths old. But she was a new teacher just out of uni and every night when i picked him up there was always something wrong eg he walked the long way back to his seat he put his book in wrong pile. The nights she didnt tell me she would tell my husband any way after our son told me this i rang my friend who worked in the office and told her what had been said she told me to ask him about another name. He said yes she has made all the class call him by this name all morning that was the day i had a call from school saying he was crying and could i nip down, but when i got there the teacher would not leave me on my own even thought it was lunch time and our son would not say what was wrong the teacher said it was because it was spelling test that afternoon and he was worried but that was the morning she had all the class doing this. Monday morning both me and his day were there to see the head she asked our son what had been happening he told her every thing she got the teacher in who straight away admitted it her reason was that she was bulled as a child and didnt see any think wrong in what she had done so please look into this and dont leave it best wishes

I would make an app to go in and speak to the teacher. I used to look after a child who was being targeted daily by her current teacher, she turned from a lively happy child to an emotional wreck. I was also bullied by a teacher for a year which totally ruined my life. For all those saying you are allowing him to be rude- this could be happening to him. If it isn’t and he just doesn’t like her then you need to speak to him about his behaviour and being respectful to others even if you aren’t keen on them but 1st of all go in
and get her take on the situation. If there is something happening then you need to be your child’s voice

I have an acquaintance who is a teacher. She’s an absolute bitch. She does it for the power trip (rather than a vocation) and regularly singles out kids.
she’s judgemental where she should be understanding. She has things about certain names eg Dylan. She never forgets and will hold grudges. She has no patience for kids with autism and deliberately misunderstands kids with ADHD.
I am sure she’s an complete exception because I’ve only ever met beautifully dedicated teachers. But horrid teachers do exist. She sucks up to the headteacher so any complaints would immediately be dismissed.

perhaps your child has had really bad luck getting a teacher like that.

You need to talk to teacher asap. But dont go in confrontation style,ask for her view , has she seen any changes etc and go from there. Having had the same teacher previously for so long the change becomes almost like a bereavement and no child should have 'star of the week' regularly. Good luck

Right, I have just joined Mumsnet so I can reply to you. You are absolutely right to follow your gut instinct here, your child is only six, he is a really little boy and school can be hard, children have virtually no autonomy once through the doors, I am a teacher, it is unacceptable for a teacher or any adult to give what sounds like a sarcastic reply because they did not get a response from a child when they said good morning, the correct response is (internally in their own head) "this child was unable/unwilling to respond to my greeting today, I wonder what I can do to make this exchange easier for them". Remember, behaviour IS communication wether we like it or not it's a fact. I am deeply saddened by some of the responses you have received, your little boy needs support to allow him to work towards demonstrating the desired behaviours, not discipline or punishment and there is a HUGE amount of research showing this. Please go and speak to your son's teacher, depersonalise it, tell the teacher the facts regarding your son's change in demeanor and confidence since joining her class, if you are still not happy then speak to the school head. Children need to feel emotionally secure and safe at school, it's vital for them. Please don't wait until you have a child at school refusal stage, it can take years to repair that damage. Just surviving school went out with the arc, everyone should be aiming for children to thrive, good teachers make mistakes and take time to get to know their pupils so a conversation with his teacher is a must. I hope things get better for your son.

I taught at a small school where teachers could have the same kids for 3yrs. The children become accustomed to how that teacher 'works' and build skills accordingly. Having a new teacher, who probably reacts differently can be quite distressing for young children because they don't know what to do. Their 'skills' they've built up no longer work and they become unsettled/unhappy.
We definitely had a few parents change schools because of their child's upset.

Personally I would speak with the teacher and say you've noticed a change in his demeanour and were wondering if you could have a chat. Don't be accusatory, why he's being moved etc. Ask about his behaviour in class, say he has said he's been moved, wondering if true and if so why, ask what would help etc.
I have a lot of school meetings now as a foster carer and I always say 'this is DC side of the story' because you ARE only getting 1 side and although you might believe him, he might be taking it in a completely different way as to how teacher meant. I do suggest ways of dealing with our DC in certain situations if i think the teacher has dealt with a child in the wrong way, but more on a educating about how this child processes/functions .

T

I have not read all of the comments but I just had to set up an account especially for this one.
Transitioning to year 2 is difficult for a lot of children. There are more expectations placed upon them, they have a new teacher and the work is harder.
Your child has gone from getting rewarded every week despite him being a bit chatty, to being what he sees as being punished and picked on for something that is not always under his control, ie his friends laughing. He is always the 1 to get moved and to him it's not fair.
He has told you, as his mum, his support and safe person about the problem from his perspective in the hope that you can help him to deal with the situation.
He is experiencing something that he hasn't been through before with a person that is practically a stranger to him, whom he doesn't know or trust. This person in his mind is not very nice to him. When she then said good morning to him, his only way to communicate his feelings about her to her, is to ignore her. This is rude behaviour but doesn't automatically mean that a 7 yo child is a rude child. You are correct not to force him to acknowledge her at that moment as that would make him feel like his trusted person is taking the side of the person that is upsetting him and invalidating his feelings towards her. This will slowly erode his trust.
The rude behaviour needs to be dealt with at home where he feels safe with time for a proper conversation about it being polite to acknowledge someone speaking to you. Including an explanation to him about how things have changed and why there are different expectations of him now.
Being well behaved but chatty isn't a big deal before y2 but as y2 is more work focused, being chatty is more of a problem. He needs to understand that he isn't doing anything that is bad behaviour but why being less chatty in class is now important. If he doesn't have this understanding then he will continue to think that he is being picked on and it's not fair and this will affect his confidence and make him feel like there is no point in trying to behave any more because no matter what he does, he can't do right for doing wrong.

