Autistic child attacking DD

[HollandAndCooper]

Hi all,

just looking for advice re the above. DD started reception at the beginning of September. She's a confident child and had no issues starting until recently.

3 times in the last 2 weeks an autistic boy has assaulted and attacked DD.
the first occasion was pinching her on her cheek leaving a mark and bruise. She was climbing on the adventure frame in the playground when this happened. Totally unprovoked.
the second occasion, he kicked her on her shin leaving a horrible bruise.
3rd occasion (today) the child in question has hit DD on her head so hard it's left a mark.

I picked her up and she was utterly hysterical.

I am so incredibly angry. I know this child has SEN but as a lot of you will relate, when someone attacks and hurts your child it rages you like nothing else. The first occasion I was angry but as understanding as can be. Now 2 and 3 more times have happened, I'm losing my patience.

it's a very small and Intimate village school, one class per year and is only reception - y2. There is no where else for the boy to go in the school because of this.

all incidents have been noted but I've now demanded a safeguarding investigation take place as he's gunning for my DD. I've been told they're doing their best to 'keep them apart.' My daughter doesn't need to be kept apart from anybody, he needs keeping away from her.

i know who the mum is. At drop off whilst waiting for the gates to be opened this child constantly presses on the intercom, bangs and punches the notice board. The mum just stands there and doesn't say anything. I know conventional discipline won't work with all SEN children, but do I speak to the mum about this? I am so angry that my 4 year old little girl cannot have her right to a safe learning environment due to this child. I have no idea if he's attacked other children.

please don't take this as a thread to hate on SEN. I am neurodiverse myself, and DD most probably is to and is on the correct pathways.

has anyone else been through this, does anyone have any advice? In reality I'd like the boy to be expelled as we're 4 weeks into her schooling life and my daughter has been assaulted 3 times. But who am I to demand that.

im at a loss on what to do. My confident, happy little girl who has loved going to school is now getting upset at drop off and is hysterical at pick up. I'm just heartbroken for her.

I know fights and scraps are normal for young kids, but this is not in the realms of normal.

any advice will be greatly received.

thank you

Seriously? There's plenty the school can, should and, hopefully, will be doing. If this child has an EHCP then there will be identified strategies and entitlements. The pupil will also have additional funding which should be used to meet their needs. It will take time to put in to place but to absolve the school of any responsibility is ridiculous.

The school should be meeting needs and supporting him though. My son could easily have been violent at that age but the school were adequately supporting and supervising him. That should be the aim. If the school failed at that and I had to take him out of education then it would have been a downward spiral for both of us, no education for him, no employment for me.

Parents used to manage this absolutely fine. Behaviour has gone completely out of control since the mass influx of ND diagnoses.
These conditions have always existed in kids…and many parents had no idea what was wrong with their kids because it wasn’t diagnosed, so they parented harder and stricter. And it worked, because there was no little voice in their ear saying “oh, Johnny is ND so punishment doesn’t work”
They found a system and punishment that DID work.

So yeh, I’m afraid I do blame the wet wipe generation of modern day parents. You’ve got it no harder than parents of old.

Maybe it might help her show a little empathy that it is also a very difficult situation for the boy and his mum as well rather than immediately calling for his expulsion etc as well.

What even is ‘meeting needs’? What need being met will stop him attacking his classmates? I’m genuinely asking.

ive said before.. my DS age 5 had the speech, language and understanding of a 12 MONTH OLD. So trying to make him see right from wrong or ‘instilling boundaries’ was the same as trying that with a 12-month-old baby. It was hard and he was hard to control. Do people really think they’d have done a better job?

Many many things depending on his diagnosis- breaks, sensory activities, adjusted work…..to name but a few.

Was he in mainstream school?

Well my son needed 1-to-1 supervision at all times. School provided that. Nobody got hurt.

I would have preferred a special school setting but wasn’t an option.

Being deaf is a disability. You ask for things to help you. Being autistic is a disability. You also ask for things to help you. What is the difference?.

Nope. Not an option despite big, exhausting fights. He is still in mainstream at age 9 and has improved a lot but is still years behind peers. He should hopefully get a place for secondary but it’s still an exhausting battle.

Thankfully he has been adequately supported. If he had been made to stay at home because school couldn’t be bothered to put support in place, our lives would probably look very, very different.

