School issue - violent kid

[PeloMom]

My kid started reception in a new school this year. Everything was going well until recently.

He comes every day complaining from a kid in the class getting physical (I don’t know if it’s just with my kid or other kids too although I have overheard the teacher giving parts of a similar speech to other parents as to me in regards to the situation).

I have been proactively approached by the teacher and principal explaining that the situation is being dealt with by involving the school councillors, parents etc.

What is a reasonable timeline for me to expect a resolution?

On top of this It’s an independent school so I’m not prepared to be paying a good amount of money for my kid to be assaulted daily (not that that’s acceptable in public schools to be clear). I have to confirm whether we will be continuing next year at the school at some point. Is it unreasonable for me to expect a solution in the next 2-3 months (holiday time included)? I appreciate it can be a process just trying to gauge if anyone has dealt with this how long it took for them to see a change. What assurances would you seek in the meantime from the school that your child is safe?
YABU- solution will take more than 2-3 months; start looking for a new school
YANBU- thing should resolve quickly

@Worriedmotheroftwo do you honestly think that the child whos is being violent has it worse than the one being physically assaulted? That as a parent of a child who's being punched and kicked I should be saying 'yes I know Timmy is hurting you, but poor Timmy having to kick you'??

They do thought as they want the money. My nieces and nephews have been to 3 different private schools and bullying was rife. My cousins son went to a private school and bully and drugs were rife

That is not what I said at all. Please re-read my comments.

And actually my son does have it really hard - he struggles every day and probably always will. Thankfully in such a supportive environment (this is a top HMC independent school) he is thriving. With parents like you around... Well, it may well be a very different story.

Yeh... and they did. 👌

Nobody has any right to hit anyone. But every child has a right to have their needs supported. Thanks to my son's wonderful school (and the fact that parents were supportive rather than starting a witch-hunt and demanding expulsion) my son is now thriving and doing brilliantly.

Precisely.

You will be lucky to find a school where there won’t be an incident of a child getting physical

I think this is everything that's wrong with private education honestly and one of the reasons why I'd never support it. Child struggles - kick them out faster and make them a mainstream schools issue. Meanwhile mainstream schools are struggling financially to support higher numbers of struggling children. Such a shame their parents aren't wealthy hey. Because that's what it ultimately boils down to - a very basic level of the rich get richer. Privileged children get better education better resources better grades better jobs and the others are just left behind. I work in state schools and some have given up their staffrooms and stores and self funded little safe sensory spaces to do EVERYTHING in their power to reach those children and help them sustain school because they genuinely care about all children's outcomes.

I think op what you need to consider is that this is reception. It's early, early doors into the education system for this group of children. Some will be statemented in time (but not at that age), some will have experienced recent trauma that they will need extra support to navigate and again because they are so little that isn't as easy as providing a schools counsellor the way you might for older pupils and at this point in the year the school may not even have enough of a relationship built to identify safeguarding issues at home if that's the root cause.

There's a huge amount of emotional intelligence and resilience work that needs to be done at that age to help a lot of children interact well with the education system and that will take time.

As a parent what I would be looking at are the strategies the school is putting in place to manage this, how committed they are to it, the range and breadth of strategies they're prepared to use BEFORE expelling a child. If they swifty moved to removing a child under the guise of 'safety' I'd be pulling mine because if god forbid tragedy ever befell my family and my child experienced significant trauma and was struggling behaviourally I'd want his school to be a safe consistent space and to try to help him.

Obviously you want your child to be safe and to enjoy school, but there needs to be a balance and these children will need time to learn and adapt to a school setting. They are very little and hitting is not unusual for that age, some will do it in school and some will do it when they get home because they're exhausted and have been holding it in all day so you just won't see it. Speak to the school about the pastoral care they're offering to all pupils and what strategies they're using to support affected pupils while helping the other sustain being in school.

Every parents concern is with their own child. Sorry to say but if my child was being injured by another pupil regularly I would expect the school to seperate the pupil from those he is hurting. If your child was regularly hitting other children, I'd be very surprised if parents were not complaining.

Sorry to sound harsh, but your childs diagnosis is not the issue of other parents.

