Other people's violent kids...

[rumtumtigger]

My dd is 6 and there are 3 boys in her class who physically hurt the other children every day.

Is this typical? And how do others deal with it? My dd is refusing to go to parties when these boys are invited along, which seems a shame. The parents of the violent boys don't stay at the parties so other kids normally get hurt. One of the parents doesn't even stop her child hurting others when she is there. All the parents concerned are educated and comfortably off and don't neglect their kids in other ways.

Anyone else have experience of this - is it the same for all of us?

You could be posting this from my Son's class (maybe you are) as there are 3 boys there who do this, and it scares the girls / younger kids. Unfortunately ds1 is one of these three .

In our case ds is in the process of being assessed for As and frankly if just one of the parents would approach the school I would thank them forever, as it might force them to get off their arses and help. We are doing all we can (esp. difficult as I am his biggest target, he even attacks dh now), but the extra help we need isn't forthcoming because no-one will complain. I know people don't want to seem bigoted and it is very difficult.

However, what happnes is that DS is not invited to the parties, which alienates him further.

So my advice is to approach the school. Your child is your priority anyhow, but if this is happening in school then they should be involved.

I don't ignore ds's behaviour because he needs to learn by repetition, but mainly I stay close because I am terrified what he can do. It's a horrible, horrible place to be.

Being called in didn't work with 'our' parents either. They just didn't come. It took being phoned to collect their kids who had been suspended at the age of 6 to actually get them into a meeting.

I am quite relieved in a way that the kids have started escalating again this term as even though they stopped being violent for a week or so, the threat of it was always there and a whole class of kids could never relax.

We go to a new school in three weeks. One that actually follows a set procedure for dealing with violence without fail.

Peachy

If you wait for school to do anything re your son (and am not suggesting at all that you have not been proactive) you'll wait forever frankly.

I can sympathise with your situation as many ASD children do not cope at all in maintream without any extra support. Or they barely cope in school with the result that they come home and take out their various frustrations of the day on the parents or siblings at home.

Have you written to the LEA asking for your son to be assessed with a view to getting a Statement of special needs?. There is actually nothing to stop you doing this. To my mind no statement equals no support. A statement if granted is legally binding and will give a set number of hours of extra support per week.

IPSEA are very good in helping families get their special needs children the educational support they need.

Their web address is www.ipsea.org.uk

We are waiting for a Salt assessment, without which we have no hope at all. We had a letter today, only a year left to go.

Like many AS kids, Sam's main violence is at home; at school it is seen as part of this crowd he hangs with, all of whom are imo ripe for assessment. They call us in weekly, we go in with huge concerns, then they wrote a letter saying that they ahd no concerns to the Ed Psych.

We are under pressure atm to not push things as ds3 is up for a place at nursery this month, without which I cannot continue my degree. The school has the ability due to funsing to select its pupils and does.

The situation is this: Sam goes to school and often remains within normal limits, when he doesn't it is dismissed by a school that doesn't want statemented children. So he comes home havingr eached his overload levels and beats two barrels of shite out of us. This is how BIBIC explained it to us.

I know I should contact IPSEA and maybe I am being irrespoinsible, but as some mumsnetters know I was close to a breakdown last week over this and neither Dh or I are in a palce where we can take on any battles that we will, inevitably, lose.

I have tried discussing this with SENCO and she has refered us, but she is off sick now until September as is the Head and there is no-one there prepared to sign any forms atm.

There is the possibility of a place in a ASD school, but Sam needs his dx first and with year long waiting lists that ain't happening soon.

But I ahve bookmarked your website and when stronger, I will contact them. thank you.

Tigermoth the kind of thing they do is:

• punching (on occaision in the face)and kicking on a several times a day basis, kicks to the head not uncommon
• constant pushing, shoving, treading on feet, poking etc in order to get what they want ahead of the rest of the class - also intimidation by evil faces (doesn't sound so bad but actually these faces scare me and make it pretty difficult for kids to concentrate in class)
• knocking others over by rushing around at high velocity or smacking extremely hard into others and not caring a jot about it.
• hitting with sticks and biting is not so often a problem as the school are strict on these

Not as extreme as Crackle's descriptions though - thank goodness for small mercies! I go into school for 2 hours a week to help in the class room so I see a lot of what happens there but what happens at lunchtimes is mainly from what dd says and the injuries that other kids sometimes go home with.

The girls tend to deal with it in the playground by all standing together, force of numbers.

I think it is the constant low level violence which is not dealt with effectively more than the big face punching incidents

Rumtumtigger, I agree with you that the boys behaviour you describe is less extreme than crackle's description. Sorry but I think a lot of it sounds like carelessness, boisterousness, and low level bad behaviour and IMO is not that untypical of groups of six year old boys. It's seems there could be a general discipline problem at the school.

You say you spend 2 hours a week at school but are you ever there at lunchtimes? have you seen the girls huddling together to protect themselves from the boys? are they doing it in pure fear or as part of a game?

