Teacher carrying 9yo into school.

[ChitterChatter1987]

My eldest daughter (Year 5) is becoming really tricky to get into school some days, particularly Mondays.
She has a male teacher for the first time this year, who she seems to get on well with and speaks positively about.She had specifically asked to have him despite often generally being abit more fearful of males than females.He is popular with kids and parents and is fairly young and laid back, quite playful and enthusiastic in his approach.

A couple of times he has come out when we have had issues getting her in recently and has verbally managed to persuade DD to go in by giving an incentive etc which has worked well, but today despite him trying this and offering good solutions to her worries, she just would not go in, and went outside the office reception and sat down refusing to move.
He suggested out of earshot for me to go as maybe me being there was making her more reluctant, which i agree was probably true as maybe then she thinks she might be able to come home.

I walked off up the path and left him negotiating with her outside as he had advised, however then looked back and saw him fireman carrying her into the building.
Now I totally get it's a hard sitiation knowing how to get her in,and appreciate he has a class to teach, so can't stand outside negotiating with her for ages, and there is a possibility she was okay with him lifting her in and it was a fun game (although I would be surprised as she isn't really a tactile child with anyone other than me and sometimes her dad and sister) If someone had done that with my 5yo, unless she was kicking and screaming in upset, I probably wouldn't think much of it tbh, but with her being older on the cusp of puberty, him being male, and also her having ASD and not liking physical touch, it just feels like it might be quite humiliating for her and abit forceful and inappropriate, despite it being meant as a playful gesture to get her to go in.
We always try to teach her body autonomy, that nobody should touch her including hugs etc without her wanting them to, so i just worry that this is going against that, especially with him being an adult male.
She is quite a young 9.5, and fairly small for her age, so not sure he would have done it otherwise, but despite that she is still the age she is.

My plan is I will speak to her later and see if she was okay with it or not, and if not ask for a meeting with school, asking them to not do it again and discussing alternative methods to get her into school.

What are others thoughts on this practice? If anyone else has experienced something similar, or has any ideas of alternative ways to get her into school i would be grateful for your input!

There does not need to be enough TAs to cajole every child into the classroom. There needs to be more specialist schools available for the children who genuinely need board games to sit nicely and listen. Mainstream schools shouldn’t have to be dealing with this.

100% this!

The headteacher did that with my ds2 once at the end of year 4. I was fine with that, but they were both male, I don't know if that makes a difference. I would have been fine with a female teacher doing it, although I would have worried about a smaller teacher getting hurt or dropping him as he was thrashing about quite a bit.

I suppose this happened this morning as you say this “may” have made your child feel on x or y way. You don’t even know if your child is upset but you are here finding a way to deal with a teacher.

You know what is the problem with most overanxious children? Over anxious parents.

I've been this teacher. Look - you either want them to get her inside, or you don't. If you want her inside, then you have to accept that nobody has the time or energy for pandering to a child that is taking away the resources of 3+ adults at the busiest part of the day. The more you phrase it as a negotiation, the more she will see that it is an option to stand there and dick about refusing to go in. If you don't want them to get her inside then you need to stay and be responsible for her, on your own, until she walks through by herself. There are ways to support a soft launch e.g. going in before the others into a breakfast club or the office, maybe having a job like delivering the register or something, but that is not a negotiation either - she either goes in or she doesn't but standing on the threshold suggesting she has a choice is doing her no good and wasting yours and everyone else's time. I expect the teacher suggested that you leave because you were giving the option of not going in, as you pose in your post.

By all means speak to the school about options for the morning. But I have taught more children than I could count on one hand who have just needed a firm but jolly handhold whilst being led away from mum, or indeed to be picked up and moved inside. Every single child settled when in school and the illusion of choice about the situation was removed. Children thrive on boundaries.

Good luck with that. SEND reforms plans to have more SEND children in mainstream, not less.

You need to make it absolutely clear that is behaviour isn’t tolerated. No one is coming for her, she isn’t allowed just sit in the hall and school is a must attend. Even if she doesn’t like it THERE IS NO OPTION

I would have walked her in by the hand, dragged if necessary to the classroom. There are kids who need very very strong boundaries for their own good and your DD sounds like she is one of them.

Don’t let this get away from you, you need to be in charge of this

what do you expect me to do myself? Stand there all day? take her home?

Either of those would be fine. Or carry her in yourself.
Just don't make it the school's problem to deal with.