Reception age children don’t understand the concept of rights. However, the school is obliged to make reasonable adjustments for disability, such as providing additional adult support for him (not on him).

Tbh it sounds like the school are dealing with it, reception age kids are still a bit feral tbh. However they do have an obligation to the other parents to give it a good go to get their child settled and behaving appropriately. I would say to the school, it’s fine if they want to do that but they need to have a 1 to 1 to minimise the risk of incidents until it is resolved. I would not be happy either. DD’s school will withdraw a place if kids can’t follow the behaviour policy but they do have a process for that. This does involve exploring SEN as well which I think is reasonable as small adjustments may enable a child to continue. I imagine thats what they are currently doing. Working through their own internal policy on managing behaviour. It may be worth checking their behaviour policy yourself so you get a good idea of what their processes is.

Sorry to say I also don’t think another child’s difficulties means I have to be understanding about my child being hit. I expect my DD to be compassionate towards other people but not to the extent where she is not allowed to have boundaries around her own wellbeing to accommodate others. Thats the red line. Yes I would complain if she was regularly being hit at school, it’s supposed to be a safe experience for her too.

OP don't wait 2-3 more months of your ds reporting being hurt daily. That's ridiculous. Tell the school it needs to stop now. They need to provide a 1-1 or stop it somehow. The previous poster said a 1-1 is doable in a private school. I wouldn't have accepted my dc being hurt daily in a state school either. Not wanting your dc to be someone's punchbag is not "carrying out a witch hunt" it's normal parenting.

To the poster who spoke of her son, t's not for other parents to support your son and be understanding of his dysregulation . My son has autism, has been on the receiving end of this and very recently hit someone himself. No child should go to school being worried about being attacked. There should be stronger rules about excluding kids who do this rather than putting it all down to disability and I say that as parent in this situation. Op i would kick up a fuss. If the school excludes the child that also demonstrates their needs cannot be met there, although I'm not sure how public schools work

My son was strangled in reception by another reception child.

He was punched. Hit. Pushed. Taunted. All by the same child. Not once. Multiple time.

The child in question had SEN. I do feel sorry for that child. I worked with the school and was supportive. The mother approached me in the playground and cried. She told me how hard it was for her and her son. The whole focus was on the perpetrator. My son needed to report the incidents. My son needed to be more forceful. My son needed to not play in the same part of the playground. My son needed to understand that the other child was big and didn't know his own strength. My son needed to know that the other child didn't mean to hurt him.

The long term impact on my son of being subjected to consistent physical violence by another child was, and still is, horrendous. It didn't matter that that child had a diagnosis. The impact of being strangled or hit, of feeling helpless and worthless and not protected- doesn't disappear for a child just because the perpetrator has a diagnosis.

The point is, all children matter. Your child doesn't matter any more than my child. It doesn't make it a witch hunt to protect my child.

It's great that your ds was supported and is doing well. It sounds like a very different situation to the OP though. It sounds like your ds' school quickly put in support which helped your ds and protected the other kids too.
OP is talking about her ds being assaulted daily and wondering if it'll be resolved in 2-3 months or if she needs to remove her ds from the school to protect him. No decent parent would be ok with that, no matter how supportive they were. Unless they were supportive of other kids but not their own child I guess.

OP, as others have said, I would want to know in really concrete terms what they are going to do to protect my child. As a parent who 'let' this go on far too long, for fear of being labelled ableist and out of sympathy for the perpetrator and their family, please don't make the same mistake I did. I ended up with a 7 year old who wasn't sleeping, wasn't eating and was terrified of attending school. I made many polite requests of her class teacher to ask her to protect my child, but when she came home with a black eye enough was enough, I called the head and told them my daughter would not be returning until they guaranteed her safety. Within an hour the perpetrator was moved to a specialist unit within the school where their needs could be met, and my daughter returned to her class. It took several months though before she lost the look of fear in her eyes going into school, and ultimately only fully recovered when she moved schools.

An adult who has been assaulted could take out a restraining order, but we expect children to just take being hit as 'the other child can't help it'. EVERY child has a right to feel safe at home and at school.

