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?

A child who is violent - for any reason - needs to be removed immediately from that classroom. No if or buts. And THEN a solution found. Not the other way around

This and I cannot believe it even needs to be stated

Mainstream is “not my problem” any more either because DS is (quite correctly) in an amazing independent specialist school for autistic children. I have no skin in the game, but those parents who - quite reasonably - don’t want dysregulated SEN kids in MS classrooms are going to have to get very comfortable with paying a fucktonne more tax. DS’ school costs £100k per child for an academic year.

It’s not just that there is nowhere for these children to go, it’s that there are so many AN now relative to the NT or “non-SEN” children that it’s just not practical sending them all out of MS unless we triple the education budget. You don’t get a free pass to opt out of the law requiring school attendance because your kid is autistic.

Nobody is condoning violence, but we are all constrained by the current system and rules that are failing everyone. It’s just easier to blame parents exclusively than recognize the mammoth mess we’re in.

We can’t afford significant investment. We have significantly invested, and it’s made virtually no difference to outcomes.

I think we need a very high quality investigation into why so many children have SEMH needs now, or a ND profile of SEMH. The number of kids with these issues is accelerating at an alarming rate, and just continuing to up the budget isn’t an option. In addition to core spending 60p in every £1 is spent on social care and taxis to special schools costs more than £1 billion a year.

I’m actually not convinced this is an issue money can solve if I’m being honest. I feel like we need to examine the causes and tackle it there because the alternative is stay as we are, or increase spending even more which I don’t think the taxpayer would agree to.

Yes, I agree. I don’t think people realise just how expensive these placements are - the focus will be on improving mainstream with good reason.

There will be huge repercussions.

Teachers hands are tied from dealing with this effectively (and I don’t mean punishment, I mean having the support staff, the means to refuse a violent child from being in the school (relying on there being suitable provision elsewhere), the means to swiftly remove a disregulated child from a room before anything occurs (more hands on staff).

Parents hands are tied because the LA fights us at every turn. We face obstruction every step of the way - we would rather our dc are in a suitable placement where they can thrive.

Inclusion doesn’t work like this. This is the result of years of poor government decisions, and no one listening to those who have been warning this loudly for years.

I also have no skin in the game. I have none left at mainstream school. I am deeply frustrated at what it’s become and how nearly everyone is being let down, but not only that, being pitted against each other with increasingly vitriolic posts which at the end of the day help no one.

At the end of the day someone needs to work out why so many more children are not coping, and instead of battling it with the same strategies that have never worked, find some new ones sharpish.

If they are violent and disregulated in mainstream they are much more likely to have issues into adulthood involving police etc. So I don't think it will cost more long term. It will shift the cost from one thing to another and there won't be chronic issues in the same way.

Things are connected. It's perfectly possible that properly funding this, will cost less overall pretty quickly.

Safeguarding children doesn't seem to exist anymore.

It's not a priority.

It’s not. But that’s not the fault of SN children or parents, as is so often made out to be the case on threads like this.

Have you got receipts for that claim about dysregulated kids needing police involvement in adulthood? I am not aware of any studies.

Either way, those proposals would require the kind of joined-up thinking that governments of every stripe seem utterly incapable of, mainly because they don't plan further than the next GE. You might defray some policing cost by improving SEN facilities in schools, or increasing the number of specialist places, but the payoff (if any) would be way down the road.

I do still sense this pervasive stereotype about the 'violent' kid with errant/useless parents who don't even attempt to manage the behaviour (often from people who would baulk about this type of profiling in other contexts). I can only comment on my DS, who has a very high IQ and has been raised in a stable, MC family with high aspirations and expectations of behaviour, but is autistic with a whole host of comorbidities. Most of his violent behaviours are directed towards himself (headbutting floors and walls, pulling hair out, etc), but there have been occasions that they are directed at others.

