Bullying by a child with SEN

[Justwhy2]

My child is experiencing issues in primary school - hitting, kicking, name calling, spreading rumours. In my view it is bullying. The child involved has special educational needs, and a full time classroom assistant.

The school have taken measures to increase supervision of the other child, however they have not imposed any consequences for the incidents that have happened to date. They are also now saying that it is "more 2 sided than I realise," however they have not provided me with any evidence of this. I suspect they are going on what the other child's parents are saying, however the other child has been exposed telling lies on at least 2 occasions.

I understand the complexities of the situation, however surely hitting and kicking can't be ignored just because a child has special educational needs? My child is very aware that if they were to behave this way in school there would be consequences?

It is leaving my child feeling very unsupported. I suppose my question is am I being unreasonable to call this bullying? Has anyone been in this situation, or worked in a school where this has happened, and can advise me on what would be reasonable action from the school in the circumstances?

The end of the month is a long time for a child being bullied
Id try and request an urgent meeting this week for starters. Then keep the one for the end of the month for updates.

It is half term week here. Enhanced supervision has been implemented, so hopefully thjngs should improve - if not I will definitely ask for the meeting to be brought forward. Thanks!

When I googled "bullying", the first 6 results all had three parts:

1. a word or phrase meaning "an action" or "a behaviour" or "a word"
2. a word or phrase meaning "designed to" or "with the intent to" or "in order to" or a variation on that theme
3. a word or phrase meaning "to hurt" or "to harm" or "to damage" or similar.

While the behaviours this child is presenting, maybe those talked about in the anti-bullying policy, if there is doubt as to whether that child understands that the behaviour is causing hurt, harm, upset to OPs child or other children, there is definately doubt as to whether it is bullying, because "a behaviour that causes harm" is NOT necessarily bullying.

If OP is going from the angle that the SEN child is "bullying" i.e. deliberately hurting her child, the school could easily try to shut her down by saying her child isn't being bullied because the SEN child doesn't mean to hurt. That is why, I think it is really important that she goes from the angle that her child has a right not to be hurt at school be anyone, even accidently. Even if the SEND child does not understand the effect his behaviour has on others at all (and I am not saying he doesn't, but it's possible) the school still have a responsibility to completely stop the behaviours and the affects they are having on her child and others.

I absolutely see what you are both saying. I know he other child quite well, and absolutely believe they know exactly what they are doing - particularly when it comes to the manipulation and rumours.

I have used the term bullying in my communication with the school, but agree that isn't a point to get stuck on, it is the behaviour and impact that needs to be addressed.

Thanks everyone!

And I absolutely agree that children with SEN CAN be bullies, just didn't want you to have given school a way to excuse the behaviour, because it 100% needs totally stopping whatever the motivation for it. I hope you can get the outcome your son deserves.

@Justwhy2 Do not use Google! When you complain to a school, use their anti bullying policy. That will define what the school sees as bullying. That’s what matters. Nothing else. Make sure what you say allies to their policy. The policy will be on the web site of the school and gives you a complete overview of what bullying is and how it’s dealt with.

In your case, look at the SEN policy and Behaviour policy too. They all matter in your case.

I can't believe the trust some of you put in school policies!

Having sen is ZERO excuse for bullying!! Make a complaint to the school governors and ofsted - as soon as you do you’ll be amazed how quickly the school want to sort it out! A lot of good schools rated high with ofsted claim they don’t have any bullying as don’t want to ruin their rating but a decent school admits to bullying happening and it’s how they manage it which is the main thing!

I dont think anyone "trusts" policies but the OP can quote them in her complaints to show how unwanted behaviours are harming her daughter and how the action taken is not working. The school has to respond to the complaint letter and they cant wiggle around policy (thats why the pp have been worried about calling it bullying as this school defined it as with intent). However, in most workplaces, it is the impact on the victim that is important, regardless of the intention of the perpetrator, its still called bullying.

If they fail to address the points OP has made in her complaint, then that in itself is grounds for more trouble coming the schools way. The school cannot argue the policy doesnt apply. It also provides a evidenced paper trail if OP has to take this further to the governing body, DfE, ofsted or even social services.

The same thing happened to my child and it was awful (it took a lot of therapy to work out the issues resulting from lack of action and my child taking this as evidence of their insignificance and unimportance).

