Autistic child attacking DD part 2

[HollandAndCooper]

Original thread here:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5420774-autistic-child-attacking-dd?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

Hi Everyone,

me back again looking for advice, perhaps some last minute advice as I have a meeting scheduled with the head teacher this morning.

DD aged 4 has been very unwell and spent a week off school. She is really going through it at the moment. She returned to school yesterday after her time off, and I'd hoped that the boy in question would've got bored and moved on. I did have a meeting booked last week but couldn't go due to DD being poorly.

well.. it turns out he hasn't got bored and moved on. It's a very small school with 20-25 per class, one class per year from reception to year 2.

the event that happened yesterday, by DDs account.
it was play time and DD was playing with a couple other girls in the play ground. Child in question was calling DD names like 'baby' and 'you need nappies' and announced he was going to the toilet.
he came back out and proceeded to have faeces on his finger to which he wiped on her cardigan.

a staff member took her to the quiet room, swapped her cardigan for one in lost property and the cardigan was handed to me in a bag on pick up. With still an evident stain on it.

i have a meeting this morning.

I have a copy of the safe guarding policy, anti bullying policy. I just need some wise words from MN now with what I need to say but I'm going down the route of failing to keep my child safe, and this is a huge safeguarding issue, not to mention a biohazard issue.
please be kind, I'm a single parent doing my best, and she won't be returning until she is safe.

so far the child has:
kicked, punched, pinched, clouted her on the head with a metal water bottle, name called and taunted. And now this.

she will not be going back to the school until this is sorted and there are proper sanctions in place. I am so angry and utterly heartbroken for her. She has been so poorly last week and in and out of hospital and I cannot see her broken like this anymore.

i appreciate the old thread is 1000 posts but there's more information on there if needed.
My AIBU is I guess to want this child excluded and put as far away from DD as possible. But I know it's not that simple. I'm at a total loss and they are failing to safe guard my child. She will not be returning until she can be safe, I'm also looking at other provisions for her now.
thanks in advance.

Yes autistic children don’t just bully and target one kid only ‘because they are autistic’. autism doesn’t totally define a person and anyone either nd or nt can be a nasty bully! A lot of excuses for this boy and the school and his mum. My dd got pushed over by a boy in foundation who the following year got moved to a SEN school, and the teacher was brilliant, nipped this behaviour in the bud straight away as much as she could, and really really apologised to me straight after it happened, and assured wouldn’t happen again, it didn’t. Can’t believe this school are so
passive about your dd’s injuries. Though do think the school are totally failing this boy as well. Bad handling all round by them. Enjoy your break with dd.

Good luck. No advice here other than take notes as you go and then email the Head afterwards with your notes written up as minutes confirming if you don’t hear differently in xx days you will assume they agree that they are a factual account. Keep emotion out of it, as far as possible. Emphasise their statutory duty to keep your child safe. If you aren’t happy with the outcome use their complaints procedure and once this is done I believe you can complain to the LEA.

We had this for 2 years. My 8 year old son was punched weekly, strangled regularly (once to the point of passing out), threatened with a knife held to his stomach and told he was going to be stabbed until he was dead, and had his stomach sliced with the bent metal part of a pencil top eraser. The child was never even suspended, despite the school acknowledging that every incident was as reported. We moved him in the end.

That’s disgraceful. I feel so sorry for both your son and you.

It doesn’t surprise me at all that more parents are opting out altogether and home educating.

Violence like this must never be normalised or tolerated. Well done for moving him, but you shouldn’t have had to. The other child should have been removed. It’s a disgrace.

Let's not call disabled four year old, s psycho shall we ?

No the school should have done their job and ensured all the children were being safe guraded .

The school failed your child massively.

But realistically how can a school 100% 'safe guard' and keep children safe from strong, violent boys? As the kid grows he will get stronger and stronger. Unless he has a full security team around him then it's impossible for any school to adequately safeguard.

and if the troublesome kid is the common denominator, I think it's only right they are excluded instead of multiple children being assaulted, and the children having to witness it, as it's distressing for them and normalising violent behaviour.

I know there's not many places for these kids to go, but keeping the kid in school to be 'Inclusive' should not be at other children's expense of safety and trauma.

I think some of these children should be expelled.

No, no child of any age has the right to subject another child to violence. I would never allow that with one of mine. Stop excusing it.

My post wasn't in reference to the 4 year old boy. It was a reply to this.

"We had this for 2 years. My 8 year old son was punched weekly, strangled regularly (once to the point of passing out), threatened with a knife held to his stomach and told he was going to be stabbed until he was dead, and had his stomach sliced with the bent metal part of a pencil top eraser. The child was never even suspended, despite the school acknowledging that every incident was as reported. We moved him in the end."

Strangling a child until he passes out, threatening him with a knife and slicing him open with a shiv is psycho behaviour. The aggressor not being suspended is outrageous.

I'm pretty peeved that Mumsnet have removed my comment.

I agree completely. It’s completely unacceptable behaviour. It’s doing children a complete disservice to have no real consequences for it.

I agree and have said so upthread. We need more special schools. 'Inclusion' as far as SEND children go has always been about saving money. A mainstream school is highly unlikely to have the resources to provide the containment a violent child needs - but special school dedicated to such a child's education and well-being, will have those resources and the expertise to use them.

It doesn’t sound like they’ve even tried?
My DS was pretty much out of control and could be violent at that age (and I’m a good parent with boundaries and discipline before anybody criticises) but he had 1-to-1 to supervise him, keep others safe and being in school with proper support has helped his development massively and he’s no longer the violent little boy he was at age 4.

I do agree that often a SEN school is needed, but it doesn’t sound as though your school have even tried. They sound utterly useless.

