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.

I’m surprised that teachers don’t wear body cam tbh

I think teachers need lots of quick support so that children who can't comply are taken out.

Otherwise school just becomes crowd control doesn't it?

We can't change parenting can we? I think I was far too soft on my two but they have been at very strict school where they had to learn boundaries.

If I could go back in time I would be a much more strict parent with the kids having to take responsibility much younger. I think I was far too quick to do everything for them.

I think teachers are amazing. It is incredibly hard work to manage children and all their behaviours.

SEN is not "an excuse". It's a real problem a child has. How would you like it if someone tells you you're using your disability as an "excuse" to get a parking place or an adjustment at work etc? How would you feel if you had say Tourette syndrome and people would say "stop using your disability as an excuse for swearing constantly"?

You're making ridiculous assumptions. Your default is to assume all negative behaviours needing challenged are because of SEN. By your logic I could label this as hate speech as you are implying that disability always leads to problematic behaviour. It's possible for a child to have SEN AND also just have poor behaviour and poor parenting.

We need to stop pandering to this attitude that anyone with SEN is only ever excused because SEN. Absolute rubbish. I can have SEN / disability and still choose to behave kindly or not.

Broken families raise broken children.

Theses threads are made to have a pop at parents and teachers. There seems to be no middle ground. To acknowledge there can be wrongs/rights/difficulties on both sides.

The lockdown posts are interesting. My kids were 4 and 8 (nursery and year 3) at the start of the first lockdown and I've often wondered which are the causative effects of lockdown itself, and what is more of a correlation (that has read across to how it's addressed.)

Lockdown was shit, with two parents working full time. We were incredibly fortunate in that our jobs had a degree of flexibility (ie the ability to do stuff at different hours) and having more than one child was hugely beneficial. But even so habits got picked up, especially around screens, that we had to work incredibly incredibly hard to fight at the time and fix later. I'm not a "demonise screens" parent - I'm probably too relaxed - but I can fully believe that increased screen dependence for ever-younger kids massively accelerated during that period, for understandable reasons - and once the habit is there it's incredibly hard to break. And I can see my own kids' behaviour after they've spent too long on screens - it has to have an impact.

I often actually think that having kids that age was probably the least bad during lockdowns. Not little babies and toddlers who were massively intense and missing out on early socialisation, or older teens who are designed to pull away from their parents. Anecdotally this year's year 11 is the most challenging ever at my eldest's school - they're the kids who transitioned to secondary in 2020. And certainly the kids in the year below my youngest year seem to have struggled more with the lack of time at nursery.

There's no way it can't have had some impact but it feels quite lazy to put all problems at that door when there have been so many rapid changes - and particularly the rise of personal devices - over the last decade.

Yes it's sad and ridiculous.

Gentle parenting has its place and it's great we encourage children to not bottle up feelings, but children also need to learn that there are times they just need to do as they're told. It shouldn't take a 10 minute discussion and tons of empathy for a kid to put their coat on. Sometimes you just do things because you have to. I don't want to do all the paperwork in my job, but I have to. When my manager asks me to do something, I get on with it regardless of my opinion.

Respect has gone. Kids won't die from hearing no and being shouted at by a teacher. The rare time I got a detention, I was mortified about telling my parents. I'd have been given a right bollocking if I was ever disrespectful to a teacher!

Where did I say "all negative behaviours are because of SEN"? 🤷‍♀️

You are making ridiculous assumptions indeed.

Unfortunately sometimes you have to be that parent even if the schools don't like it. I don't put up with any nonsense from schools because the impact on my kids is phenomenal so I have been that parent but when they see the difference in my kids in school they realise why. The school should be putting these suggestions forward to you anyway as they should know adaptions are required to support him in school.

I quit teaching when a colleague complained about me to the head because their Y3 child was not publicly and praised rewarded for expected behaviour (e.g. doing their homework). The child had no SEN that might warrant extra recognition or anything but they felt that a head teachers award or similar should have been given.

I left because I was upset that a colleague would do that to another colleague and that the head demanded an investigation even though he knew it was a load of bollocks. I often wonder how this teacher reacts when his maths group handed in their homework - like, does he set off fireworks or something to celebrate?

It's nearly impossible to separate correlation and causation in psychological research due to obvious restrictions on experimental work. On the ground though it's totally overwhelming, and it cannot be a simple coincidence.

You’re missing the point.

People can and do use SEN as an excuse. That’s just how it is. Similar to adults making claims for disability benefits when there are no issues. It happens - not everyone tells the truth all of the time.

SEN is a real thing in some cases, yes. But not every claimed case of SEN is genuine. Some parents are just lazy, too busy and/or entitled.

Nobody is saying for a moment that anyone who says their kid has SEN is a liar, but it’s just naive to think that no parents deliberately use it as an excuse. It allows those people to forego any responsibility because “it’s just the way he is, it cant be helped”.

The problem was endemic way before anyone heard of Covid.

Have you tried to get SEN recently?

🤦‍♀️

There needs to be some sort of investigation into the prevalence of ASD and ADHD. Anecdotally about a third of families we know have a child with one of these conditions also on here every other poster mentions this. What on earth is going on to have caused it?

