To say the behaviour crisis in schools can't just be blamed on parenting

[Sendcrisis2025]

I speak as a mum of two children with EHCPs and someone who is a SENDIASS officer, name changed to protect my identity/job.

There is a strong rhetoric from the teaching unions this week about behaviour in schools and poor parenting. No mention of the bigger picture, just poor parenting.

My DC are 10 and 8, just two years behind them. When DC1 was a toddler there was a huge range of groups, support, targeted interventions through the local sure start centre. These were already being cut by the time my DC2 was a toddler. Then covid happened and the services and groups have just not returned. There is no early support anymore.

One of my DC is a challenge in school, fortuantly she is predominantly a flight risk rather than violent but still a behavioural challenge. We have had one physical incident where she shoved a teacher. Pure combination of factors that had led to DC being enclosed within a corner by several children and with nowhere to escape to she shoved to escape. Unacceptable but that was the reasoning of why and she was suspended for two days etc. She struggles to cope with the sensory demands of mainstream. Too many children, too much going on. They fly through the content whereas she likes to master things in depth before moving on. Too many low level behavioural issues like children who just don't ever stop talking. She can't navigate social dynamics. None of this DC can cope with. There is a lack of consistency in the school day and the routines. None of this is the school's fault but realistically how it is in every mainstream school. We are struggling to get her moved to a specialist setting. She has no learning needs and generally with the one exception, she isnt violent so the SEMH schools are not appropriate either.

My other DC would never dream of acting out, is not a behavioural issue at all despite his needs.

Based on the unions DC is entirely due to my poor parenting. It doesnt matter that DC2 is a behavioural dream. It doesnt matter that I have no behavioural issues with DC1 at home where it is quiet, the same rigid routine for the past 6 years and less social demands. It doesnt matter that she is in a completely wrong setting.

In my LA there are over 400 children like my DC1 who have specialist agreed but are stuck in mainstream with no setting to go to. There is nowhere for them to go. These are the children with specialist agreed by the LA. This doesn't include the many hundreds more who don't have specialist agreed or don't even have EHCPs yet.

Our health trust is on 3+ years for an initial appointment. CAMHs are almost non-existent. You are only considered for medication if you are already a behavioural problem in school, it doesn't matter if a child has severe ADHD until they are at the point they can no longer cope and it is at crisis point.

Early help, if accepted, offers 6 weeks of support. There is a huge gap between early help and child in need.

I speak to parents day in day out at work who are desperate for help as their children can not cope at school.

There will always be poorly behaved children due to poor parents but the majority? The majority are children who simply cannot cope in the setting they are in with nowhere to go to.

Over 400 children in my LA with specialist agreed but stuck in mainstream. That is an incredible number.

I know my DC spends 8.45am-2pm in a small cupboard with a 1-1 TA. She joins a much younger year group for the last hour a day. She does 95% of her schoolwork with me at home.

I'm 50/50 on this one.

Last week I was in the supermarket and a child was running around demolishing the shelves, sweeping products onto the floor and opening some to eat the contents inside. His mother was busy staring at her phone, but I couldn't help glancing over at her and she scowled at me and said aggressively , 'He's got ADHD!' before walking off and then calling for her child and leaving all the crap on the floor.

I'm 58 and I won't be sorry to be leaving this planet (maybe I should just leave the UK). I despair for future generations.

I’ve already said I’m not wearing rose coloured glasses.
When I was at primary school both my parents worked, as my father’s wages were very low. I had hand me downs, but still went to school clean and washed.
I agree the lack of dental service is terrible, but the majority of decay in young children’s teeth is down to sweet drinks, surgery food, and lack of supervision in cleaning teeth. Young children cannot be left to do this , it won’t be done properly.

So why don't you parent him and explain that teachers are human? Some you will click with, some you won't.

Being disruptive and thinking it's all about him is impossible to accommodate.

He, or you, know if he is taken out of class, and let's face it being removed means his behaviour is far lower than the basic behaviour expected, means he is further behind as time goes on.

So what are you doing as his parent to ensure in future, if nothing else, he just sucks it up buttercup, and sits and listens?

I expect you are doing nothing and emailing the school that they are failing.

Because we would tell ours, have actually when one got a detention for "being in the wrong area at the wrong time" - "I am not going to fight the school about this suck it up buttercup and do the detention"

You have to parent.
Not blame.
All you can do it help ensure it doesn't happen again.