It can be soul-destroying as a parent to hear that your child has hurt someone, or thrown something at a teacher/pupil. There is an inference that it is behaviour learned from home, even when nothing could be further from the truth. As his mother, I desperately wanted DS to fit in at school, make friends, be respectful to teachers and have a happy childhood (all of which applied to me and DH), but that wasn't to be. Now all I can do is try to keep the sensory overwhelm to a minimum and keep DS regulated at all times. It is much, much easier now that he is in an autism-friendly educational environment.

It's all very well saying "get them out of MS" (and in many cases that is the best solution), but in our case, there was no option to do so without giving up my well-paid career (goodbye, tax revenue) and my caring responsibilities (hello, council-funded care home), not to mention accepting that my super-bright DS did not actually deserve an education, so we persevered with the LA and "won" because that's the system we have. My son is not feral or subhuman (and neither am I). We are both doing the best that circumstances allow.

It makes them petrified to go to school. Nice work guys, nice work.

It’s like our kids who are being assaulted are being used as Guinea pigs in some sort of social experiment. I’d just love to know what a parent is supposed to say to a child who doesn’t want to go to school on Friday because another child has hurt them Monday - Thursday. You can’t tell
them it will be ok when you know for a fact it won’t be.

I don’t honestly believe it IS that much more expensive to educate nd children. You might need smaller classes and a higher staff to pupil ratio but it isn’t hundreds of thousands.

@Errors what is the solution? You are right btw. If the violent ones ( the violence is stress from school btw), if those violent ones stay home all day, the mum loses working potential. We then have a probable benefit claim for mum coming. More cost to you.

I'm trying to make people see ' get rid of them ' which is an understandable feeling, is costing more. That kid will then cost more being out of education for reasons my original post explains.

At primary, there was a boy so disregulated he couldn't cope. It was not safe. Mainstream school is so stressful for SEN kids that some meltdown. That's not ok for anyone.

Violent meltdowns are STRESS and ANXIETY caused by trying to function in a place where ( excuse my language) kids are thinking what the absolute fuck is happening here. Why are other kids laughing at me all day, why can't I tell the teacher they were wrong and why have I got to sit in silence, why can't I stim and why have I got a detention. And then people explode.

Under that stress I would explode. I would probably run some bastard over. I'm a pretty amazing, intelligent, articulate legend tbh ( 😆), but enough stress like this, I will of course be on the way to edge of sanity. This is what causes this problem in mainstream.

If we could support children with their emotional wellbeing to cope a bit better stress anxiety wise then that would help. But they cut all services such as CAMHS so severely that private is the only option for most. So parents can't even look at helping that way. This is not being invested in!

I paid this week £1000 to see a leading wonderful psychiatrist expert on Autism. Because I know it's the right thing. I can't access support like most mum's, my child is FORCED in mainstream and being given daily detention for tourettes tics. I am not joking guys. My story is across the board. Tic noises, detention. How cruel is that. Cruelty beyond words.

He is not violent! But the stress and anxiety of a life like that having to try not get noticed with tics, all of it, we are leading to an absolute explosion. It's a bomb waiting to happen with all these children I am telling people daily.

@Wildflowers99 you might work in this sector? There is underfunding at every turn. CAMHS has been obliterated, not invested in. Schools are not seeing investment, it's cost cutting and that's why we have kids in mainstream. They don't have those PRU units anymore that existed years gone by.

I think really understanding the growth in the population would be fascinating. I would never trust a Government moron to do that and smoke and mirrors their way through it. I had a school SENCO try tell me what Autism was and that diagnosis isn't good for getting into the army. This is the intellectual bandwidth we can be dealing with.

I have been so lucky to see some of the best. I had a home, I lost it and live in social housing and became so ill with autoimmunity that I can't function. All my house money is gone - spent on my child. Thousands. It's apparent now all my illness, triggered by stress. Mum's of these kids live in a daily war zone psychologically with stress from school mostly. Losing jobs because school can't and won't support properly. They can't afford to either. So look how much this all cost. My £20,000 is gone on this shit.

