Over reaction by school?

[scorpioamo]

Sorry this is so long :-\

Recently my 3 year old attended a play group and started coming out with strange things to the teacher such as i will chop off your head! I don't know where she got this from but could just be from Alice in wonderland story where the queen says chop off their heads? i read to my children every night. My daughter is quite advanced for her years speech wise and developmentally as she has an older sister 4 1/2 (who also attended the same play group but with no problems) and she picks up a lot from her such as counting , learning colours etc so i know she is intelligent for her age. she has also told lies about my eldest daughters school friends saying they pushed her over, which is definitely not true as she doesn't obviously attend my older daughters school. My daughter has always been one for tantrums but then school informed me she had bitten herself twice (not drawn blood) and had also pinched herself (not bruised ) and they were very concerned at this. my daughter then told the teacher once "you are hurting me you are trying to twist my hand and make it come off" I got quite concerned with this and started giving it a lot of attention trying to get her to stop all this behaviour thinking she would get kicked out of play group! the school said they had never seen any such behavior and then proceeded to contact social services skipping out on getting advice from a health visitor as i agreed with them! I was so shocked by this action as i have always been very involved with my children's learning and i always volunteer for the school trips and nature walks etc so they surely know my character.
Me and my daughter had a home interview a week later by social services they asked if i had seen a health visitor!!! The social services didn't see any problems at home and said my daughter seems loved and happy they referred me to a GP who said she had seen worse behavior and it was common and that i just needed to stop making an issue of it and let my daughter know it is bad behaviour by treating it as such! I usually do time out a minute per year of their lives i did this next time she bit herself and the behaviour stopped !!! Has anyone had this sort of over reaction by a play group or school? was it an over reaction???

I think it was a HUGE over reaction. My dd1 is quite advanced for her age and she still does things like this.

She is very imaginative and bright.

When she was your dd's age she told me that while I was out her Dad had 'scratched out my eyes and broked my neck, for nothing, onliberately'

He then apparently glued her neck back together and bought her some new eyes from the shop, so I couldn't tell what he had done

She often used to (and still does) threaten to feed me to the lions at the zoo, if I upset her/say no etc.

I thought it was just normal imagniative toddler stuff tbh.

I have abs no experience of this, so cant give any advice, but... just think, if they save just one child from being very over-cautious, surely its a good thing? It must have been v.embarrasing, but please try and laugh about it and remember you are a great mum, and be thankful that the school is so po-active!

Shiney, thats actually really funny

Yes, I have. It lead to a string of professional assessments for my son. I don't think the referral to the SW was due to them thinking she was 'at risk' from you in any way. From what I understand, the first call for nurseries and schools is to get a SW involved if they feel the child's behaviour is 'unusual' and needs assessing by a pediatrician, phycologist etc. Not quite sure why they do this as the SW is hardly qualified to recognise a special needs behaviour more than the parent is. Load of old b**cks if you ask me.

Yeah i totally agree and did relay this to the school that i understand they did it in the best interests of my daughter and were 'only trying to do the right thing' but my problem was they lied to me and said the health visitor said she doesn't deal with behaviour problems and that its a matter for social services. The school has now apologised and said that the health rang me today and said the health vistor planted the seed of doubt in their heads and that she should in hindesight have said to the health visitor to have a visit first then if any concerns go ahead with the social services refferal. Just feeling a bit let don by the play group and have removed my daughter because of this and other bad things i have now heard about the school. I just don't trust the school anymore :-(

Thanks for all your replies its comforting to know i'm not the only one! Glad its all over now though!

Shineyandnew that sounds like something my daughter could come out with her imagination is so wild sometimes haha. Glad to see another child can construct stories which obviously didn't happen as the school seemed to think because she said they were trying to twist her hand off and showed them what they had supposedly done they were baffled as to how she would know how to make that up withot seeing it or having it done to her! They obviously don't watch cartoons haha