My child is being assaulted

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DD 7has been assaulted multiple times by 2 boys in her year. She has been punched, slapped, kicked and pushed over.

Schools advice is for her to "keep away from the boys she knows are known to be volatile" so when they are playing whole year games, for example, the school have suggested she "uses clear language to ensure they are ready for theor turn, so as not to provoke their anger" and "when explained to the girls that their are some boys who are prone to angry outbursts, and the girls should avoid being around them"

AIBU, or is this absolutely ridiculous?!

The age of criminal responsibility is 10 years old.

And then she’ll look pretty foolish when the reality is uncovered. I’d follow the advice from the poster below.

And yes I’d like to know why you’re posting this again.

I'm also advocating for what priceless said. First
Then go nuclear.

if there is a class WhatsApp group I would message other parents to find out if they know about this
What do you know about these boys and their parents
I would not allow my child to go back to school
I would put it in writing to the head and write to the chair of governors copied to the local authority
The school’s approach sounds like complete madness and needs to be challenged

@ToughC00kie but she should not be in the dark. Someone should tell her if this is the case !!

Your poor DD.
Escalate and complain in line with school policy but also I would be looking to move schools asap. If this is the attitude of the Head then there is little chance that effective change will happen.

Nope but the paraphrasing makes it clear for those that work with children. Staff in schools don’t outright announce SEN.

We had a similar situation when my eldest was in reception. One of the boys kept trying to open the door of the toilet cubicle when she was in there. He'd figured out how to unlock it from the outside. The teacher's response was a similar, "tell her to stay away from him" and I immediately corrected her (yes, female teacher!) How could she keep away when she is on the toilet? I told my daughter to scream as loudly as she could if it happened again, and also told the teacher that I'd said this. And that if it did happen again, I'd take it further. I had to make it explicitly clear that it was not my daughter's responsibility to keep away from a boy who was bothering/scaring her.

Well she chose to start not one but two threads on MN as opposed to getting further information from the school.

What is the “reality” @ToughC00kie why do you know more than the op?
sincerly hope you’re not a member of the school with inside knowledge that’s not being shared with the op!

Don’t be ridiculous

@ToughC00kie often the professionals who look after our DC are not up to date with the law and their own policies.
I'd never hand over responsibility for my own DC safety if they were having issues like this.

Awful advice and yes my experience is personal from an education setting! Don't do it folks !

Then why are you so sure you know the “reality”?

That’s really not true.

I'd have gone and attacked their parents by now.

Sounds like the boys in question need to be in a different type of school

If two men assaulted a woman, they'd be arrested, though. Are you suggesting these two boys are arrested?

While obviously the school needs to be dealing with the boys and getting their behaviour in hand, it is simply common sense for the OP's daughter to not approach children who are mean to her, if she doesn't need to. Why would you want to go near children who attack you?

It's about dealing with the situation as it is, not as it should be.

Yes, the school should deal with it, and there needs to be a massive fuss kicked up until they do. Yes, the boys shouldn't be assaulting her, and frankly I'd pull her out of school until a plan to deal with them is sorted, or even switch her to another school if possible. But with the situation as it stands now, walking up to them unnecessarily means the daughter is deliberately putting herself in harm's way, and that's not sensible.

@ToughC00kie sorry what are you saying ?

You don't like the fact she started two threads ? Is that braking a mn rule ? If so have you reported it.
If you think it's not real again have you reported it ?
I've often had to start another thread on a topic because some looser overly invested poster /s are like a dog with a bone and are not helpful....so I've had to try and start again

Just a thought.

I don’t but neither does she however if she starts shouting from the rooftops without even getting more info and hearing the actual story from professionals who were there as opposed to a 9 year old she’s going to look very foolish.

Really helpful🙄

Op also states her DD has been told to avoid being around them not that she has been going up to them ?

She also says she has spoken to the head .

Sorry edited to add in the second post if she goes up to them....

Still it's quite hard in a school and class to avoid people. What is the head telling the volatile boys ?

Obviously nobody would because we expect adult men to behave in a civilised manner. I would also not expect an adult female to repeatedly approach adult men who had used clear language to explain they were not interested in interacting with her.

For 7 year old children, developing the skills needed to navigate a social situation like this is ongoing. Many children - both male and female - at this age may resort to pushing or hitting to get someone to go away if words haven’t worked. They are only in year 2. That’s still very little.

In some ways, I think telling your daughter to leave them alone IS a consequence. Children will learn that if they are violent, others won’t want to play with them.

The OP said in a follow up:

She may be approaching the abusers, but only.in an age appropriate/game appropriate manner

Which to me implies that the daughter might be going up to the boys and trying to engage them. Obviously, that shouldn't result in them hitting or pushing her, but at the same time, if she is doing that, the OP needs to work on her not doing it, as it's putting her in an interaction she knows will result in harm to herself.

I would move her and the youngest to a different school if your daughter is in the situation.
Its a little odd that your daughter does keep going to the boys that have hurt her, there is a child in my sons class that is unpredictable and very volatile due to issues, every other child in the year learnt this very quickly, within the first few weeks of foundation (now year 1) and give him a very wide berth.
Importantly though the school also recognised the issue and put an extra member of staff to help manage the behaviour during class time, despite budget constraints.
If you don’t want to move her then you need reinforce the idea of her staying away from them because even as an adult she will come across people who for whatever reason are not particularly safe to be around and she’s needs to learn self preservation and know to extricate herself.

It’s really sad and indicative of the society we are living in that so many posters on a parenting site are joining the bandwagon of “well if she does approach them…”
what does that mean? If she wants to play with her friends in a certain area of the playground and the boys are there… should she not be allowed to? If their desks are near the craft or library area of the classroom, should she not be allowed in those areas?