I think a lot of people don't understand school refusal in ASD children and will be answering from that point of view.

What else are the school doing to help with the areas that she is struggling with around being in school?

My son's school refuses, about 2-3 days a week, he's 8, he has ASD and ADHD and a history of seizures, he's under several specialists, he loves to learn. He struggles because once he goes into school he has to follow in the sometimes struggles to take in due to sensory difficulties.

I can assure you no one is giving in, my son goes to school every single day, school have addressed issues with a soft start and support to go j to class. He thrives, he is in top group for everything because he works really very hard and is academically very capable but emotionally, executive function etc he's behind.

If I have to dress him I dress him, if I have to carry him out the house and into the car I do (he's almost 5 foot tall and 7 stone (he's also under endocrinology for his growth) if I have to put an arm around him and half drag him I do, if itakes me late for work he still goes, if I have to sit into the playground or a bottom of a staircase, if I get toppled over and I jured he goes to school. Noone gives in to him. However if his school weren't able to offer soft start, supportive staff he can form a relationship with, a positive front when I call the office for support as I can't get to the door buzzer because he's thrown his whole weight against me.

He's off today with a throat infection and it's the first day he's been of since P1.

So you don't know, and everyone I know with a school efuser has the same tale, were there bashing our brains in, risking careers we've spent decades building, constantly planning, constantly supporting and losing our collective minds.

I feel for the teachers having to deal with this shit. On more than one occasion I've witnessed one boy at our primary school being dragged, naked, out of his parents' car and carried into school by a TA. They don't get paid enough! I agree with PP who said mainstream schools shouldn't be dealing with this stuff.

Hopefully, if she felt humiliated or uncomfortable, she'll go into school next time and not play up because she'll know the consequence is embarrassment.

For what it's worth one of mine kicked off once over 50p tuck money and had to be carried in but by my partner not a teacher.

The usual reasons she gives are either that her tummy hurts (think this is code for feeling anxious despite her saying otherwise) she will have nobody to play with at break because she doesn't have any friends (she only has what I would call 'fringe friends' but nobody really consistent) or also she says that Maths is too difficult.Both me and school are trying to help her with her worries but often she gets into a cycle of rigid thinking then its sometimes hard to know what else to do or say to convince or help her.

Ok

And when you do that and the child claws their face and bangs their head off a wall repeated in a meltdown until they bleed and you have to restrain them to an office and it takes 2 hours for them to become coherent again.

What's the next step then?

Whilst she might have found it humiliating, I am imagine the rest of the class is already pretty fed up of her and it is no more humiliating than seeing her refuse to come inside.

Yes, which is ridiculous and means the kids who are ready and waiting to learn, won’t.

I am answering from the point of view of having an ASD child who tried to not attend school. I took a very hard line stuck with it and now we are almost at the point where she is leaving school.

It’s been a hard road but I never dismissed my responsibilities – more parents need to do the same and understand that the world will not bend to their children so they can understand that as adults they need to find their place in the world but not expected to bend to them.

I have a six year old son and would be unhappy with a teacher of either gender picking him up like that unless he was in physical danger/putting other children in danger.

Did she consent to being carried?

Exactly.

I'm shocked by this. There are ways of moving a child that are both physically and safeguarding safe, and this is not one of them.

I'd want to discuss it with the DSL, because the teacher should either be capeable of safe handling (and should have had training in it) or he should be leaving moving a child to someone who is.

Being left outside is putting her in physical danger as is leaving the other kids unsupervised for too much time (and impacts their learning)

I am team teacher, he did what needed to be done. But if I was his line manager/ head/ union rep I would be telling him not to do it again because things can get nasty and if anything was raised it would blight his career for ever.

I would imagine the next step would be finding a more appropriate type of school.

It’s not fair on the teachers, it’s not fair on the other staff, it’s not fair on the children in the classroom and it’s not fair on the child themselves.

Teachers are damned if they do and if they don’t these days, particularly male teachers, who I’m surprised even enter the role! If you have no major concerns about this, if it got her into school, and if she wasn’t kicking and screaming (was she?) then I wouldn’t complain. He was likely being quite jovial and if your daughter didn’t seem distressed then there is no harm done and he got her into school!

Even if the reforms don't go ahead, specialist schools are still very limited and plenty of SEND children will end up in mainstream. Some will be fine with support but others won't be.

Plenty of SEND children want to learn too. Unfortunately many can't if they aren't in the correct setting.