Crackle describes ...
'biting through the shin, poking eyes with sharpened pencils, stabbing legs with aforementioned pencils leaving the lead inbedded and pulling hair out by the handfull'

IMO that's certainly more than any child should put up with and I think the school here has a definite duty to protect the other pupils.

Flip, i deeply sympathise with the situation that you and your son are in. I think that you have been very brave to post.

I am interested to see that your son is involved with a 'circle of friends' we have found that to be very helpful in the secondary school that I work in.

Do you mind if I ask you some questions.....feel free to tell me to mind my own buisness.

What do you think triggered your sons behaviour....was it something or do you think this is 'in built'?

Would you favour you son having indensive support out of the clasroom, councelling and support, before returing him into the classroom. I ask because as a secondary teacher I am constantly putting sticking plasters over major behavioural issues. I work with kids who don't learn because of their behaviour. I sometimes think that they should have been taken out of mainstream for a term or to of intensive thr=erapy and support to get them back on track. The support we give them seems to work for a little while and then something will trigger the behaviour and we are back where we started. I just wonder what you feel.

As I said I think you are very brave to post, and feel your son is very lucky in his mother

Just re read your message and see you think it's the constant low level of violence that is a problem, not major incidents and I agree.

Your very first message on the thread was 'is this typical?' IMO, having two sons myself and seeing them at three different primary schools, my answer is 'yes, it is'. I think you would find that 'low level violence' at any school. Again IME, some schools are better at dealing with it than others.

Sorry batters but I cannot accept that some kids are inherently not nice. Some have never been given any examples of nice-ness and have no mental models of it, and some are probably more inclined towards violence (there was research on this if I am right- in The Times last week- certain people had differently developed brains that meant they were quicker to spark and had less chance of intercepting the anger before it escalated) but I think everyone is born with the capability to be nice, but some may need a lot more education before they are able, things like anger management.

Although it feels like a child is being a little shit when s/he is violent, I really don't think you can blame a young child for violence - it comes naturally at a young age and it's for parents to teach children it's unacceptable, and stop and remove them when they do it. Whether special needs or not, they have to keep reinforcing that message.

I was at a garden party recently where a very violent 4-year-old was hurting the other kids. His parents were not bothered and didn't even seem to bat an eyelid when he fell in the pond! (Another adult rescued him.) To my eyes, he was desperately attention-seeking and to be honest he needed attention - responsible, sensible adult attention to give him love and help him understand how to behave.

By contrast, I went to a playgroup where a mother had brought her 10-y-o son who had Asperger's. He said something to me that was very shocking and hurtful (about how he hated my baby and would like to hurt him) and she immediately pulled him up on it, explained everything to him and got him to apologise. He came over to me to say sorry and he sounded as if he meant it.

It doesn't matter whether special needs or not; defining and limiting unacceptable behaviour is adults' responsibility. I would address the adults in question and say "I don't think you should let X go to parties until he can behave" - or isolate him and phone them to come and bring him home.

This is a very interesting thread. I had lots of problems with ds a few years back when he was 3.5 to 4.5 yrs old (he is 6.5 now). His father left & he went from being a sweet, energetic little toddler into every parent's worse nightmare.

I got help, after being referred to a child psych and I learnt to put into practice alot of the stuff that you see on shows like "house of tiny tearaways" and "supernanny". It was really hard work & required draining amounts of input from me, but was definitely worth it, as he is now able to cope with his emotions much better.

I was also told to ignore bad behaviour but definitely not all of it, only such behaviour as could be ignored. With other children I would watch him constantly and I never had a chance to enjoy a conversation or coffee with friends because I needed to be available to remove him from potentially harming another child before it even happened. We left so many activities, so many venues, so many peoples houses - it was really hellish. But by always carrying through consequences of my warnings, he did learn that my rules were not bendable & bad behaviour would not be tolerated & that I was someone to listen to & respect.
Very occasionally, he still has difficulty controlling his behaviour sometimes, but it is nearly always at home when he is very tired. There has only been one incident at school (he's been there for two years now) and I made him write a note of apology & I personally supervised the giving of the note to the child who he had spat at. He knows that any incidents that are reported to me, he will have to write an apology.
If you watch programmes like Supernanny & House of Tiny Tearaways, you will see that often the parents are not setting clear, easy to understand rules for behaviour & they are not enforcing consequences either. Another thing that is really is easy to forget with children who are very challenging is to praise all good behaviour to up the positive attention. When I first started this, ds's behaviour was so bad, I would resort to saying things like "Well done, you drank your juice so nicely".
So my conclusion to all of this would be that alot of normal children's behaviour is down to parental input. Some children are relaxed & easy going, so it is easier with thime but some children are more demanding, high energy and attention seeking & those children need more guidance from parents about how to control their behaviour.
As an aside I want to say that it was brave of Flip to post & I know when I was going through all the problems with ds, I felt very isolated too. I hope it improves for your ds Flip, like it has for mine.

