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!

At almost 10 find it totally bizarre your not concentrating on getting her into school. If there are no disabilities then she loses privileges until she starts behaving

We all have to do things that make us anxious and school today is not a generally scary experience. I think more children would benefit from being pushed/cajoled/forced into dealing with the fear and pushing through.

Ideally a child would respond to a conversation , but in the case of mine and many other others, the only course of action is to be stronger than them and their fears and make them attend. I don’t deny that this process is brutal and hard and in many ways is a much more onerous process on the parents but in 99% of the cases it will work. I know some kids are simply mentally not able to deal with school and that’s a whole other issue.

I think you should have got her in there by yourself rather than him doing it.

It says in the OP that she has Autism.

Find out what happened... he may have jokingly said "right what are we going to do, am I going to have to carry you in?" to which she replied "yes"

Well, he's totally fucked it hasn't he. Totally inappropriate and won't do any good at all.

I disagree. I don’t think this is a male / female thing.

im team teacher in this case.

It worked that day. Now you have an autistic child already struggling to attend who has been taught she'll be picked up by a man and forced into class

Not necessarily by force but by persuasion.
We all have to do thngs we don't want where it us school, work , whatever. Sometimes persussion makes things a bit easier.

The child has a good relationship with the teacher. Once the audience has gone i.e.mum, and she is still a little reluctant he may have suggested it as a fun way for her to go in.

Teacher hasn't got all day, mum is struggling. An asd kid would likely massively kick off if unhappy.

Child probably saw it as a novelty.
Teacher isnt being secretive, he is on school premises where there's likely to be carers, office staff nearby etc.

Team "if you have to lay hands on them to get them into school then this is not sustainable."

You've had a lot of replies from people who I don't think have been through this. Physically carrying her in is not going to fly at 11 or 13 or 16. Resorting to it at 9 is just papering over the cracks and knocking through problem down the path. Better that it comes to a head now than at the start of Y10.

I think how are you proposing to tackle it is perfectly sensible. Keep in mind other options like emergency AR - not in response to the lifting but in response to anyone needing to touch to to keep/get her into school.

What would you have suggested he do? You seem helpless and desperate as is this teacher (who had a class full of children waiting and a job to do)....maybe you should come up with a constructive plan OP, as the parent.

she just would not go in, and went outside the office reception and sat down refusing to move
So she wasn't upset about going in, just being rebellious?

Unlikely that a woman teacher would risk putting her back out carrying a 9 1/2 year old, though?

I can see why you might be taken aback to see that happening, but in practice, what would be a better solution? That he leaves her outside alone while he gets all the other pupils sorted? That he leaves all the other pupils unsupervised while he negotiates with one pupil? Or that he calls you back and gets you to deal with her?

I think you need to be very careful not to make things worse for her by validating her refusal, albeit indirectly.

I feel so sorry for teachers these days. They have so much to do because parents are not doing it themselves.

You expected the whole class (assuming 30 odd children) to wait because your child was refusing to go? It sounds like she acts up when your there, the teacher has good rapport with her and has dealt with the situation (which you weren't). I totally appreciate you teach body autonomy, but unless you plan to home school, her attending school won't be changing anytime soon. So you either need to be strict with going in, and come up with a plan with the help of the school and stick to it that's not disrupting the whole class. I don't enjoy work on Monday's, but i get up and go. I feel there's potentially an element of pandering here, perhaps helping set her up socially so she can feel more comfortable and make friends & grow her confidence (even outside of school) would help?

I done that with my child for 2 years and guess what he didnt want to be here anymore!
I would do anything to not have done that and instead not listened to people like you.
For 2 years I took him to a place where he was petrified,didnt sleep didnt want to eat!
I stayed with him in a room on his own in the end with a 1 to 1 because of safeguarding so he was sat in a room with no friends because of something he could not help!
Dragging a child into somewhere does not remove the anxiety it hides it!

Op try and get to the route of why she feels this way and get early intervention.

I understand your concern OP although its a sign of the times that you should even suspect this Teacher was acting inappropriately in this difficult situation. It feels like as a society we have lost all trust in the adult population who work with children. Of course we have to be diligent but we shouldn't tar everyone with the same brush.

Thanks for those who have responded sensibly, however don't want to keep feeding the thread as many (as I probably should have expected on here) are just unnecessarily and harshly judging my parenting, my child, or unfairly accusing me of teacher bashing and making allegations i'm not.

He seems a very good teacher, I said that in my OP, but that does not mean he could never make a bad judgement or mistake in his approach.
However as i said before, I am not out to make complaints about him, as i realise it was a difficult situation and he meant no harm.I was simply interested in whether lifting about a Year 5 would be thought of as usual or appropriate practice by others, as it does not really feel so to me, although I do see he maybe felt he had no choice having asked me to leave and needing to get back to class.In future I think i will stay until she has gone in so he or anyone else will not need to take such actions.I would have stayed to help if I hadn't been asked not to, and me leaving clearly didn't help anyway, as she still refused to go in even when she knew I had gone, hence why he was lifting her.
She is actually quite shy in general, and can demonstrate fawning behaviours, would not necessarily stand up for herself if she felt uncomfortable or unhappy, especially to a male (and no i haven't taught her to fear men, she is just automatically more wary of them and always has been)

I will check in with daughter after school about it and go from there.
Whatever though, i do think though that there needs to be more of a formal plan about getting her into school, so will discuss with them the soft starts approach.

Whatever you please but why do you think it is the job of teaching and admin staff to deal with your child in the school office, knocking his head into a desk and clawing his face until it bleeds?

Wouldn't you be better placed to deal with this?
Wouldn't your child want you to deal with this?
Why would you want to pass the buck to others-with other responsibilities-to deal with this?
Why wouldn't you want to deal with this?

Are you too busy, too inept, too irresponsible?

Gosh, that sounds like a struggle op. You and DD are really going through it at the moment.

I see where you’re coming from. I think, like you said, the best bet is to discuss it with her later in a non-biased way and see how she feels. He might think it’s a fun and playful way to get a child into school, but not all children respond to that in the same way. The last thing you want is for her to develop even more anxiety around going into school.

You sound like your head is screwed on @ChitterChatter1987

I think your DD is going to be just fine

You think this is "totally fucking it"? I swear people on this thread are reacting as if he' dragged her in using his cock.

He hasn’t totally fucked it but he does need advising.

What does he need to be advised about?
It's such an indictment of society and parenting that this thread even exists.

This was inappropriate behaviour and I think he does need speaking to from senior staff about it so he doesn't endanger his career. He is also leaving himself open to allegations. There also needs to be plan going forward about how to get your daughter into school.

So what makes you think this child is able to deal with it?

Not picking children up and putting them over his shoulder, at the risk of sounding acerbic.