Reception child disruptive behaviour and parenting programme AIBU

[Mamamia2019]

Hi,

My child has recently started reception. Child has always been a “spirited” child but we worked super hard the past few months with behaviour and child is currently being a dream a home 95% of the home. The prior behaviour at home was not listening, intentionally making mess/ being mischievous etc. never related to violent behaviour. Child also only went to nursery 1 day a week.

Fast forward to now- started reception, started with most days feedback of “not listening, being defiant against doing work, sitting on mat” etc. then we had feedback of “play fighting” which we strongly discussed with child was an absolute no-no in school and we had a few weeks of no play fighting mostly good feedback. This week have had 2 phone calls from school due to very disruptive behaviour, ripping things down, running away not listening etc. threatened to teacher to hurt children but never actually did. Then another incident of actually trying to hurt a child but not succeeding thankfully!!

Ive been constantly trying to work with school for reward systems I’ve bought in myself, timetable, discussing with child about school etc. arranging meetings with teachers etc.

Today I’ve been invited to attend a parent workshop to help his behaviour, I was open to this and was given info. On reading tonight I’ve discovered this is actually a “child to parent violence” programme!! I had repeatedly voiced to school we have no issues with violence at all at home, he has two siblings, and is never violent at all to them OR us!

It has been a really stressful start to his school life and I now feel bloody awful they have offered me this programme. I have no idea why they are offering this to us when I’ve clearly stated we have very very minor behaviour at home (nothing you wouldn’t expect of a 4 year old) and absolutely no violence with us or with family/ friends.

AIBU to think they are completely missing the mark here? Even if it was relevant I don’t see how as the parent me doing the workshop is helpful if I’m not the one caring for him at school, nor do we have the undesirable school behaviours at home.

Also any advice strongly welcome!!

Iv harped on before about it but iv found 'the incredible years programme' the most beneficial. I did course by zoom but you can buy the book or audiobook.

I also did Incredible Years and was really pleasantly surprised. Our borough delivers the program in person and our facilitators were very good.

It's great he's not behaving like that at home but those behaviours at school are extreme.
You are going to need to work closely with the school and I would attend anything they suggest. You need to show you are going to be.supportive. I hope things settle down.

I honestly don’t know at this point the school said they can’t identify specific triggers so I’m also in the dark!

Of course I’m shocked! Like I say we don’t have this violence at home so it’s completely out of character!

it’s a reward jar of an item he likes he gets for good behaviour, once the jar is full he brings it home a starts a new jar.

I don’t think he has but possibility as his dad my husband im sure has adhd.

1 day nursery was definitely a mistake I won’t be repeating with my youngest.

It’s fairly common for school to recommend a parenting course if there are issues with behaviour,

if the parenting course helps it’s a much cheaper and easier fix than if the child has Sen issues.

think of it as the school using it to help your child. They don’t know what’s causing the problems at school. Parenting is a possibility. If the parenting course doesn’t help and or things get worse then it’ll be time to call in the behaviour specialists and look at possible diagnosis/additional support.

Poor child. That school is the wrong place for him.
is there another school you can look at instead?
sometbing is triggering him.
yes he might be ND. But also it may just be the wrong place for him.

and. Do. Not fret about nursery. If he is a spirited child then IME school wil be hard unless it is the right environment. Regardless of how many days they attended pre school. ( my kids were at full time pre school but are spirited kids and reception was still hard. Very hard. In different ways)

we had children at an alleged outstanding school which was awful and at schools “only” classified as good, which were excellent. But the latter schools made a huge effort to engage and make the environment work for all kids.

His behaviour hadn’t been anything worse than you’d expect for his age until recently so we didn’t need to go more intensive on behaviour management until then.

I guess I felt guilty taking him to nursery when I was at home on the other days, and tbh we had had a tough couple of years financially and was struggling already with the pretty small amount for just the single day tbh, seemed silly at the time to pay for childcare. I also loved the time with him and we done so many little adventures.

He obviously is struggling in some way but seems briefs episodes, as the rest of the time they say he is enjoying school, engaging in work etc, great with phonics etc. he comes out happy talking about his day. Then is good as gold when we get home, playing etc. I’m just baffled with the contrast from home to school!

if he was unhappy overall it would make sense to me he was struggling and not enjoying it but this just seems to make no sense 😭

Im not sure if reverting back to half days would help, I think he woukd be annoyed and upset missing out lunchtime etc as he always talks about lunchtime and enjoying it etc, and afternoons seem his better time.

Also. The school should be able to identify triggers. If they cannot then he needs to move as they are making the problem worse. Is the class teacher inexperienced?

if there are multiple forms please ask for him to be moved in with a more appropriate teacher.

but based on your comments I would consider withdrawing him and finding a more suitable environment.

change the environment not the child.

Yes I definitely will. They said they can’t identify patterns of triggers at this stage!

Sen covers a lot of different issues. Sensory processing, speech and language, adhd, autism, learning disabilities, specific learning difficulties like dyslexia...

