Stop blaming teachers for your child’s behaviour

[Woolfatthedoor]

I’m so fed up of my partner return home from school exhausted and mentally drained due to the appalling behaviour of some of their year six pupils.
Heaven forbid they are reprimanded. Then a slurry of emails accusing the teacher of ‘shouting’ at their innocent kids.
My Partner and several colleagues are at the point ot resigning.
They are experienced teachers who love teaching yet these kids make teaching intolerable.
If feels like these kids are not set any boundaries at home therefore come to school with a degree of arrogance.
Parents don’t seem to take any accountability for their children’s behaviour siding with them against the teacher who just wants to teach the rest of the class.

What money?

My DP is a teacher now nearing retirement and it can't come soon enough. At the start of DP's career the kids behaved and largely had boundaries and values. Then it started to get worse and in the last 10 years it's been an absolute shit show. It's not the kids, they are the same clay as they've always been. Go figure.

Clearly there are lots of situations that are very sad and some families are very unsupported. As I said, I have lived experience of this. However what I dispute in the strongest terms that the sen crisis is not an sen crisis at all and the sen numbers I believe are exaggerated meaning that the people who are genuinely struggling are not being helped. Every week I see kids who I know supposedly have adhd wandering about swigging from a can of Gatorade or some such rubbish before lobbing it over someone’s fence and I simply do not believe that neurodivergence is the main contributor to the issues that are happening in the schools at the moment, even though it is being argued it is. I’m not going to discuss any more. I know a lot, both academically and professionally as well as lived experience, so I feel my view is not nonsense. I have a great deal of sympathy for many families who aren’t being helped and supported but I feel that that is because resources are being redirected away and towards kids who quite simply have terrible diets, are overstimulated and poorly parented. That’s all I’ll say about it

Can someone show me the money? Can someone show me how to reimburse myself of the thousands I've spent?

@Flipflop223 apologies ref the question reference! You're right, the specific question was for wildflowers.

I'd love some too. I've had to find the mythical job, that you can drop at 2 minutes notice. Within 5 minutes of school. That covers all drop offs and pick ups as my DC isn't allowed into breakfast or after school club. It certainly doesn't pay what my old job does. It barely pays minimum wage. I'd love some of this free money.

Because teachers are never to blame? If a teacher can’t control a class without screaming at them, maybe they should be in another profession.

My DDs year 6 teachers screams and shouts, everyday the class is let out late because he screams and shouts at them. This not not me believing my lying child, this is me stood at the school gate listening to him loosing his temper! And yes, I have bloody complained. I don’t want my child screamed at daily and have her come home exhausted with her head pounding because the only way her teacher can deal with some problem children is to scream, shout and punish the entire class because of a few kids who are the problem every day.

I’ve spoken to the teacher, he has admitted that there are times his buttons are pushed with the slightest issue after a day or week of big issues piling up. He has admitted punishing the whole class for the behaviour of a few dosnt work, but yet he still dose it. I’ve spoken to senior staff in school and suggested he’s not coping, their response is he’s “ preparing them for highschool…” I’ve spoken to the HT who agreed and had already spoken to him about it and finally I’ve emailed as I found it ridiculous that on mental health awareness day he’s screaming at a bunch of 10/11yos.

I have no problem with teachers raising their voices and giving out punishments. If my dd plays up, she gets her punishment and sucks it up. I do have a problem with teachers loosing it with an entire class or innocent children having to put up with shouting and screaming because of the behaviour of other children. Why should my child have to come home from school crying with a headache because her teacher can’t cope with his class? All staff, teacher, DHT and HT have confirmed my dd is not a problem child and is very quiet and helpful in class. I’ve asked this and I’ve told them if she is playing up I have no issues with her being told off, they have reassured me she is not an issue. So why is my child’s MH suffering if she’s not the problem.

The old year 6 teacher was amazing and never shouted, their response is kids loved her, she even taught one of the worse behaved year groups the school ever had and didn’t need to shout at them.

Well that’s exactly what Keir Starmer and govt have been talking about. They’re doing a sen review right now in an acknowledgment that it’s gone nuts. No doubt he’ll come back with some woolly definition akin to his “working people” definition - who knows what that means. I was under the impression that a working person was someone who worked. Seemingly not. Liz Kendall is also looking at benefits in relation to sen and mental health because it’s not sustainable. The local authorities are doing their own reviews on how they can limit claims. It’s costing a large fortune.

There are literally hundreds of papers on this stuff. I’d need to spend at least an hour pulling out all the key papers that are pointing to all of these issues. Sorry if you think i should be doing that 🤷‍♀️ You can do your own research and find the original sources.

You might think im clueless and im fine with that.

I feel compelled to mention it’s losing not loosing. Loose is something not tight. Sorry!

@AliceMcK we had the most amazing teacher for year 6. The best approaches, the best temperament, he was great with all the kids and they all did so well. All the kids were chilled including my own and did great. It was because of him. He was the best. He was understanding, fair and reasonable and could laugh at the SEN kids quirks. My son loved him.

