To think we have gone wrong with kids as a nation?

[ABigBarofChocolate]

I've been working with kids for a long time and through the years, forms of "punishment" have changed so much.

You hear the whole " when I was at school we got the belt/ruler/??" I don't condone that all.

When I was at school, you got a punishment exercise (writing the same sentence 100 times) or you just didn't get any rewards at the end of the week because your merit chart wasn't full. Very badly behaved kids would either get sent to the HT office or be suspended with work to do.

My DCs school are having a hard time just now. You're basically not allowed to say No to kids these days. It's all positive reinforcement. Don't punish, distract. Etc.

So when the same 2 kids are physically hurting other people's kids or are giving others verbal abuse daily...how are they supposed to handle it?

Did we go wrong when we were told by education big wigs that we were no longer able to make a child feel bad for what they've done to another? No more naughty corner or punishment exercises or being sent out of class or raised voices.

What are your thoughts?

My children's primary school got the balance just right and truly is a wonderful school with very happy kids who are well behaved. Bullying is dealt with so swiftly and effectively. It consequently has a very low turnover of staff, staff stay for 10/20 years. We were blessed with this school and it's in London where I guess schools normally have a high turnover of staff.

Roll onto my dd secondary and it's waaaaay too strict but strict and punitive about the wrong things in my opinion. Very strict on uniform and punctuality, as in walking into class when the bell has not even gone off but the teacher is already there can get you a detention. Also equipment. I would say less strict on behaviour. I would far prefer it the other way around with more measures in place to deal with poor behaviour/ attitudes.

I absolutely hate the whole merit: demerit system. We go along with it but I really could not care less if my dd gets a merit for looking keen! Not would I care less if she got a de merit for being 1 sec late to class after she had to spend most of her lunch break queuing for her meal! I would care if she got a detention if she was rude to a teacher or class mate though. I wish my DD cared less though, but as it is she finds the whole thing very stressful, just trying to avoid demerits etc as they seem to be given out so freely. On the back of this stress I worry about mental health in the future unless she can adopt a more laid back attitude to them.

@Vinvertebrate it's a touchy subject this. We've unfortunately had a couple of children explain that the reason they called a teacher XYZ is because they have ADHD and can't help it, as an example. What is your opinion of that?

I personally don't accept being called something and for that to be excused because of their condition. It has never sat right with me.

Maybe I'm in the wrong job, fine. Maybe I don't truly understand like you say, fine. But honestly based on conversations with colleagues, it isn't just me. There won't be many teachers left at this rate.
Even if we did understand, our hands are still tied, because many parents don't understand and we can't win.

Misused/ misunderstood how? I may have missed something, but I don’t think the linked article or any posters here have suggested that any of what you mention is NOT part of a safe environment or nurturing relationships. A lot of folks have assumed that’s what is happening though.

Very definitely

So

1. Name calling, violence, property destruction, etc etc are all behaviours that no-one should be doing and no-one wants to be around or have aimed at them or their loved ones.

but
2) Think about a situation where you might feel the need to physically fight, swear etc. It would be quite extreme, with extreme feelings attached, wouldn't it? Would it have come on suddenly in a day or week or month where you felt fine, happy and content the vast majority of the time - probably not, unless it was caused by a very extreme event happening right in front of you?

The actual problem here is that the everyday (=school) environment is not meeting need, which is causing an increasing pressure of stress/resentment/anger to build in the child and also cumulatively exhausting their ability to supress their 'unwanted' behaviours. If you provoke someone - anyone - enough, eventually they will lash out.

In the case of school, the environment and expectations only act as a mild or inconsequential provocation to most students but are an unbearable, unsuitable habitat for others. If you don't want SEND children to snap (and don't forget, some snap outwards but others snap inwardly) you need to not break them in the first place.

Sure. Saying to the child in your given scenario, in a calm way, “You have hurt someone, we are leaving now.” Followed by picking them up and leaving, is a consequence for the behaviour, encouraging a sense of accountability and teaching them it isn’t OK, rather than instilling fear and shame. Because that kind of behaviour is to be expected developmentally at a young age, but over time, the consequences help them define between right and wrong. Punishment would look more like shouting or screaming, dragging them out roughly/ physically hurting them, giving the silent treatment, humiliating them etc, which regardless of personality will be inherently shaming and fear inducing. As a society currently, we’ve got the balance wrong - what tends to happen is the latter, or a complete lack of response altogether. Which takes us right back to the much needed positive, nurturing relationship between parent/ child or teacher/ child.

The distinction between consequence and punishment is utterly fatuous. There is none.