If the child in question has a severe learning disability then that’s different - I can absolutely appreciate there’s virtually nothing you can do to teach them right from wrong. I have full sympathy there and my heart goes out to anyone with a child like this, I know one family locally and they’re exhausted and their lives look so incredibly hard.

But there is an increasing group of ‘ND’ children who are of typical intelligence, can understand right from wrong when it suits them, but for whatever reason just randomly attack their classmates and this is just explained away as autism. I just don’t buy it - if a child had done this when I was at school I would remember as all hell would break loose. And logically this should’ve happened even more back then because there were no fidget toys, no hall passes, no sensory rooms. So why didn’t it?

“ But there is an increasing group of ‘ND’ children who are of typical intelligence, can understand right from wrong when it suits them, but for whatever reason just randomly attack their classmates and this is just explained away as autism.”

Evidence please

I’ve read threads on here where even a 121 can’t stop them suddenly lashing out. And the 121s themselves get hurt. There were 3 121s in my daughters previous school class. Three!!!!

Well that’s different. He clearly had very extreme needs that warranted an SEN school.

I am talking about the parents of children who are in mainstream school. Not those with very severe disabilities.

The diagnostic rates of autism have generally been stable at about 1 in 35 for the last 10 years. Historically it was under-diagnosed in girls, but this has not been true for around 15 years.

Nobody is diagnosing BPD in children. It's not a diagnosis that can be given to children.

There is a correlation between people diagnosed with autism and reporting trauma, but that correlation can be used to as evidence to support trauma responses being misdiagnosed as autism.

Trauma is more difficult to treat when you have autism only in the context of the NHS which is under resourced and uses the phrase "difficulties can be seen in the context of their autism" in order to move them out of CAMHS budgets.

And because this is the most important and relevant point to this thread, I'll repeat it:

In any case, non of that is relevant to a child (or her mother) who's a victim of abuse at the hands of another child.
It doesn't matter why the boy is violent. It only matters that he is.
Only the boy, the boy's family, his teachers and his mental health/medical team need to think about the why. It's absolutely not relevant to anyone else.

My son was/is in mainstream.

Then my daughter’s class must be a statistical rarity as she had 3 children with autism, out of a class of 26.

Mine is 3.5. Very smart I believe but very young for his years. I would put his behaviour much younger which is quite common in autistic kids. No normal three year old climbs banisters or grabs knives etc like mine tries to!

Sorry, I got confused because you replied ‘nope’ to my question about whether he was in mainstream.

It’s rather shocking that a child with the speech and understanding of a 12 month old baby was allowed in a mainstream school, for both his sake and the other children.

In my experience of knowing many, many families with SEN children it’s only those like my son, who are extremely developmentally delayed, who have issues with violence and lashing out at school. All of the parents who haven’t managed to get a place at special school are desperate for one.

As for more SEN at schools, years ago special schools would have been the default. When they changed the act so ‘all children had the right to mainstream’ it basically turned into this situation now where families who desperately need, choose and want a special school have to go through a huge, years-long battle to get a place.

In my daughter’s old class (she’s moved now) there was a non verbal girl whose understanding must’ve been around that age - she couldn’t speak, didn’t know her own name, had no danger awareness etc

She’s in Year 2 now. I don’t know her circumstances but it seems extraordinary.

A good 1:1 will greatly reduce the number of violent outburst, in my experience (senior in mainstream and slt in sen). They are there to help the young person avoid overstimulation and should be aware of their triggers and recognise signs of dysregulation. Pupils will likely have a sensory diet and staff should be putting additional strategies in place when things are escalating e.g moderating use of language, use of visuals, sensory toys, walks, using sensory equipment etc. A 1:1 is not the only strategy

Sorry, I realised I answered wrong.

Yes, it was/is shocking. He was still on a waiting list for a diagnosis at that point (although obviously we all knew something was very wrong). But sadly this seems to norm for a lot of children like him, which is why we see situations like OPs.

Thankfully school were able to adequately support him as he could have meltdowns and was violent too. I can’t imagine where we would be now if I was told ‘sorry it’s not our problem to support him so we’re not bothering, you can keep him at home.’

Hopefully the school supported a child with no awareness of danger rather than kicking them out due to the risk.