Now it's just a nightmare. There are old fashioned teachers with a certain expectation. You've got teachers where the expectations upon them are probably too much and they have less capacity to be reasonable. I mean my own capacity is poor and I'm losing it at my own child with behaviour I know is alot to do with being ND.

Its like nursing. If the conditions are of a really good standard then it makes sense that the staff will feel better and work better ( less stressed and frustrated). But the schools as annoying as I'm finding them are kind of being screwed over like hospitals are and they get alot of unfair blame for what's ultimately a resource problem amongst other demands.

Yes …
As a teacher over 30 years I taught:
Teenagers who had been boy soldiers in Sudan
Syrian refugees who had been shot at
Victims of female genital mutilation
Children supposedly possessed by jinns and beaten
13 year old boys and girls groomed by Church of England priests
13 year old girls groomed by males and females
Under-16 girls taught to sell sex by their mothers
14 year old boys filmed having sex with animals by their fathers
Boys sexually abused by their Catholic fathers, grandfathers, uncles and their friends
Little girls with UTIs because their stepdads came into their bedrooms at night and hurt them

But all mental health problems in children started in 2020, caused by teachers calling for lockdowns.

Right.

It’s getting old

Covid lockdowns are blamed for everything 😅

I don’t think this has to do with the lock down anymore. I think what’s happened is that parents had a lot more control of where their children were and they don’t want to give that up but it’s at a detriment to their children. Let the teachers teach. Lock down is over. Stop coddling your horrifically behaved children. Time to rein in the little beasts who are telling on everyone. Let your children learn and thrive with their teachers. Your children aren’t fragile little eggs that don’t need a hand hold anymore

But there are still horrible teachers and they need to be weeded out. Screw tenure

Ok, I didn’t read that before I just responded and for that I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you had to experience that with these violated children. That’s beyond compare. I hope I didn’t insult you and I did I apologize. I’m so sorry again

But this generation of parents are using it for anything bad that their offspring are doing. They have no accountability and only care about their cellphones. I’ve never seen anything like it. My DIL comes over and expects me to dote on her but she can’t get off her cellphone. Wtf is so freaking important about a cellphone

I also left recently. It was the behaviour of the parents more than the children.

I love teaching and still do but the lack of respect and sheer disdain shown by some parents made me rethink things.

I was already giving too much of myself, my energy, my time with my own children.. previous time when my Dad was ill..

Anyway, 8 weeks in and I've surpassed the rubbish teaching salary. I just regret not leaving years ago.

In fact I regret ever becoming a teacher. It's a shit job, (apart from the actual teaching, which I loved and was very good at), shit money and you get treated with such disdain..

All whilst paying off a student loan and seeing all your friends go ahead and make lots more money, have expenses paid (rather than paying for work things out of your own pocket), international travel, annual bonuses (that isn't a £5 Amazon voucher for example)...

Everyone I know are either leaving or planning to.

It’s a perfect storm of phone addiction / individualism and the benefits culture. It’s never their fault someone else is to blame and someone else should be responsible.

Accepting compromise and responsibilities for the greater good of a system such as a school or general society is gone. These reels of “ill fight for my child” etc feed into that narrative. It used to be the general population automatically took the schools side. That’s how it was in my day. Even the tough kids feared “a letter home” The parents and school were on the same side. The parents have switched sides now and this is the result.

My parents taught for decades retiring in the early 2000s. do you know their difficulties with the job? Other teachers /SLT. Not the parents or the kids! And they taught in average state schools.

I think there were a lot of benefits to my son from being born during lockdown - he was home with his primary caregiver all day everyday. So he got unlimited cuddles (proven to develop the brain). I could read books to him throughout the day. We weren't always rushing somewhere etc.

So if lockdown is being blamed for people on maternity leave not having time to spend with their children then that's a weird one.

I do understand for older children then the reality was different. But lack of toilet training cannot possibly be excused if your baby was BORN during lockdown and are now 4 / almost 5.

I had this issue when someone close to me had their child tested, they didn’t benefit from the diagnosis - they already had severe special needs on the highest rate of support at a special school and behavioural challenges. The diagnoses of ASD opened up more respite care and support for children with ASD - but the parenting etc was no different.

To me, said child met the criteria because they measured their inability to do certain tasks and the absence of x, y and z. Said child can’t toilet independently or make a drink, communicates with echolalia as a teenager - so if you look for a lack of skills you’ll always find them.

In reality the take up will consist of those using the before school clubs anyway and maybe one or two extras who’s parents will benefit from the before school club - because they can get to work earlier who couldn’t previously pay. My kids will continue to eat their porridge at home because that works for us. Even when I use the before school club I feed them first because 1) it’s all UPF cereal I’d rather they didn’t eat and 2) getting up, having breakfast and getting dressed is a part of our routine and they’re hungry when they wake.

Much different if you had multiples though. When you have more than one it’s a totally different dynamic - childcare/school would have been what allowed for those cuddles.

I’ve witnessed this in a special school - obviously all those children qualified for DLA for the care component- but I had another parent tell me how they managed to qualify for higher rate mobility (and thus qualify for a car) because of how they presented their evidence. They knew the criteria and how to work around it and encouraged me to do the same.

The before and afterschool club isn’t any better.