I will happily provide studies here to demonstrate the situation I am experiencing and how that relates to having real, not fake, SEN kids.

The experts I see have credentials and skills, qualifications and follow NHS process and guidance and then add even more! The Government will never be undermining the validity of these guys and their watertight assesment process. They are intellectual and professionals and follow every guideline and even more.

I feel pretty strongly you are alluding to diagnosis process being a possible cause; you feel it is incorrect and inaccurate I sense.

The reality is there are more than you know undiagnosed because parents can't afford it, NHS won't assess for years. I walk into schools and see these kids quite obvious to me now in every classroom.

Where does the money come from?! 🤷‍♀️ Something has to give absolutely. It needs money. I agree. And where and how? So difficult.

My discomfort is this feels very much like a refugee type position - I'm not paying anynore out my taxes mentality - because in reality - I don't like them. This argument I feel would be different if these kids all had cancer and we're not ND and we needed investment there.

We can't euthanise them i am afraid.

If Putin takes over, that might be ok and I'm sure many with their underlying dark thoughts on here will be satisfied. 😬

@Itisbetter I agree. I don't think it would take that much.

The system is so so rigid and it won't take much to just be less bloody rigid. It would transform lives and improve output.

I think alot of reason it's rigid is we have 1 teacher trying to handle 30 alone in a class. It's too much for them to manage. If they act like it's borstal or the army in that school it gives them some control over the class.

That approach is the antithesis of what works well, but I understand why they do it. It's a tough tough job right now.

That’s easily hundreds and thousands per school right there!

There are no more than 5 pupils in any class in DS’ school (and 3 in DS’ actual class). That class has 2 FT teachers and a TA i.e. it’s 1:1, plus separate subject teachers. Add in OT, SALT, psychologist, therapy, well-being and it’s many multiples of the cost of a bog-standard state education.

I am not suggesting that every autistic child needs that level of support, but plenty will.

What about the kids who have been assaulted and bullied and then end up with anxiety related conditions and school refusal because they've been hurt in the classroom.

And the costs to parents and the taxpayer from that.

SEN kids don't have a monopoly on mental health issues (and costs and indirect costs). Nor do they have a monopoly on parents being in a position where they feel school has completely failed them and can't just quit and homeschool because of the cost of it at extreme expense of their child's well being...

I mean if somebody at work regularly hit me I simply wouldn’t go in. They don’t have this option. I just don’t get why so many children are acting like this, it’s a mystery - I went to a failing primary in the 90s, and believe me there were fights between children in the playground (boys knocking ten bells out of each other over football) but they all were able to magically behave in the classroom, to hit a teacher or another child in their sight would’ve been unthinkable. What’s gone wrong with these children?

@RedToothBrush it doesn't happen like that. Those poor little angels being bullied if you think that's what this is they are experiencing from ND kids, they will have a school and class with predominantly NT people in their corner. On an instinctive level at least. That ND kid will be shown like animals do - complete rejection from the group.
That is understandable. That protects your little Sally ok. 🙏

Your little Sally isn't getting beaten and systemically targeted I will guarantee that. It's the other way round. The ND kids, being unlikeable in their difference are targeted by the majority. NT people.

If the ND kids can't get through in mainstream. They should not be there.

But again, my one hundredth repetition. The Government has not provided adequate services and there is NOWHERE anymore. They have actually been stripped right back.

Wow, what an incredibly dismissive way of talking about little girls (and boys) regularly harmed at school.

With all due respect @RedToothBrush, that is nothing more than whataboutery. I am not minimizing the challenges faced by ANY children in school, or by any parents who feel utterly failed by the school system. I am simply trying to explain things from the perspective of a SEN mum, who perhaps does not fit the profile that people assume gives rise to the type of needs that DS has. I am certainly not a poster girl advocating violent children be allowed in MS schools. I got DS out as soon as I possibly could, but (with even the best will in the world and enough cash to go private) it took years. Is that good enough? No. Is it SEN children or parents’ fault? Also no!

