Constantly disruptive child in my daughter's class

[waitingforsainos]

DD is Y6 and this other child seems to be causing so much trouble in class every day, shouting at the teacher, slamming doors, flicking light switches on and off, randomly screaming in the middle of a lesson when they don't want to do the work, mouthing off if other kids get to do something different because they've behaved well. DD says it's every lesson.

On the whatsapp group, the child's mum has said it's not their fault, they've got an ehcp for semh (think that's mental health?) and has laughed at the teacher when she's been asked to go inside to talk at the end of the day.

From the parent chat, it sounds like the child has had a few suspensions but doesn't seem to have made any difference.

AIBU to expect more from school? What would happen in your child's school if someone behaved like that?

All areas have these schools the issue is trying to get a place. When your child has additional needs you don't actually get to choose where your child goes (unless paying private) the local authority make the decision. The parents will request a school and if that school has a space and agrees they can meet need then your child will attend that school. If they are rejected the local authority will choose a school and even if that school says they can't meet need they can force a school to accept a child if there's no where else for them to go. Regardless of parents wishes.

@Coco1789 it's a funding/training/prioritising issue which is school - local authority- government.

I have said YANBU because you are reasonable to expect your child to be able to access education without impediment. However, there may be very little the school can do. They are expected to take the child and accommodate their needs as set out in their EHCP. Unfortunately, at the current time, these Trump the rights of every child without an EHCP. Without suitable alternative provision for children who aren’t thriving in mainstream education, this will continue to happen.

@Coco1789 tbh the families I've worked with and parents I know who have children on reduced timetables have typically supported it as trying to get their child to school is a massive issue in itself and often parents of Sen kids (like myself) don't work or work part time. When you are looking at aps and reduced time table you are very close to exclusion which nobody wants. But yes it would be on the parents to find childcare if they have to work.

bendmeoverbackwards
Many parents of autistic kids say their dc need a lot of screen time to self regulate. There must be other alternatives surely?

My son is profoundly autistic, he's non verbal.

He's completely disinterested in screens.

One of his means of regulating is deep pressure - pressing the arms of furniture, cupboard doors - he can do this for hours & can really damage things. If we stop him (which we have to in many situations) - the meltdowns are unbelievable, he'll tear his own hair out, bite himself until bleeds, bang his head into walls. Sometimes behaviour isn't a direct result of screen time, but unmet need.

And before anyone asks - we have input from OT & he is in a specialist school.

I’d like to see it acknowledged that no child should have to spend any school time whatsoever in a classroom with a persistently disruptive or violent child. If a child cannot act in a calm and focussed manner they need to be separated from those than can. there should be a classroom in the school for the violent and disruptive with teaching assistants allocated to that room and the teacher and the calm students should be left to get on with education.

No it's not, the Social, Emotional and Mental Heath catch-all is used for anything that has not yet been diagnosed but it is causing the behavioural differences triggered by unmet SEMH needs. My dd is on the autism pathway, her ehcp currently states SEMH.

Op, the SEN system is completely broken and is doing neither neurotypical children nor neurodivergent children any good. Mainstream schools are ill equipped to deal with the worst extremes of neurodivergence. There are not enough specialist schools and so SEN children would would likely do much better in specialist settings instead flounder in mainstream, causing a great deal of trauma to teachers, classmates, themselves and their families. It's why so many schools actively pursue off-rolling, and it's why so many SEN parents are left with no other choice than to homeschool.

It's a desperate situation and I feel for everyone involved. I'm one of the 'lucky' ones. My 8yo dd is extremely well supported and currently functioning very well in mainstream. My 14 ds (diagnosed adhd but no ehcp) is finding the demands of school increasingly challenging, but it's his learning and schoolwork that is suffering primarily rather than his impact on others (he doesn't have the emotional dysregulation that can be common in those with adhd, as well as autism). The school are currently dialling up their support (finally, now he's diagnosed) to ensure he meets his potential.

Even with a child with 'mild' SEN it's pot luck as to how well the school manages it, and effective communication between parents and teachers is vital.

Seriously I wouldn't be able to contain my temper haha according to Google the average private school fee is 18k a year, why should I have to fork out all that because of other people's darling crotch monkeys

Some of the stories I read on here where the kid is a demon and the parents just laugh and joke about it.
I think I would go full Jessica kitchling on them 😂.