Well he has a 1:1 which the TA is stepping in as.

apart from having a full entourage, what can actually be done about an extremely violent and unsafe boy? The logical answer would be to remove him.

Ah fair enough, I’m surprised a 1-to-1 hasn’t been able to supervise him properly. I agree if he is that out of control that even a dedicated 1-to-1 who supervises him closely at all times can’t prevent these situations then a special school is probably best.

The school should be placing him in separate accommodation with interval and lunch being taken separately from other children until a better solution is found.

Usually, there's some kind of a support base that can be used when separate accommodation is required. It's not unheard of for a pupil to be given a shorter school day under such circumstances.

They can't it's impossible. Which was accepted as common sense 20 years ago but now is the belief that dare not speak its name.

Most people would prefer their own children are treated badly and have fewer life opportunities than they themselves express a view that goes contrary to the dominant social position.

I'll add to my previous post. In some schools, the SLT takes the coward's way out and offers a victim a shorter school day and a separate playtime and lunch. I've always found this tactic appalling.

They won't remove him though because they haven't tried everything they can.

Poo smearing, even when targeted towards a specific person can be attributed to SEN. It's about not understanding other people's boundaries, social rules, a need for control in an environment that is chaotic, poor impulse control, cause and effect (if I do X then I can get a strong reaction whether negative or positive) and isn't strictly a sensory/play thing. The bullying should not be happening because the school should be stepping in but the school can't exclude the boy because of their own failings. That would be discrimination.

The school need to prove they can't meet need and that takes a ridiculously long time. It can take multiple cycles of applying for EHCPs where the LA says no you can't have an EHCP, then, fine you can have an EHCP and we will give you this tiny budget you can't do anything with but you need to prove why this budget doesn't work, to, ok fine we will increase the budget and try these interventions from these relevant teams, to finally yes we agree that specialist provision or education other than at school is needed. Meanwhile schools frantically fly through APD reviews in short cycles to try and throw as much evidence in as they can but the LA can refuse them if they're too short or don't meet the threshold for evidence that the school have tried their absolute best with the resources available to them.

Your daughter absolutely should have been protected, the school have failed her, but this kid is what, 6 weeks into school? A huge transition in his life, you don't have all of his information because you're not privy to it, and he is entitled to an education, and a lot can change over the course of a school year with the right tools and support for a child like this.

The school wont open themselves up to discrimination case.

I know you want this child removing but there's hoops that need jumping through for that to happen that are outside of your reasonable control.

Some people have been absolutely awful on this thread, likening the boy to a psychopath. He's 4, and none of us including you OP have any idea what they're doing to redirect the behaviour.

I said in an earlier post that I think a suspension would be warranted while they work out an interim care plan if it's necessary to keeping others safe, especially if they can contact SEN teams and professionals for input around redirecting this behaviour and identifying triggers in that time, but everyone seems hell bent in writing him off as a future criminal which he'd be much more likely to become if he's turfed out of school for good where he's less likely to have professional engagement.

People on here have more empathy for a violent kid that smears poo on his victim, than they do for the kids who suffer the abuse. If op. Moves her daughter? Another child will be targeted. At what point can we agree that a child who assaults other children isn’t fit for mainstream education? No one suggests the child is solely responsible, but with disinterested parenting and no consequences, where do people see this go? If it’s not dealt with now, we have another string of threads about unmanageable violent boys here. This doesn’t happen in a vaccuum. It happens because the behaviour gets minimised until you cannot ignore it and then it’s too late. This boy knowingly went to the loo for a poo and went to smear it on OP’s daughter. Why are his rights more important than hers not to be harmed?

I was bullied by a feral group of boys , when I was aged 6. They decided to pick on me, I have no idea why.

Maybe because I transferred in from a local Convent School? But I had many friends at the new school.

It culminated, after a few weeks of horror in school from the start of the term, in them chasing me home on my short bit of the unaccompanied walk home alone, them throwing me to the ground in the tiny bit of scrubland on my short unaccompanied walk home alone,

(This was the 60s, perfectly normal to have a tiny bit of a walk home alone, then met by your parent, usually your Mum)

I climbed a tree but they shook me out of it, then beat and kicked me and sexually assaulted me

I had to be taken to hospital, I still have the scars.

Re the sexual assault, I didn't realise that's what they'd done for many decades, but they did, after it came to light in counclling and I checked my medical records from back then.

They were slightly older than me, 10 or so, I have no idea why they targeted me, but I'm 66 now and I can still feel the visceral terror they made me feel, 60 years later.

I honestly thought they'd kill me at the time. I still have nightmares about it.

Still have no idea why they did that to me.

I was lucky, we moved house 200 miles away that summer and my Mum didn't send me back to that school ever again, after.

She tried to get the Police to get involved, but the ringleader boy was the son of a "Prominent member of the local Community."

Enough said, I think.

Please, OP move your daughter to another school.

They can exclude him though for repeated and persistent breaches of their behaviour policy. One would hope that bullying would be against their behaviour policy.

He may well have had an internal exclusion.

She isn’t doing her job properly. Many challenging children have 121s which successfully protect other children and successfully teach the child about appropriate behaviour.

1. it’s not just boys who have SENs and difficult starts to life causing aggressive behaviour and bullying.

2. of course schools can and do successfully safeguard other children from challenging children. They’re managing it every day.

3)you said it was only your child being assaulted.

4. you don’t just kick out every challenging child . AdHD is distracting for other children.You adequately provide support and find ways to move children forward.

5. you don’t give up on children at 4

6. unpleasant incidents happen in schools with 100s of children . Following discipline and behaviour procedures and consequences whilst supporting a child to improve does not normalise this behaviour

7. expulsion is not the answer.