I wish I could change my DS and make him NT, mainly because his life would be easier and happier, and he would face less prejudice. However, I can’t. And I can’t make him disappear either. On that basis, we need an education system that works for ALL children, including those like DS and the 30% or so with some kind of AN. And how we pay for it is everyone’s problem, sadly.

So measures need to be put in place so teachers can have better control of their classrooms with easier options to exclude. More special school spaces, less LA obstruction, more support staff in schools.

This has come about because cost cutting took away most of the options to prevent this from happening, and IMO will cost the country more because these vital resources have been dismissed and their value completely underestimated.

@Wildflowers99 wow,what a lack of intelligent, and informed explanation and come back you have provided in response to my quite excellent observations. My descriptions and explanations are pretty compelling, detailed and insightful.

Your response? You have nothing.

Any young child being battered ( they won't be dear) would be a gigantic safeguarding issue the school would be ripped apart ignoring.

You provide only clear evidence of a seething prejudice seeping through all your language, no understanding of how many kids are being so terribly hurt by these awful ND pupils. Because it isn't akin to what you have created in your mind. It reminds me slightly of 'theyre eating the dogs and cats '.

All you have is whatsboutery, prejudice and ' I have a friend of my dogs cats neighbour whose little Sally got beaten so bad by one of those Autistic kids. '

When you can match my debate with equal intellect, we may get somewhere.

For what's it worth - if my child was being beaten by another child, my reaction would be severe. This I understand and empathise.

For you, this is not happening, rather, it is steeped in something else. Your posts reveal it every day.

My son's class has two boys with significant needs.

One absolutely is a bully. He bullies the other kid with significant needs particularly badly. As well has having taken it out on numerous other kids.

He clearly has issues with parents in addition to his needs.

SEN issues are not mutually exclusive from parenting issues. But somehow we aren't allowed to say this.

Same way we are not allowed to say SEN kids DO bully.

We should be able to speak about this.

The other SEN kid is really sweet but has also ended up in trouble because the other one has form for 'recruiting' the other boys in the class to do his dirty work and assert his authority over them all (bloody nightmare when my son first went along with it and then refused to).

The other boy needs a lot of extra help and will probably academically be at a point by high school where mainstream isn't suitable for him. But at primary I'm very much on board with him being in mainstream with support.

But the other one? Nope.

We need to bust these myths and stereotypes - OF ALL KINDS - because they are fundamentally harming the kids.

Yes there are parents who go into denial and parents who just don't parent and that's very much part of the problem - we don't have strategies to deal with this because we are too busy tripping over ourselves to 'be nice' and 'be kind' rather than being honest.

If you child is repeatedly hurting other children it doesn't matter what the reason - whether it be because little Johnny is a little shit with bad parents, whether he's got SEN needs and struggling parents or has significant SEN issues that the school simply can't cope with and is being bullied THEY SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM THE SITUATION SO THEY DON'T HURT CHILDREN BECAUSE CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE SUBJECTED TO VIOLENCE in the name of protecting SEN kids.

ALL children have the legal rights to be safe from harm.

This shouldn't be a difficult concept to get.

And yet somehow I'm painted as 'the bad guy'?!

Like wtf is that all about?

But they don’t improve mainstream they just put kids in mainstream and hope for the best. Our council has a big overspend on sen much is due to specialist placements which cost £100k plus per year, it’s difficult to cut that spend as they have no where to send the kids to as alternative they are at end of road. So instead they cut the spending at the bottom and put kids in mainstream with little or no extra funding so the mainstream school can’t provide extra support, placement breaks down, takes about 3 years or more for the council to do anything all the time the child is having to go to the mainstream otherwise their parent will be fined/jailed for non attendance and multiple kids are being traumatised. Child then ends up in specialist placement costing £100,000 a year plus transport costs until they are 18. If support had been in place from day one it was required it would have been cheaper in long run and less children traumatised

If a child is violent and after a set period of time strategies aren’t working, they should be removed from the school. No ifs. Not buts.