It is very woke to randomly change word usage and think you have reinvented parenting.

If a consequence is not wanted, it is a punishment and serves the same purpose as punishments always have. If the consequence is wanted and doesn’t modify behaviour, it isn’t really a behaviour management tool at all.

Vinvertebrate
I also tried hard to keep a good relationship when my autistic dd was at mainstream and like your child she ended up in an expensive specialist school. I think the answer is more specialist schools and more specialist units attached to mainstream schools. I also think we need non academic and more vocational routes for students at fe colleges from 14 and the ability for schools to reduce the number of gcses some kids take. Schools and LAs are not funded to meet the needs of the rising number of students who need or want a different provision. Add in the wave of children who are out of school and are seeking eotas or home tutoring and it is easy to see why LAs are in trouble.

There is also a perception that schools can make all the adjustments required by children with send. Many cannot either because of numbers and experience of staff or the physical requirements. I have seen countless situations whete parents are furious that their child does not get a bespoke curriculum, 1.1 and a therapeutic programm. The school had no money nor space nor expertise.

Very pleased that you have managed to make your LA provide appropriate education and that your DC is doing well. The main problem seems to be that currently SEN schools are privately run and cost LAs a fortune, thanks to the policy of inclusion since the 90s - to save money afaik, and it didn't work so now it is costing more than it could save.
Inclusion was always a myth.

I've only read the first page but came to say yes. I'm a teacher and my hands are completely tied. The only consequences we're allowed to give are 'natural consequences', so if a child makes a mess they have to tidy it up. To me, that's barely a consequence. That's a given. There should be a proper consequence on top of that!

If a child hurts another child intentionally, there's nothing I can do other than tell them their behaviour was mean and they must say sorry. I'm not allowed to give any punishment.

I had a child a few years ago who was a bully and would sexually assault other children on a daily basis. This was in a KS1 class, and SLT said it was 'developmentally appropriate' for his age, so nothing was done.

A child with a broken leg would not be expected to take part in a PE class, but that’s what we expect children with neurodevelopmental disabilities to do

I've seen this a number of times on here, and it's interesting that people think this.
Because dd is an amputee, we know a lot of lower limb amputees - and the number who are expected to either just get on with the PE class or sit out if they can't manage it is probably the majority. Often even if they want to try or are having a go they will be told to sit out because the teacher doesn't want the risk (either to the child themselves or other children-prosthetics are heavy)/they don't do it quite right/it's easier than thinking out of the box how to do it.
And that's not the same as a child with a broken leg sitting out because this is permanent. The comparison with an amputee is much more similar to a ND child. It's a source of frustration to many amputees (and paralympic coaches too)

I think the comparison to a broken leg is that doing PE on a broken leg would harm the child (as their injury is unhealed) through what is usually a standard school activity, isn't it?
Presumably an amputee or someone with limb differences from birth wouldn't have that risk just from participating in exercise provided it was something physically plausible being asked?

Yes, that’s exactly what I meant @BestZebbie. It would be physically impossible and damaging for the child, and frustrating for the rest of the class. (Just add in parents complaining that their DC’s footballing prowess was being held back by the DC with the broken leg who can’t participate properly, plus the LA refusing to admit there is a problem with the DC’s leg, and you pretty much have the lot of a SEN parent!)

My dd was born without her lower arm. If you x-ray it you might expect to see it like your arm then stopping.
That's not the case. Her bones there are bent and twisted. If she breaks her elbow they will probably never get it back as it was. It will take considerably longer to heal because of less blood flow among other things - and is more likely if she falls to damage either her little arm (because it's vulnerable) or herself because of not being able to break her fall.
If she falls while wearing her prosthetic it can be quite dangerous because it should come off, but if it doesn't it could snap her arm.
Her shoulder and elbow both bend the wrong way if forced and pop out when exercising, which don't always go back easily.

There's also the fact that she will be twisting to use her good arm, and upper-limb amputees are far more likely to have shoulder or back problems. If she damages her good arm then she's left without a hand to use.

So there is a risk greater than someone who isn't an amputee.

However my main point was that amputees are regularly left to get on or excluded from PE (and sometimes other subjects as dd found) in schools.

I am not denying that’s it’s difficult. I manage an employee who is adult-diagnosed ADHD, and whereas we used to discuss/work on her occasional bluntness to customers, for example, I now get a palm and “it’s my ADHD”. I am certainly not suggesting that every ND person is beyond reproach, any more than every single DLA claimant is scrupulously honest and there is nobody at all swinging the lead. But it is a tiny minority who are.