So everyone/anyone who has trouble with the system is genuine? Nobody is exaggerating or trying to stick a label on their kid?

Right you are. Enjoy your naive approach.

I think it can be very hard for parents of SEN/disabilitys. Parents have to really fight for diagnosis and EHCP. It can take years.it can be mentally and emotionally draining to its hard.

Then someone comes along and says SEN is an excuse. It can be really upsetting for someone who had to fight for years. I know people are not saying all SEN is used as an excuse some is abd that's probably true. But it can feel like being tired with the same brush. So then people come and say hey that's not true because they feel hurt after all the fighting they had to do.

It took 6 years for my son to get a diagnosis but we have been very lucky as the school have always been great with him. Even before diagnosis and EHCP

Of course, I know it’s very rarely straightforward in getting diagnoses/EHCPs etc.

I think the people who do seek to use it as an excuse or get-out-of-jail card for their kids (and their own poor parenting) must be a huge insult to anyone who genuinely deals with SEN.

Yanbu

I think the people who do seek to use it as an excuse or get-out-of-jail card for their kids (and their own poor parenting) must be a huge insult to anyone who genuinely deals with SEN

^

👏 👏 👏 👏

This was happening before Covid.
This is a perfect storm of rising rates of SN, schools unable to exclude pupils and poor behaviour management policies (not teachers faults but lead to difficulties in dealing with the poor behaviour), cost of living crisis, mental health crisis and more.

Everyone’s lives are more difficult, and it’s unfair to constantly blame parents - they’re struggling too.

Education has been slowly deteriorating for years, like a slow car crash. Now it’s reaching a point where it’s increasingly unfit for purpose it’s all the parents fault?

There was a time 5+ years ago when it was all teachers faults, that wasn’t fair either.

Education needs to take a different approach. It’s not working any more, for anyone. Something has to change.

In dc's secondary the problematic SEN pupils have their own class but that hasn't solved the disruption in class rooms.

For us, we felt like we had to pursue a diagnosis to try to get DD2's needs met and to prevent us from being fined for school absence, and so that she could be prescribed medication to help with anxiety.

She was never disruptive or naughty at school and had very good attendance throughout primary school but but found secondary school completely overwhelming and became very anxious about school, particularly as she started in 2020 when there was so much disruption and then much of the fun or bonding extra curricular stuff wasn't happening. Not the least in the anxiety about school was that there was so much homework from the start and so much to remember, and there were detentions for forgetting equipment or homework. Also I think the "zero tolerance" approach where she could see other kids being told off and shouted at made her feel so anxious about getting things wrong herself. We of course tried hard to make sure she had everything but it just felt so much harder than with DD2 who went to a super-selective grammar and who were so much more relaxed and had far less homework! I never had a detention at school and was very academic but how most schools are run now would have made me a nervous wreck as I was really scared of getting into trouble. and We tried two different schools but what she really needed was somewhere smaller and nurturing without too much academic pressure (like primary school really) but that didn't exist- even the local private schools are mostly very academic.

It also very common for girls not to have any issues until puberty and secondary school. We are now doing online school and tutoring and hope she will get on better at FE college - the one she wants to go to is quite small and tries very hard to be not like school at all.

We don't do "gentle parenting" but we do kind and respectful parenting for the most part- certainly not authoritarian and carrot rather than stick, but there are good boundaries. Secondary schools are for the most part, not kind and respectful environments. Secondary schools now are just too big and it feels unsafe for many kids and they cannot learn in that environment. And as DD2 was bullied and sexually assaulted, and then bullied about being sexually assaulted, it really was unsafe.

DD2 is not someone who struggles socially or with other activities outside school and does not have general anxiety. It really was just school itself which was the issue.

To me there's responsibility lying at a few different doors. Yes parents need to take accountability and actively parent their child including consequences for certain behaviour, however I think there's also the reality that for many children our education systems do not work effectively and children struggle massively to engage with them. It needs a total overhaul and until that happens and the money and resource to do it is prioritised, then more pupils will struggle, more teachers will be put under significant pressure and burn out will happen. And teaching is no different to any other front line profession- when people are very stressed for long periods of time they will become disillusioned and burn out and sometimes unfortunately that does manifest itself as lack of patience and empathy which we do at times see in some teachers who probably just don't have the energy to adapt their approach to meet the needs where possible of certain pupils.

It also works in tandem with the other community based support available - you can't sit back and watch the chronic under funding of the community and charity sector happen over years and not expect to see a knock on effect in settings like schools. If parents themselves are not resourced to be more resilient and able to access certain early stage interventions then that will inevitably affect their parenting and it will play out in children's behaviours. The cuts to charities over the last few years have seen some charities budgets reduced by 50% but they're still expected to deliver the same level of service. Many have closed their doors completely and as we know they are the services that prop up our statutory services like healthcare and social services so of course its playing out in educational settings. No point blaming parents for a systemic issue... blame the government for years of austerity and intentional under funding of communities resources.

I understand your frustration completely op - I work in school settings- but what you're mentioning is really only the tip of the iceberg and the causality is rooted in something much deeper.