Your child was hit with a stick close to his eye. I think I would be looking for a meeting with the head at this point and given that it's an independent school I would let them know I'm thinking seriously about whether he will carry on there next year if things don't change. They need to make a serious workable plan to keep your child safe.

OP isn’t asking for anything more than an assurance that her child will be kept safe at school. The school should be putting this to an end immediately, by giving the child who is being physical a full time adult supervisor and then working with his parents on behavioural strategies to manage the issue. If this child is neurodivergent or had another explanation for why he is behaving this way then it’s not his fault and he needs support. All OP is actually asking is that while that support is put in place, the safety of her child is guaranteed. That isn’t kicking off, it’s basic parenting.

I imagine they will offer the parents the choice of paying extra for a 1-1 for their child or asking the child to leave.

@Lavender14 I did not say the child should be excluded. I said the school is able to mention exclusion as an option IF that's the only way to keep other children safe but the focus of my post was 100% about protecting all the children and keeping them safe. This is not something that is "wrong" with private education. Something that is right in a private school is that if it costs money to resolve a situation then it's not wrong to insist that that money must be made available. A violent and dangerous child must have 1:1 adult supervision for the protection of all the children. The acceptable amount of peer to peer violence in school is zero. The rights of all children to be safe and protected in school is paramount. That doesn't mean that a child that will hurt them shouldn't get an education but they must be educated with resources around them to protect others. What is terribly wrong in state education is that similar situations are happening in huge numbers of schools and they are just expected to cope with it with no extra resources.

There was a boy in my primary school class who used to regularly beat me up until I was bleeding. The adults explained to me that he was angry and upset because his parents were getting divorced. I was seven. I did not have the capacity to understand why being upset and angry with his parents meant that I was supposed to be understanding and sympathetic about getting injured regularly at school.

At a private school I would expect this to be resolved by the end of term. They can either meet the child’s needs and should do it now or they can’t and the child should be asked to leave.

Having 1:1 support is no guarantee of safety. Many children either at school or out of school are able to damage other people, themselves, objects or buildings whilst having 1:1 support. It's a step in the right direction in terms of keeping everyone safe but isn't the 'solved' answer some people think it is.

Children can run away from 1:1 staff. Children can act so quickly it's impossible to intervene.
Children often have no triggers and therefore cannot be pre-empted.

@PeloMom what sanctions are actually being applied to the child doing the hitting to help them stop ? Sounds like the child needs solid help with emotional regulation. I appreciate that at 4 they still learning.

@NobleWashedLinen I'm sorry that happened to you. The well being of one traumatised child shouldn't be put above that of another. All children are vulnerable.

I would focus entirely on your child, and ask for a detailed explanation or risk assessment of how they will keep your child safe from non-accidental injury in school. It should include in class, free-flow, playtime, lunchtime, toilet use etc etc.

I would ask for a meeting this week / start of next for this being put in place. For this initial meeting, I would ask for your child’s teacher and their immediate senior - eg phase lead, deputy head - to be there.

Assuming they have 2 more weeks of term, I would ask for weekly meetings with class teacher to review progress - keep a diary of any incidents or any comments from your child.

If the measures put in place are successful, I would ask for less frequent updates next term, after an initial fortnight or so, and then move to ‘reactive’ meetings where you simply call one if an incident occurs.

If they are not successful, continue the weekly meetings, ALWAYS focusing on ‘how will you keep my child safe’ not ‘what are you doing about child A’ and start looking fir another school. The other thing to get in place at that point is a written assurance that, should you need to move schools due to their failure to keep your child safe, they will waive their normal notice requirement for fees and return your deposit so that you can make a quick move without penalty.

Be unfailingly polite, insistent, and totally focused on your own child.

My son is autistic and adhd, unfortunately he lashes out in a meltdown, both at teachers and students. He’s in the process of an ehcp to see if he needs to attend a special needs school or if he needs a 1 to 1 at his current school. It’s taken a year and a half to get to the process of an ehcp and months to be allocated one. What I’m trying to say is the kit that’s hitting may have additional needs that is not supported overnight. It’s hard for yourself and your child - but also hard for everyone involved