Red card problem! Advice

[benito]

OK, I'm trying not to get too annoyed about this, so calm me down if you can!

Last Monday (i.e. nearly two weeks ago) DS 2 (who is 5) got a red card at playtime. He was seen hitting a friend by a TA. Teacher didn't know all he details but said he had previously been told to stop.

A red card means he loses 5 mins from his 'golden time' on a Friday and has to sit outside the head's office and then explain what he has done. Pretty daunting for a 5 year old.

He doesn't get in trouble at school but he hit his best friend. They are always falling out. The friend is very small and often jumps on and hits DS and DS will respond when he's had enough. I know the boy and his mum really well and we discussed it and the boy told us that he had hit my DS first but DS got caught hitting him back.

Ok, I thought, leave it. DS shouldn't hit back. I won't interfere.

Come Friday (last week) DS was in tears as he didn't want to go in to school. We talked it all through and persuaded him that everyone makes mistakes and that recognising that was important etc etc.

I popped in that morning and told the teacher he'd been crying and she said she would 'play it down'.

DS came out last week and said nothing happened and he hadn't had to see the head. I thought they must have thought better of it.

Today he gets home (DH picked him up) and starts crying. They made him do his red card punishment today out of the blue as they forgot it last week.

Is it me, or is that really crap? He's 5. It's their fault they forgot. It's bad enough they have to wait all week for a sanction anyway but to go through last Friday all wound up and then have it imposed out of the blue today, seems really rubbish to me. I can't imagine any parent disciplining in this ineffective way.

Am I overreacting?

Presumably the red card system applies to all children - then that is a rule of the school; if you are at school, whatever age, then then you sign up to be part of those rules.
Hitting is not acceptable whether it is by a friend or not - My child has been on the receiving end and I would expect there to be some sanction.
I would agree that is seems a huge oversight not to apply the sanction soon after it happened - that would be my issue, not the rest of it.

That is crap. Not punishing someone for hitting, but forgetting and then punishing later at such a young age.

I would go in and explain to the teacher that being punished 2 weeks after the event was inappropriate and out of proportion. She knew that your son felt unhappy and scared about the planned punishment - that in itself was punishment enough. At 5, they should not have done it a week later, even if they forgot.

sanctions should happen straight away, yes, he deserved a sanction, whatever the provocation buthe shouldn't have to wait for it.

Yes, I agree about a sanction and that the only point is the late imposition of it. You will note I was very clear that DS had to accept his punishment and made no comment on that. I mentioned that the boy was a friend only to explain how I became aware that DS had been hit first and then retaliated and not to justify him hitting.

Bonzodog, my son was on the receiving end too and often is so although I don't justify his retaliation, as you and Pixieonaleaf say school rules apply to everyone and punishments should be consistent if they are to be applied at all. So, both boys should both have been punished and the teacher would have found what had happened if she'd bother to ask the boys but she didn't.

But the point is that making a 5 year old wait all week for punishment is bad enough but then to overlook it and then impose it the week after when he wasn't expecting it is awful and shows a complete disregard for the child involved.

I just hate getting dragged into petty crap like this. I really do. It just seems common sense not to do something like this. Teachers complain about parents interfering but then do idiotic things like this so you face a choice of having to make an issue of something or just ignoring rubbish practices

Was it actually forgotten the first week? Or could there have been some sort of misunderstanding when you popped in to say about the crying? Maybe the teacher thought you were requesting it be put off for that golden time or something.

No, she said 'we'll play it down and not make a big issue of it'.

DS said at golden time this week she said 'you didn't do this last week so you'll have to go and do it now'.

He's 5 so he's not really sure why he didn't do it last week. He just says he was sent to his 'golden time' class (they move to different classes) with other children last week. Usually, any child on a red card is asked to stay behind. I assume she must have forgot.

I won't go in all guns blazing. I will just ask her what happened about the red card and see what she says. If she says it was forgotten and then imposed this week, then I will say that I think that was a little unfair and unkind given his upset last week. He was gutted on Friday. He's pretty shy as a rule and would have found that difficult.

Sometimes teachers don't get things right and do forget things - they are human too.
I hope you find a happy outcome.

I know, Bonzo, I appreciate that and this is why I was looking for guidance. I don't want to make a big issue of it unnecessarily.

I have an older boy with Asperger's who needs a lot of support in school and I have a high level of involvement with school because of him.

So, it can be difficult to get the right perspective on things with DS2. I don't want to ignore it just because I already have enough on my plate but equally I don't want to make a fuss and overreact based on my experiences with an older and more vulnerable child.

Hence the post really! DH is useless at being a sounding board for these things so I was wondering what other people would do.

Sorry about the old thread, but it is really relevant to something that happened today and is nice and short so hopefully not to onerous to look through.

My DS is 4 and at a school nursery. Today he bit a child and got a red card. From what I understand they will be keeping a record of red cards and they can lead to sanctions, like 'internal exclusion' (having to go to another room). I think from what the teacher said (she only teaches nursery once a week by the way) that they haven't previously been using it or keeping records and now she has asked the other nursery teachers to do so.

I feel very uncomfortable with the idea of a preschool child having a file with their misdemeanours on it. Surely it will mean that by the time they go to school they will be 'marked' as 'naughty'. Little kids sometimes do stuff like that, you talk to them about it, give whatever discipline is appropriate and move on.

I now feel really worried for my son's future, he manages to behave most of the time, but like all little ones sometimes fails. What happens if he has 3 marks by the time next September comes around!

In case it's relevant to your replies, his reasoning was that she was annoying him. Also the bite did not leave a mark.

It's not at all unusual for teachers to keep an incident book - simple recording of things which have happened. Then if a pattern of behaviour emerges, the evidence is there - what happened and when - and it will make it easier to notice common patterns and support a child to manage their behaviour. So if a child does bite other children repeatedly, they can be supported to use other ways of responding when someone annoys them. If it's something that only happens once or twice then no one will do anything with the information. But if a bigger behaviour pattern emerges then next year's teacher will be made aware and be ready if problems occur again. That's all - nothing sinister, no children being marked for life - just a way of supporting children to manage their behaviour.

Actually a behaviour book can be very useful for a child and a teacher in accessing help for them.

It can show if a child has a particular issue with something and can be helped. eg. If Charlie always hits people on Thursday Lunch time and never any other time, maybe it's because they have swimming on Thursday afternoon and he's scared about it. So they can help him to be less scared about swimming and perhaps support him Thursday morning to not give him the opportunity to lose his temper.

Or if that particular class tends to have a lot of tempers around the dressing up outfits they can make sure that when they're out they have more supervision, or the two girls that clash because they both want the same power ranger costume aren't doing it together.

Then if there is a child who has behaviour issues and they need extra help, the first thing often to do is keep a diary of the behaviour. So if they've been keeping records from the start they have a head start on a child where they will only begin after it has been noticed that there might be an issue.

A bite is always an issue, mark or not, even if there is good child logic to doing it. (except in stranger danger!)

Thank you both. Lots of useful points/info. Can I ask Witchend, how would a teacher describe the 'issue' of a bite? I know that biting is bad but don't understand why you say it's always an issue. Sorry to be thick!

biting is a serious problem, whether it leaves a mark or not, and teachers will pass on the information about this.

however, it is like toilet training, a stage that passes. in a few years no one will care, or look up how many times your child bit, or wet himself, cos he will have grown out of it, even if teachers need to know about the problem right now.

If he is still biting/wetting himself age 8 or 9, obviously those early records will help in dealing with a serious issue, but if he isn't, the early records become totally irrelevant.