The school wants to see me about DS1's bad behaviour...

[scampadoodle]

Every now & then DS1 gets the devil in him & behaves really badly - not listening, being a bit aggressive or playing rough, & generally being naughty. The rest of the time he can be lovely. He's very affectionate & the school tells me he's extremely bright. He's 5 & in Reception.
When he behaves badly at school they put him on timeout or send him to another class. Anyway I've just had the Inclusion Manager of the school on the phone: after a day of bad behaviour they've sent him to a Year 2 class for the rest of the afternoon & they want to see me regarding 'strategies' [sp?] for his transfer to Year 1 in the autumn.
I am so upset; I feel I've completely failed as a parent & that he's going to get expelled & end up in a crap school, & that'll mean DS2 won't get to go to a decent school ...blah blah blah... I know I'm being silly, but I'm so down about it & don't know what to do either about punishing him or managing his behaviour

Try not to worry.
The meeting will be positive - discussing the reasons why your DS may sometimes behave inappropriately, and deciding on ways to make it easier for him to conform.

Don't feel down. It sounds like your lad is just a feisty wee 5 year old.

Don't get defensive when you talk to the school, it's probably just the case that the school and you use different strategies to discipline him (even if you think they sound the same).

Once you know what he's done get the school to give you a blow by blow account of how they deal with it. It sounds pedantitic but to a child there is a world of difference between saying for eg

Don't do that, if you do that again you're in time out and

Don't do that, please can you do this, if you don't do this you'll go into time out.

Like I said I sound like a pedant but I find the devil to be in the detail with little ones.

Once you know if and how you and the school differ, then you can see if you can come up with a plan to deal with situations in the same way.

Children love consistency, he may take a while to respond, but he's only human, he's only 5 and his IS a little angel

if you liase with the school, i'm sure you'll be able to find a solution. my ds is still a baby so i have no personal experience but dp and many friends are teachers and i know that if the parents are helpful it makes a huge difference to how they see things. good luck!

A hard situation. My advice would be to go and listen, really listen, to what the school have to say, say as little as possible yourself, go home and think it over, then talk to the school again. It's too hard not to jump to the defence of your child/parenting initially i think! Good luck.

He has so much energy it's hard for him to sit still, he's such a fidget! He's wire-thin & can keep going like the Duracell bunny. Part of me thinks it's a shame he has to start conforming so young, & the other part of me realises that he must, or he won't get through the school system. (He really enjoys school BTW)

He's only 5 and he sounds like he's just being a boy! Could the school be expecting a bit too much from him?

Well, that's what I'm wondering. Although most of the other children seem to manage.
One odd thing the Inclusion Manager (wtf?) said to me on the phone was that she'd been in his class & he was walking through the room carrying a chair, but with the legs outwards, so that he ran the risk of bayonetting any child who happened to be in the way. "Of course," she said, "he was only being helpful, but he was completely unaware..." & she was shocked by this! But he's only FIVE YEARS OLD! why should he be aware of something like that unless it's pointed out to him??!