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.com/url?q=www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14388433/Mother-school-gates-kicked-face-avoids-jail.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14388433/amp/Mother-school-gates-kicked-face-avoids-jail.html

The parents can find out how the other kids feel having to put up with their child's vile violent behaviour

I'm not saying that in some cases, these children do have parents that do not care or are partly the reason for their childs semh.
But I have a child who is in primary and is seen as a disruptive child.
The reason why he is this way is because he has high anxiety of school and of illness, he has ASD and adhd.

He doesn't know how to regulate his emotions, so if he feels frightened, he will start to show anger.
And it escalates.

He now is pretty isolated in a room in the school on his own with just his 1 to 1.
Goes part time, it takes me 90 mins to get him settled enough for me to leave him, and then I need to pick him up before lunch.

He has an EHCP,but what he really needs is a good sen school (there isn't any).
I have thought about home schooling him, but he wouldn't do any work, and I'll get no support at all if I take him out of school.

My husband and I do everything to help our child, we go on school trips, stay with him everyday until he is settled,always back the teachers (unless we feel strongly that it would cause more behaviour issues).
Parents know my child and know if there is anything they need to speak to us about our child s behaviour that is causing problems, we will do our dam best to sort it!
He can be the most loving and giving child.
He just isn't in the right place. We have other children who are beautifully behaved but then don't have the constant flight or fright response our other child does.
We as parents would give anything to have our child not feel like they do, but it isn't that simple.

most of the children who have beaten up my (mild ASD) child over the years have been in care. They’ve had highly traumatic lives. They don’t have parents who care about them.

Here in Scotland children in care are untouchable by the school. They can’t be removed from the school or changed class. There are no consequences for poor behaviour. They beat up whoever they like - both pupils and staff. The school offered to get our child into any other local authority school we wanted, but seeing as we would have been facing the same problem with completely uncontrollable children we opted for private. Best decision we ever made.

It’s such an unbelievably frustrating situation though. The teachers, school police and local authority were totally powerless to do anything about my child being physically assaulted. Moving schools or home schooling are the only options for our child who was totally and utterly innocent.

I have a child who is ND so I understand all the difficulties that go with that. However my child masks in school so doesn’t display any disruptive or antisocial behaviours so I guess I’m fortunate on that front (although not so fortunate as I deal with the unmasked version!)

However there is a child in my DD’s class (Y6) who frequently hurts other kids, steals and lies. The child has PTSD but I feel the parent makes excuses for their behaviour. I understand how hard it must be but I do feel sorry for the rest of the class having to deal with it daily.

I'm sorry you went through that, there was one child causing trouble when mine was in reception I was enraged until I met the mum a lovely woman and the child has special needs which they get support for now and are doing well.

But when I hear about mini demons terrorising other kids and the parents think it's all just a big joke that would make my blood boil. I'm 99% joking but if we started going Jessica kitchling on these parents maybe they'd get the message

Or we change the broken system so that these children are better supported and in an environment that doesn’t destroy them.

But sometimes none of that will help, only in the immediate term.No amount of funding or training will, for example bring back parents from the dead, or out of prison. It is only time, patience, therapy and building up a relationship of trustbwith the child that can help. Punishing them does absolutely nothing because they are so hurt they just don't care!

My 10 year old has autism and emotional development delay so he is like a 3 year old emotionally. I raised concerns that he was autistic when he was 3 months old but he didn't get diagnosed until he was 6 years old and didn't get an ehcp until the beginning of year 6.

He isn't violent but he is disruptive. He will self harm in class and stim, which disturbs the other children.

Typo *only in the long term

Scrubberdubber….what is a crotch monkey?.By the way you sound a delight.

I'm mid 30s, the difference now to back then - special needs schools and special needs classes. I went to a normal state primary, our school had 2 special needs classes. Every school in our area had a special needs class or special needs classes. If your behaviour or learning was a concern, you ended up in the special needs class. So for most people, these children were out of sight, out of mind. I remember one of our teachers in yr 5 threatened one of the boys in our class whose behaviour was disruptive with having his parents in and getting him sent to the special needs class. The stigma of your child been sent to the special needs class was huge back then in our area. Our school had 2 special needs classes, both mixed ages, they had 6 staff and 12 kids in each one. Our small town also had a special needs school. The bigger town had 3 special needs schools. If you couldn't cope in the special needs class at normal school, then you went to the special needs school.