Like I said being removed from a class takes some special type of behaviour, that is for you as a parent to address. Do something, anything, but do something about it.

The diagnosis rate for things like ASD and ADHD is way higher than it used to be. Assuming the actual rates haven't changed significantly, a child with one of these conditions is much more likely to get support than 25 years ago, when - if we are to believe what we are told - behaviour in schools was much better. So I'm not sure how the state of SEN support is to blame.

Agree. Kids only need dental work by 5 if their parents are feeding them rubbish and not brushing their teeth.

Perhaps the school system needs adjusting. Children start school much younger now particularly if they are summer born. When I was at school there would have been school entries at the beginning of each term. Sen wasn’t recognised in schools then and it should have been. There arent enough specialist schools catering for children with Sen. Children are expected to jump through more hoops educationally. The jump from year R- year 1 is to big. There needs to be more play based education. Stressed children don’t learn. Many children are rebelling because they are not coping. To much being told to sit and do. There isn’t many adults in jobs that would choose that so why are we expecting children to do it. Many families with parenting issues won’t make changes long term. Parenting courses I have attended were not teaching me anything I didn’t already know. Children with ehcp’s in main stream are expected to attend mainstream with the knowledge that they probably won’t cope at secondary level then there is a huge fight to find an education while they are at home without school support. The government need to step up surely it would be cheaper in the long run.

Oh don't be silly now! ;-)
It's the dentists fault
Or the toothpaste's fault
Or the toothbrush's fault
Or the sinks fault
Or the TV's fault because they don't brush their teeth on TV.

It just can't be the parent's fault, or the child's fault because they don't want to brush their teeth after a litre of sugary squash their parent's gave them because they can't drink water and the bristles are you know, sensory, so it must be society and professionals fault.

I think that part of the problem is that in the 80s/90s the most important thing was to get kids access to education and avoid them being run over by cars or pinched by strangers. In the 2010s it seemed as though sitting kids in front of a screen was the golden answer to all of these problems.

I think we've realised now that it was in fact a terrible answer and that all the screen time and inactivity is making the kids come out wrong.

I think that getting rid of screens at home and getting them out in the sunshine talking would be great, but it has to happen in schools too. We need the screens to go and we need to bring back adequate numbers of skilled teachers, who can use a blackboard and tell a calm engaging story about their subject.

When I was in school I had the same teacher for each subject for a whole year. In the half term before I (recently) withdrew my son from his school, his science class had 7 different changes of class teacher and at some points no teacher at all. This is not okay.

Also kids need access to decent food at school and at home, and since many kids need special diets now to avoid chronic illness, that is complicated. We used to be allowed to go home for lunch. Why can't that happen now? No reason, that's why. It's just silly rules that prevent it, and so kids have to lose their school place in order to access safe food at home.

We also need to lose the staggering amounts of pressure we see now. Schools should not be farming kids to make progress-8 data, attendance data, league table entries and ofter reports. They are people. They should be growing and learning like people. They are not statistics.

We also need the NHS to be working. Some kids just now are going to school ill because they are terrified of attendance processes. They NHS needs to help these kids, and the school needs to stop penalising them for taking time off to access medical help.

I'm so annoyed by the whole situation. If the teachers want to strike, I support them, but it 100% is not the parents' fault either. We need to work together to fix this mess.

This is absolutely not true. Sleep disorders can also cause to dental decay and can be triggered by food intolerance. Don't be awful to parents who already have terribly difficult situations to deal with.

Our town has had no preschool dental service when my son was small. We had to spend multiple thousands of pounds to find a way to have a decayed tooth removed privately under GA. It was a terrible thing to go though and you shouldn't be awful to people in this situation.

They can’t go home to lunch if the parent is at work, or is so poor they can’t afford to make a decent lunch!

I know but that doesn't mean you should prevent kids going home who need to and who do have a parent at home.

Sorry, some decay may be due to the circumstances you describe, but the majority of parents are to blame if they give too many sweet drinks and sugary snacks, and they're not cleaning their children’s teeth properly until they can do it unsupervised, hence the high number of extractions. Toothpaste and toothbrush can be bought very cheaply and some schools give them for free. Obviously some are putting children to bed without paying enough attention to this vital procedure.