Wow you sound lovely. Adults won't say hi to people they dislike, why should we force children? Op should arrange a meeting with the teacher hear them out and express concern at them singling their son out. Kicking a paper towel on the floor on a bus is hardly disruptive and if it was happening so often why weren't the parents notified? It sounds fishy and like the teacher has taken and unnecessary dislike to the child

My son is yr3 and has had several teachers (don't ask) but all of them have moved the children around. It's not necessarily been him that's the issue, sometimes someone he is sat near has an issue with someone else, 7 year
old personalities can be strong, he's quite steady and not easily distracted so he tends to get put by those who are..there have been a couple with bad eyesight who needed to be nearer the front. He's quite needy so it's helped to have him
near the front but can do the work so
sometimes he goes
to
the back..I asked the head once and she said it's incorporated into their plan to move them round to ensure people learn to get along and don't fall into cliques and all depends on the dynamics of the whole room.

@PennyFleck this infuriated me, if you've raised your child to be polite and they stop behaving in that manner to someone never ever force them to act a certain way in front of that person. You question them after! This is why there are children who are abused and molested because of people like you! Who fail to read the room, think outside the box and see the bigger picture.

If your DS has changed and is now anxious about school, it is only right you do all you can to help him. Respecting adults, based solely on the fact they are adults makes no sense. There is every possibility that she hasn't warmed to your son for some reason and he senses it, especially if he had such a lovely relationship with his previous teacher. As the professional adult in the situation, she needs to treat him in a way that doesn't make him feel so anxious that he doesn't want to go to school! You have drawn her attention to it now, and she was either lying about moving him so often, or was a bit oblivious to it. Either way, now she knows and it's up to her to try and rebuild the relationship

When I was the same age as your son, I had a teacher who was truly evil to me, my mum noticed the change in my behaviour. One day I was a little late for school but my mum explained that it was her fault and how sorry she was. The teacher seemed to accept it and told me to go into the classroom. Mum left. As soon as she had gone the teacher brought me to the front of class and began to yell at me for bringing my mum in and not accepting I was in the wrong. However my mum was still in the corridor because she had seen another teacher and was catching up with her, so she heard everything. She walked straight into the room and took me out straight to the head, needless to say I was moved classes and the teacher left the school quite quickly after. Check in with your son and ask other parents and kids what happens in the classroom.

If you didn't like your manager would you ignore them?

Maybe you should go & have a chat to the teacher & tell her how unhappy he seems. If you get no joy go to the head teacher.

Sorry to all those who seem to think teachers are always reasonable and right but I disagree. When my son was 7 he changed from a happy, outgoing child to one who lacked confidence and self esteem. I found out that other children had told their parents that Miss X 'was being unkind' to my DS. For example: one day she said his work was dirty and disgusting. This was two boys on his table had been kicking it about on the floor but it was my DS who she told off and humiliated. That is just one incident. I also learned that this teacher had caused another boy in a previous year to have a breakdown by treating him similarly. She simply did not like certain boys. She made my DS self conscious about his size (he was tall and well built but not fat) and he became a vegetarian, which was fine but I wish I knew what it was in reaction to.

When I complained to the head she said I had 'given her the ammunition' she needed to 'do something that had needed doing for a long time'. But that teacher stayed in place until the end of the year before she left. In my opinion she spoiled my DS's experience of primary school and effected him significantly in lasting ways.
OP, you need to find out what is happening and act accordingly.

I am picking up that the teacher may be treating him unfairly. One of my daughters was bullied by a teacher and she was a pretty well behaved child. If his character has changed there may be a reason. Dont be so quick to blame OPs parenting. She sounds very concerned and wants solutions, not blame. The teacher might have taken a dislike to him for whatever reason. I would ask other parents subtly about how their kids are fitting in and raise it with the head of year if it continues. He may be being victimised and its an awful situation to be in.

So he missed out on the trip and started behaving so was allowed to go with the new school the following year? That sounds like the sanction of not being allowed to go worked to get him to understand there are consequences

Hi OP, I haven't read all of the comments but just wanted to say that my DS is moved most days or he's removed from the classroom. He's in year 3 (7y/o) and is currently awaiting an ASD assessment. However, it's been the same since he was in reception and while it's not ideal I can appreciate the reasons for it and what may appear trivial reasons if he was at home in a class of 30 children it becomes problematic.
I've always built up a good rapport with his teachers. His y 3 teacher is new to the school so I let him settle for a couple of weeks before I approached her. You need to make it clear that your willing to talk about his behaviours and how best to manage them for example reward charts, raffle tickets for good behaviour etc. You could also give her a small exercise book and ask her to briefly log his behaviour just so you can recognise patterns.
Is he bored? Struggling with the work being set? Is the work too easy? Does he need short breaks during his lessons? These are all questions you could ask and really she should be happy to discuss them.

Do you really think such behaviour is ok? Imagine how uncivilised it would be if all the children were kicking paper towels around? The queue would not be a queue at all! Please try to view your DS’s behaviour from the point of view of the teacher and the other children, some of whom may find his behaviour stressful.

Some people are dicks, ergo some teachers are dicks. You won’t know what is happening until you go in and ask.

I once rang my son’s head teacher because he was refusing to go to school because he had pe and he said the pe teacher shouted, laughed at him and teased him for being rubbish (he has dyspraxia as well as asd and adhd).

I rang thinking this can’t be right, he has probably misunderstood… I told the head what he said and she said “ yep, the pe teacher is from an agency and she is horrible” apparently the head had heard her shouting and laughing at the children.

She said they weren’t going to have her back next year and until then my son could just not do pe… which suited him but didn’t actually sort it for the rest of the kids.