Where children are concerned, I think it’s incumbent on teachers to accept (even if they don’t fully understand) that a proportion of the “badly behaved” children described on here will be ND, and their behaviour will be involuntary. And that proportion is increasing and is likely to increase further. Rightly, the law is there to ensure these vulnerable children receive a full-time education with appropriate adjustments. That will certainly mean ALL mainstream schools having appropriate resources, trained staff and space, which will mean greater investment. What we can’t have (and what I get a whiff of from your post) is parents complaining about little Timmy being a badly behaved wee shite, and the class teacher agreeing wholeheartedly. If you won’t educate yourself then you can’t help parents understand either. You cannot be an authority on children’s education if you ignore the 1/76 or so who are believed to be on the autistic spectrum. There are tonnes of resources out there which explain how ND brains differ. (FWIW I tried a virtual reality tool at a NAS event that supposedly mimicked sensory processing disorder and didn’t last a minute, because it was hideous. I would have been flinging chairs within the hour and I was the classic quiet girly swot at school).

Also agree with pp’s that more specialist schools/hubs are needed. I’m old enough to remember when they were all closed in the 80’s in the interests of “inclusion” (which was always money really). The problem for us was that the few remaining specialist school places are used for those children with the worst LD’s and that (rather than autism) is where their expertise lies. The mainstream SEN “hubs” are full to bursting too, so that leaves the private sector to fill the gaps and the LA won’t give those expensive places out without a fight. During that fight, the DC has to stay in school - even if they are disruptive and dysregulated daily, as my DS was - if the parent(s) are to have any hope of a place. Once they’re off-roll, it’s not the LA’s problem.

I think we can all agree that the current system is failing ALL pupils, but please don’t blame the SEN parents and understand that what you see as “behaviour” can be symptomatic of a lifelong neuro disability in some children.

One of the children I refer to in my post has no SEN. He's had referrals, they've come back with nothing. He pushes a child and they fall to the ground. He swears. He threatens awful things. He's a bully to put it bluntly. He lives at home with both parents and siblings. They have a genuinely happy family, spend time together, eat together etc. But when he swears at home they laugh it off because they all do it too. He's been brought up to think that swear words are normal vocabulary. As well as being brought up to punch anyone who annoys or irritates him. So when the parents are called about his behaviour, they just say " oh god! I really don't know what I'm going to do with him" and that's it. He goes home. Plays out. Hits a kid and enjoys the rest of his day. There are many kids like that in this area alone.

Yeah this terrifies me too. My DC is 11. He has a residential trip coming up and I'm terrified of what one of these boys might do to him when he's not supervised by an adult and my child has no way to contact me as their mobile phones are removed. Considering he has hurt my child a few times when there have been adults present, my fear is valid.

What! Oh my god! That is not on! That's a child protection issue!!

This is absolute bullshit. Do men need to realise they can either have a career or be fathers before 30? Now all the problems with society are being blamed on either woman either having kids too late or working. Have you any evidence to back this up?

Large sections of the work force would literally collapse without working mothers. I work in social work, most if my colleagues are working mums. I am imagine with other professions such as teaching and nursing where there are a large percentage of the workforce are women, that there is a significant number of working mums. The very people you are trying to demonise are in fact the very people out there safeguarding and teaching and looking after the next generation.

Women have always worked. Children have always been brought up with a wide range caregivers going back to when we lived in tribes. In the span of history, the concept of a stay at home is a relatively new one.

Many counties like Scandinavian ones have used daycare for decades and don't have the problems we do. It's so short sighted to think children going to nursery and mums working is the sole cause of the problems faced now by children. I've seen no research or evidence to support thus In fact poverty is one of the biggest adversities a child can face in life but of course to some people the solution is to put women and children at risk of poverty by insisting women stay at home.

You just described me as a child in primary school and I was being raised by a bipolar parent and no one knew what she was like because she masked. He's acting out and you should investigate it.

Neither of his parents have been diagnosed with bi polar disorder and show no signs of it.

It was an example. It could be anything but he is acting something out.

A teacher can not investigate a family

No but they can suggest things and talk to the relevant agencies

He has been like this since he was 2. It's learned behavior and he sees nothing wrong with it as nobody in his family tell him so. Only people outwith the home so he just dismisses it and if he's fed up listening, he hits them " cos he felt like it"

I understand where you're coming from. if a child was acting out in my setting, I'd be asking if anything had changed at home that caused his change in behaviour or if he has been unwell etc. It's automatic for us in education to think that the child is having a hard time with something. Investigations have taken place, family life explored, referrals made. It's just his manner because it was his parents manner when they were kids and are same as adults. It's sadly the mentality of a lot of people in this area.