However, I will say that it is really really hard 1-2-1 on a child as you can turn your back for a second as another child asks a question and an incident can occur. I do think that there is something in the fact that lifeguards don't work more than 20mins but we expect LSAs on guard for hours so I am sympathetic to the individual poorly paid LSA who has to bear the burden.

It's just a nightmare. We ended up removing our child from the school but there were other compounding issues for us too.

I would also take this up with school governors, the LA and oftsed. Especially as you have already raised this with the school and nothing seems to be been done.

This will also help the school make the case for more support hours. Its likely that even if they are getting 1:1 support this will only be in class hours and not break times which is when a lot of issues do occur. I have worked in schools and 1:1 supervision at break times can be done if there is a case for it. I know of 4 children who have had total 1:1 support for the full day, 1 had feeding needs and required supervision whilst eating or drinking, the other 3 were "at risk of peer alienation" as their behavior was aggressive and controlling towards their peers, in all 3 cases governors and LA or Ofsted were involved and there had been several meetings and different strategies used before the granting of total 1:1 support. This was over 10 years ago and school budgets were not as tight as they are now. It also involved juggling staff about to provide the 1:1 with their breaks and also rotating 1:1s so they didn't have the same child full time.

IMO it's none of your business whether the other child gets consequences and/or what they are and I find it odd that you even know this, because surely they wouldn't tell other parents what consequences a random other child is getting? Bear in mind if it is coming from your daughter, the information might not be that reliable.

OTOH if the other children are subject to very visible consequences and this child is very clearly not, that probably isn't especially helpful for the class as a whole because it is likely to feel unfair to the children - perhaps the school ought to rethink their behaviour policy in that case.

But either way - IMO the thing that is your business is how they are going to protect your DD from this behaviour (particularly physical violence) because it's not OK. Where is the classroom assistant when this is happening? If they are solely for that child then surely they should be with the child all of the time to intervene before anything gets to the level of violence or name calling.

I would want to know what they mean by being 2-sided because I would want to know if there is something I should be speaking to my child about. However IME when this has been said to me, it has meant that they weren't really aware of what was happening because they were only seeing the end point of incidents and not the build up to them. It generally referred to a pattern where both my child and the other child didn't have very good skills to handle a situation and so instead of having a bad interaction and then moving away, they would continue to wind each other up until it came to something that triggered adult attention. The school/nursery saw it as being 2-sided because they didn't know who had started it. Sometimes that's an absolutely fair assessment - DS3 currently has this kind of thing with his best friend where they are either best buddies or they have a massive fall out because one or the other of them has gone on the wind up (TBH, often DS3 is at fault here and we are trying to work on it.) But with another child, DS3 was really frightened of him and his actions were defensive because he didn't know how else to deal with it, so I don't agree that it was 2-sided, although it doesn't matter any more as the other child moved up to the next group. And with DS2, there was a friendship where the "friend" would wind DS2 up and let him go and watch the carnage because he found it funny. DS2 was absolutely overreacting/not behaving well, but it wasn't entirely his fault - this was before he was diagnosed with anything so I appreciate it wasn't clear to the staff.

The thing is that DS2 (ADHD, possibly AuDHD) tends to overreact/react very strongly to everything and most children understandably find this a bit too intense and take affront. DS3 (Probably NT but he's 4, so... he's 4) will just immediately bop him on the nose or scream. And if he's in a devilish mood he will wind him up because if you're 4 it is funny to wind your brother up. So I can see that there is fault from both of them, and they are fairly well matched because they are at a similar level maturity wise, but between two same-age peers, a NT child may be able to understand not winding up another child, a child with SEN might need more time and patience to work on skills to replace lashing out.

You are not asking a consistent question though - on the one hand you say supervision has been increased - so the school are doing something about it, but on the other hand you seem to want consequences for that child? Of course it should not be allowed to happen- but I struggle to see what lesson your child will learn from a child who clearly has high SEN (it’s not easy to procure one on one support in schools) being disciplined in a way you see fit (revenge?)

try walking a mile in the other parent’s shoes. If your child does not have these issues then absolutely support your child and let them know that they NEVER need to tolerate this kind of behaviour but please try and avoid imposing the same kind of blanket idea around consequences you might to a child without sen. It is a completely different thing.

stigmatising that child and those parents will achieve nothing good for anyone.

