Long one I’m afraid and don’t want to drip feed.
Short version - Just started secondary and my son has got into two altercations neither he instigated and is being kept out of lessons - is this normal/reasonable?
longer version!
my son has just started secondary, I picked the school carefully as they had a good level of pastoral support. He’s very anxious and been a school refuser so I knew he needed a supportive environment. It’s been amazing in so many ways and I’ve been singing its praises for all they did to support with the transition and he seems settled and enjoying it.
There was an incident where one of his new friends was pushing and shoving on the way into school and this lad put his hands around him - my son can’t cope and asked him several times to get off him, he got him by a finger and warned him he had to let go - the boy didn’t, DS bent his finger back and managed to dislocate it. Result - an internal exclusion for a day and an hour detention- DS was so upset he didn’t give a good statement of what happened- but the day after both boys apologised to each other and are good friends again. I spoke with the head of year who said her hands were tied as DS was too upset to give a statement so she had no evidence of his side - when I gave it she did acknowledge that she knew there was going to be another side as it was out of character…
forward to today, another boy has pushed him about and DS has put his bag up as a barrier to protect himself and the boy hit him. No adults present (they were in line after lunch) , I was called to collect him 10 minutes early as they were worried about his safety leaving school, now want him out of general circulation tomorrow as they only have both boys different accounts and need to get more statements and cctv.
my question is is this normal - both times he was defending himself, he isn’t a violent child - the opposite he’s been around DV and is terrified of getting hurt - the first time was an issue as the other child came off worse but this time he had the presence of mind to not overreact and gave his statement in detail - he’s tiny for his age and young so an easy target - any ideas on how he does anything than allow himself to be a punching bag - but sounds like even then he’ll end up missing class while they investigate- there argument is any violence they are out of circulation to avoid escalation. He’s got a few health issues and they had me in before he started to talk about the importance of attendance but he’ll have missed two days of lessons this half term due to this.
how do other schools handle this?