Bugsy, what a great post and I genuinely am so impressed with the hard work you have done with your DS. It reminded me of a playgroup mother I knew whose DS was one of those more demanding attention seeking children - it's just how he was and she and her DH although the sweetest nicest people you could meet, simply weren't prepared for him. It was actually obvious to us outsiders that they simply didn't give him enough attention - they expected him to get on and play like other children when he just coulnd't - he needed more input, more attention. Then when he became violent, they would ALWAYS tell him off and try to make him apologise, but would never ever remove him or take him home out of the situation. As you say Bugsy, they never gave him a real consequence for his actions.

I think lots of parents don't realise as you have obviously done, the sheer amount of input, hard work and hard graft these kids take.

great post, bugsey

Snowleopard- you're right i think to an extent about SN kids. We would never let Sam get away with anything, indeed I think some parents / Teachers think we are overly controlling because we are simply paranoid. We would not be the ones at the garden party letting DS get away with anything, we would be the nes making a show of ourselves bickering from stress and exhaustion and not enjoying a moment because of following Sam around.

I would NEVER ask anyone to tolerate Sam's violence. What I would ask everyone to do is realise that if we do seem glazed / inattentive occasionally it's because this is a constant stress for us (Sam rarely sleeps more than 5 hours so I mean constant!) and as such sometimes we are just so exhausted and immoralised we do let things slip a bit. He never, ever gets away with things though.

I don't understand how parents can just ignore this behaviour. I agree a lot of it is attention but some people just don't get the negative attention thing, however much you explain it to them (the idea that if you are bing ignored as a kid- any- even negative / punitary attention is better than nothing).

I do think the role of ed psychs in schools could be developed, and this is atb least down to the Teachers, ours was very paranoid about being observed, her hand had to be forced in the matter.

Love the posts from flip, bugsy and tigermoth.

batters, i never said that a bully is anice kid. i just said they arent rotton they are kids. they need to learn about behaviours from other people and what is acceptable.but i dont feel that excluding them from the group is the way to go.

I think that most kids have redeeming features. Felt that strongly today at my boys' party. Couple of the kids I previously had slight reservations about showed a much nicer side.

It was a very boisterous affair though and I think there might have been some "low level violence" when wrestling games got momentarily out of hand, though I dealt with it fast. I think it went brilliantly and that all the children enjoyed themselves and behaved well but I don't know whether your dd would have enjoyed it, rtt. I think some kids just don't like lively, physical, loud games. I certainly didn't as a child.

Batters I think the difference is that most, if not all, kids can still BE nice people if treated in the right way, and given the appropriate boundaries and consequences. I'd hate to think there was a child who couldn't be a nice enough person. The difference is that they are still forming their personalities and are open to influences. They also in general have a desire to please so this CAN be brought to the fore - it's ALL about how they are treated.

So I agree, some kids may not be nice people at the moment - but there is always hope. It's just that some kids never get the input they need.

Am quiet new to mn and have just flipped through this, but it seems that on the whole all parents on here are concerned and responsible parents, whether of a violent(horrible word!) or bullied child. All parents want to work through their situations and protect and love their children, which speaks volumes.

However my nephew and his friend have been bullied for well over 12 months now by 1 boy , who sorry if this offends is a nightmare !!
My nephews friend has been to the hospital now so many times with variuos wounds that social services got involved for fear he was being abused at home!!!
The main problem is the parents, not intersted, and don't care at all.
What is the answer if the parents are nt interested and the school have tried various methods and nothing seems to work.
My nephew goes through times when he cries to go to school and his work is slipping. I feel like going round myself and confronting his mother, but everyone tells me this would be a complete waste of time. Its a very difficult situation.

I am so interested in this thread, and there are some fantastic, thoughtful and brave posts.
I am in an interesting position at the moment - my ds2 was a very aggressive, physical child from birth. At 3, I felt unable to continue at some toddler groups as although my son never started an attack, he would attack tenfold if someone 'threatened' him, ie took a toy away, invaded his personal space etc. He had a real trigger temper too We, in conjunction with his preschool, went on a mission to try and calm him down and help him control his temper. I was so worried about what would happen when he started school.
He's a very bright boy and some of it was caused, I think, by frustration when dealing with kids his own age or younger. I don't know whether he 'grew out of it' or whether the positive parenting techniques and endless patience we and others spent on him worked - possibly a combination. but he is a different boy now (5.5).
The problem now is, at school, he has become the target for 3 boys in his class who gang up on him and punch him, kick him etc. I live in fear that he will let rip and really hurt them back, as he is capable of it! But, bless his heart, for the most part he is managing to control his temper with them.
But as the mother of a previously violent child, I ought to be empathetic to the parents of these 3 horrors. But I can't. To my mind they are bullies, and that is something my boy has never been. One child's mum is a struggling single parent, another one 'just doesn't care' (according to a classroom assistant who alerted me to this situation) and the other mum is a fully-paid up member of the ''ohhhh Tom dearest, don't do that...boys will be boys'' school of parenting. So not much help there. I will be interested to hear what the school's take on the situation is tomorrow when I go in....

fullmoon let us know how you get on - I am very interested.

Re your own child, I think violent behaviour in pre-school age children is a different issue compared to bullying behaviour from children of school age, whose level of understanding of what they are doing and the consequences is much more advanced.

sorry, violent is the wrong word here

physical aggression is really what I mean