Now it's inclusion at all costs - it's much cheaper than funding special alternative provision. The special needs school in our town was shut in the 2000s, there is now 1 special needs school for the area in the big town nearby whereas in the 90s there were 10. All the special needs classes in state schools were done away with in the 2000s and instead replaced with " SEN units" that have since been shut. Places in SN provision are tough to get, there are huge waiting lists. It's in the LA interest to delay access into SN provision for as long as possible as it's expensive.

Until we work out why on earth so many children are being diagnosed with SEN we don’t have a hope in hell of improving anything. I’m sure I’m not alone, or even exaggerating, in saying every other child on here has ASD/ADHD/both, and in real life probably 20% of the children I know have a diagnosis with more pending (my oldest is 6).

1 in 16 children are on DLA, there are 2 or 3 one-to-ones in every classroom at my kids primary, even though there used to be 1 SEN school in town and there are now 3. When I was perusing the OFSTED of a mainstream primary next to a house I was thinking of buying, it said it had a whole classroom devoted to children with EHCPs.

We can’t just bat this away with the ‘better diagnosis’ thing any more. Nor can we just keep throwing money at a SEN system which is bankrupting councils at an alarming rate.

I don’t think there will be a state pension when I’m old as I don’t think there will be enough taxpayers to fund it. I think at least a fifth of adults, if not a quarter, will spend their life on UC and PIP gaming in their bedrooms, barely able to access the outside world.

Always going to be difficult for the government to address as it’s one of those sensitive topics which people are monstered for worrying about.

My dc had/have more than one pupil like this in their classes, and they learned (and I encouraged them) to ignore, tolerate and work around them as much as possible. As mine are fairly quiet kids they were/are often seated next to disruptive kids as they won't antagonise the situation, and teachers have apologised for this but I understand why they do it.
You come across all sorts of people in life and work, and learning to accept them and ignore the behaviour is not a bad thing to learn.
Obviously if there's violence involved that's different. No one should accept being in a situation where they may get hurt.

Like @Doors247, I am the parent of one of these disruptive children. I am also “peak MN” in the sense of being MC, university educated, in a professional job, high earner, leafy suburb, etc. DS8 is AuDHD (diagnosed at age 3 by the Lorna Wing Centre) and also has dyspraxia and sensory processing disorder. I do All the Things when parenting DS ie warnings, consequences, confiscation of toys, withdrawal of treats. I also do all the other things that are supposed to help ND kids to regulate ie social stories, now and next, visual timetables, etc. I’ve done parenting courses, attended webinars and begged charities for help.

I can assure you that, in DS’ case, none of it makes the slightest difference. He has poor impulse control, is impervious to most methods of discipline and will lash out at everyone when overwhelmed. I do not condone this or think others should “just put up with it”, but (other than confining DS to an institution, which is rather frowned upon these days!) I don’t know what I am expected to do. That is his actual disability - his actions are not because I cba to parent him, it’s because he has a neurodevelopmental condition.

I get the impression that some MN’ers characterize children like DS as being from a certain “type” of family (chaotic, deprived, low-discipline, for example) because they think they would never have a child like that. They could, and do!

FWIW DS is now fully funded at an independent specialist school for autistic children (but at £100k a year, the LA doesn’t offer it up without a long fight). He had to co-exist with children in MS for years before I could get him a place, and yes he was disruptive. Please don’t blame the parents - most of us are doing our best - we don’t choose an inappropriate setting for our DC, nor do we relish the disruptive behaviour. However, these are disabled children, and they also deserve understanding and support.

I get the impression that some MN’ers characterize children like DS as being from a certain “type” of family (chaotic, deprived, low-discipline, for example) because they think theywould never have a child like that. They could, and do!

I doubt I could’ve done anything differently to you from the sounds of it. But why are there so many children like this now? Do you have any ideas? And what will happen when school finishes? It’s all such a worry, for the parents and wider society.

Getting rid of specialist provision schools and putting all kids in MS is the worst thing they ever did.

Can't they put all the disruptive ones in one ' class" and then the others who actually want to learn can do so? Only one class constantly disrupted then not all of them

No idea what your point is then. If a child can't help its behaviour because it has poor mental health, what do you suggest should happen?