They often only become an issue at school because upvtilbthen children mainly do what they want - care givers respond to a child by doing what they enjoy, for example, and they don't have to confirm to lots of rules. Reception can be frustrating for children who can't do sth or don't understand, or who feel overwhelmed.

If you suspect SEN you may end up having to do a parenting course to get any further help. It was a condition of a CAMHS referral for us, twice now.

I actually think the school have been great so far honestly, I think their intentions are in the right place but I do think there has been a fair bit of emphasis on what I can do vs what they can do, if you get what I mean?

I did consider asking if after this first term we have no improvement if he can swap to the other reception class. I didn’t want to mention this without seeming like I was blaming other children as I am absolutely not, it is my child choosing his actions but, he seems to have befriended a small group of VERY spirited boisterous boys who I don’t think are having the desired influence on him, as he has made comments about their behaviours etc and I have witnessed them at drop off and pick ups. He very much is a child influenced by other children he had a lovely little group of girls he was best friends with at nursery and I believe that’s why we didn’t have this behaviour at nursery, and with our friends etc. but we have a particular family friend who is very spirited and he definitely becomes more challenging to parent when he is with him. So I do think he is a child very responsive to his peer group. I wonder if they would consider swapping him or trialling him in the other class?

Thank you so much. I know it’s the two extremes I am finding SO hard as it’s like night and day in terms of behaviour difference 😩

WIC is actually quite good - I read the book it's based on and while the book is shockingly (and unhelpfully) wordy and waffly, it is helpful on what to actually, practically do. It just massively needs an editor (which I assume has been done for the course!)

While it's based on the topic of child-to-parent violence, there's no reason you couldn't use it for any behaviour pattern that you want to try and change. That said - it is focused on reducing unwanted behaviour so it might not be that useful if what your DC needs is actually skills training. Give it a go and see what you think. Bear in mind obviously you cannot "discipline" away distress or neurodivergent traits and you should not try to. But I do think there are some useful things from this method. It's the best guide I've ever come across about how to use consequences without basically saying "be stronger and scarier than your child, make sure you win" which I find abhorrent.

In hindsight he should have gone for more days.

This is really helpful, thank you so much.

Im genuinely ALL for anything that will help at this stage, but I was worried it wasn’t useful to my situation, seems I was wrong!

I hope I can find some useful techniques that will help him moving forward. No we absolutely do not go the nasty approach for discipline but nor are we “gentle” parents, we try to reach a happy medium so who respects and listens to us, but also knows we love him and him and his feeling as also as important as ours!

Yes absolutely he should, money was not in abundance at the time either so our options for this were limited. I don’t regret it as such as I loved the time with him, but I feel it may have benefitted this transition.

You could look at trying the other class, but TBH there are likely to be boisterous/boundary-pushing children in every class. It's quite likely he will simply seek out the same group again in the new class and the pattern will immediately repeat. My DS (7) does it every time he joins a new group of children. It is a fairly common pattern among children who struggle with social skills or self-regulation or both - my observation of DS is that he really wants to be liked but doesn't really know how to get attention in a positive way so he sees whoever is being the most outrageous as being "successful" at this and tries to emulate them. And of course they flock to each other because they like to show off and they can show off even more successfully as a group than they can on their own.

It's about helping them learn the social skills to interact on a more level way with other children so they don't feel like they have to compensate by being so outrageous all the time. And by working on the self-regulation and awareness of what's socially acceptable they get more sense of where to stop - at least that's the theory anyway. Haven't quite got there yet, but DS has other challenges going on.

It is good. It has some real nuance on how to use consequences which is genuinely helpful. It has helped me with DS's behaviour (and he has sometimes been violent to me which has now mostly stopped).

This makes perfect sense and actually probably encapsulates him entirely in terms of friendships.

He will absolutely go above and beyond to get people to laugh, like him, and I guess with like minded children this will only be more pronounced and lead to exaggerated, undesirable behaviours.

This is food for thought, thank you!

So glad to hear it has helped your child’s behaviour for the positive! I will go in with an open mind. Thank you 🥰

I don’t suspect SEN nor do the school at this stage but definitely worth doing in case this comes to light in the future. I’m sorry they make it so difficult for SEN parents to access the referrals they need!

This is very true, of this list ADHD would be the only one I would feel potentially he has traits of, so I will look into this further.

You are so right, it is far easier to control behaviour in the safe, known environment of the home.

If he thrives on positive attention, one thing which can REALLY help IME is for him to be given some responsibility in the classroom - whether this is a role which goes around all the children or he is placed as a kind of "teacher's special helper". It needs to be a real job that is genuinely useful, but it can be something small like giving out worksheets, sharpening pencils or tidying up the bookshelves or similar. It's also a good way to help children who struggle sitting and waiting because these "jobs" can often be done during the time where the class is expected to sit and wait.

Giving them the opportunity to earn praise and show responsibility and be valued for that is huge and can divert some of this need for praise/attention away from the disruptive type behaviours.

What consequences are you giving him when he gets home for behaving like this?