This. It’s safeguarding of BOTH children. Where is the 1-2-1?

@anonymous0810 the issue is that my child, who was spat at, beaten up and pursued saw that lack of any punishment/consequences as evidence that he wasn't important and that he didn't matter because the teachers didn't seem to care about his pain. I'm not saying that it needs to be deeply punitive but my child said that he just needed something to happen to show that he was valued too.

100% this!!

I understand that it is difficult for the parents of a child with SEN and I can see that, even with 1-2-1 it is difficult - how do you intervene before something is said, for example? It is very very hard to have eyes on someone all of the time to prevent everything so, necessarily, there have to be consequences. Even if the other children know that those consequences are different because of that child's circumstances, it can't just be water under the bridge because that does such damage to the other children who are affected by the behaviour.

@Arran2024The whole point of the policies is knowing what the school should do. How they define bullying. What they commit to do about it. It’s very important to know this if you are complaining. It’s what you base your argument on.

The school complaints policy must be followed. Governors after head. LA has no role. They are not in charge and neither is Ofsted.

It’s not down to the op to get more funding for the school. It’s down to the school to put that case forward. The op is concerned about her dc only and lack of action to prevent bullying. Being absolutely certain what the role of the school is is paramount when arguing they aren’t stopping the bullying.

Then that is about educating your child on the needs of the other child. Again - they absolutely should not have to tolerate the behaviour but the behaviour is driven (presumably) by a nervous system disorder (believe me I know!). Therefore arbitrary punishing a child who either has no awareness of the impact of their behaviour or is full of shame because they have no control over that behaviour benefits nobody.

im sure you can see that the perceived injustice does not take away from the fact that a child who requires a 121 is going to have an exponentially harder life than someone who doesn’t. Isn’t that consequence enough? Help teach your child boundaries, what they should and should not tolerate and empathy as well and leave the school to manage the other child according to its needs (which it sounds like they are doing to the best of their ability). As the parent you can give your own child all the reassurance they need about how much they matter.

And why can’t the thing that “happens” be that the school witnesses your child’s pain and validates their feelings (as well as obviously putting everything possible in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again). This arbitrary focus on consequences sounds a lot like an eye for an eye and I thought as a society we had moved away from that kind of “justice”. Or at least I hoped we had.

No. Absolutely not.

I'm sorry but I educated him with books about autism (as requested by the school) when he was bitten hard unprompted in year R, I spoke to him about differences when he was first spat at but ultimately your child needs to control his behaviour. Bullshit is it my child's responsibility to suddenly understand at 4, 5, 6 that they might be bitten, kicked, hurt, insulted, spat at, had pencils stabbed at their neck, attempted strangulation and that's okay because someone else is different to them.

My child suffered in a way that required months of expensive therapy because the school took that line that my child should tolerate because the other child was neurodiverse. There needs to be another way.

You genuinely think they follow these policies? Sure, use it as the basis of the complaint etc. But for a similar example, look at the Supreme Court ruling on sex/gender and how it is being ignored. And so I'm afraid, are school policies

My child and I didn't want anything massively punitive but they needed to see that some sort of action had been taken because that is what they understood as showing that they were equally cared for and that it wasn't okay for them to be used as a punching bag because the other child had their own challenges. There needs to be empathy for everyone.

@Arran2024 Are you completely obtuse!! The op is complaining because the policies have NOT been followed! However if she doesn’t know what’s in the policies, she cannot make a coherent argument!!! It’s that simple. Policies are the public face of school standards. Yes, they can struggle to follow them, but that’s the basis of the complaint. Just saying I’m not happy and other dc should be punished is not a coherent complaint.

Governors are responsible for ensuring policies are followed. The op should make her case based on what has not been followed. No 1 is probably the definition of bullying. These policies are required by law and therefore have standing in a complaint. A vague guess doesn’t. The policies are, in effect, a legal template for staff, dc and parents.

Ultimately children need to feel safe at school. I don't think it's reasonable or realistic to expect a child to feel better about being bullied by being educated on special needs. Both kids need to be safeguarded by responsible adults.