If the child needs accompanying to school and back, perhaps the parent can’t manage that, especially if the school is too far away. I wasn’t aware that children weren’t allowed to go home for lunch.

This type of thing gives me the rage. My DS has adhd and autism and absolutely would behave like this, but it was my job to make sure he didn't. A trip to the supermarket may have involved a high energy activity period beforehand, a focused activity at the store like a shopping list or carrying a heavy bag, or headphones if all else failed, and a lot of heavy supervision and interaction. It was exhausting physically and mentally and was easier leave him home. Sometimes he still did impulsive things like throwing so we would have to pick things up and apologise etc. There is no excuse for ignoring it and labelling it. Adhd is really difficult to live with for a child, they need constant support to regulate it not just a licence to behave as their impulses allow, then end up being avoided and disliked by everyone. It's shit parenting and nothing else in the scenario you describe.

I can’t believe you have written this! The teacher is there to teach - not entertain. It’s a bonus if they can make it fun etc. your dc is being sent out. Nobody else is. The teacher isn’t sending out every kid. Do you not see that your dc is the problem here? Sending a pupil out of the classroom is often a very last resort. Normally the teacher would ask the child to settle and then do the same again with an explanation of consequences. They might then sit the child somewhere else and then when all other options have been explored send the pupil out.

Thank you for giving some perspective from the other side on this situation. I can't imagine that it is easy.

Judging by the huge number of thumbs up on my post, I'd guess that I'm not the only one to have experienced this.

I do wonder if the decline in parenting has anything to do with the distraction of screens. I've witnessed so many times younger parents absorbed in their phones leaving their children unsupervised or not being fully alert of what their kids are up to.

*My DC behaviour at school is a reflection of how he is treated by his teachers.

All issues raised in school isn't what I see at home or when out and about with DC.
Sometimes it is the inability of the teacher to connect with pupils & subject matter in an interesting and engaging way. This will result in challenging behaviour from DC, then DC gets removed from class, missing out on teaching and understanding, by nextlesson they are behind and don't understand what the teacher is talking about... and so the cycle has started.

But it's easier to blame parents instead of looking at how to improve the way one teaches.*

This is total bollocks.

25 years a secondary teacher, It is not the teachers fault for sending a kid out.

l had a parent like this. Why has my precious Luke been sent out? Etc etc.

He was naughty and disruptive. Maybe l should have changed my 25 years of outstanding teaching with outstanding results to accommodate poor little Luje. Is that what you’re suggesting?😂

You are every parent whose child has zero boundaries. I have this conversation with parents like you.

Me: Your child disrupted the entire lesson throwing things and shouting. They were swearing and several things they threw, hit other students. Your child refused to leave the class and than ran off and hid. Meaning a TA then had to go out and look for them.

Parent: What did you do to them before this happened???

Definitely. It makes me so sad to see people sitting in cafes with their DCs, with the parent looking at their phone and the child looking at a tablet. I used to love sitting in Costa with a much needed coffee for me and a babycino for them and chatting about whatever they wanted.

"Exhausted" or lazy?
There's no excuse for lack of interaction/not providing nutritious food.
It's perfectly possible for both parents to work full -time and provide these things - tiring but possible.
I speak as someone who works full-time, whose husband works full-time, with absolutely no support from family or friends. Kids are almost 5 and 6.

Exactly.

Do all the other children get sent out of the room or is it just your son's behaviour that is disrupting the class?

The cycle started when your child didn't pay attention in class and you decided to blame the teacher.

Or me: I know that DC is challenging and likes to do xyz for attention.
I have spoken to teachers A & B and they both found putting DC in the front of class away from friends and other disruptive pupils, DC's behaviour is vastly improved. If front row isn't possible, still try and keep DC away from close friends in class.

Problem is, a small minority of teachers ignoring me (becauseIam justa parent) .... but are happy to email or phone me complaining about certain behaviours - none of which involve throwing stuff or hurting others. Most is annoying and petty.

I am not THAT parent- DC has boundaries and knows how to behave. I am happy to work with teachers in order to improve DC behaviour. But I still think disengaged teachers can be the cause of some poor behaviour. You can highlight poor behaviour to me and I will engage with you. But for my own experience it's ok for teachers to fire off an email but never engage with the parents thereafter.

The cycle actually started long before that. And it's teachers who allowed it to continue.

I am not in the classroom, so I can't influence DC behaviour at that moment in time.