DS1 (5) excluded from school two days in a row

[pinkandsparklytoo]

DS has been in year 1 for just over 2 weeks. Yesterday he was excluded for hitting the teacher. Apparently she had asked him to pack up the train track and he refused. He went on some sort of chair-throwing rampage and hit her in the back a few times tehn kicked her. They called his Recepton teacher in to deal with him and phoned me. He was out of there by 10:20.
Today I missed got a voice mail from teh schol. When I rang them back I found out that they thought he had bitten someone this morning but they couldn't see any marks and let him carry on with the day. However he had then later bitten someone and left a big mark, the headteacher said it was because the other boy wasn't paying attention to the teacher. She also said that my DS had told her that DS2 bites him and that's where he got it from. DS2 is 1 and hasn't bitten him for months. Later on DS told me that they had been playing dinosaurs and he was T. Rex and the other boy was T. Rex prey so he bit him to eat him up.
This week has not gone well for him in general. Tuesday I got told not to pack him fruit strings in his lunch box any more as he refused to eat the other food in it when I did. This is besides him having had them twice already this month and it not being a problem. Wednesday I had a word with the teacher to warn her that some boys had said they were going to cut his hair off (it is shoulder length) and she told me that I need to tie it up or cut some off as it is "dangerous". This was due to it becoming tangled in her big beaded necklace when she bent over him. And then the exclusions of the last two days. I don't really know what to do with him. Has anyone got any advice?

I also really feel for the teacher. I would have made an appt to see her and apologise profusely on behalf of my son and ask him to write a letter of aplogy after having taken his priviledges away for a weekend - thats no parties rains etc. If he pulls the band out you walk up and talk to the playground staff to put it on or warn him that you will run in and put it on yourself.
OP you are not doing enough here, sorry but you are simply not. The school IS trying to help but you are not backing them up.

Trains etc.

I have to say I do feel sorry for the teacher (did you say she was an NQT?) and a little sorry for your DC's peers as it is never nice to see your friend kick off and throw chairs and hurt their teacher.

It is really important that you have a proper conversation with the teacher and the new HT. It would be interesting to see if this is the new HT asserting her new authority and having a 'zero tolerance' approach or if this is the last straw in a series of unreported events.

Really good advice from Tiredness and EBD. I haven't much to add other than it must be really upsetting for you and you have my best wishes. It's really difficult as a Mum to have to take on an institution in defence of your little son.

If you don't mind me saying, there is a sense of 'he only did this because...' from your posts. Sometimes parents can take on a 'spokesperson' role for their kid's behaviours and reactions at school which isn't always helpful. Sometimes the school need you to hear 'this is really unusual behaviour and we are worried' as much as they need you to help them work out why your DC reacted as he did. Teachers usually look at at a child's behaviour in the context of what everyone else's behaviour is like, ie. child acting out vs. behaviour of everyone else in the class. Sometimes the hardest thing to effectively communicate to a parent is the unusualness of a particular behaviour relative to what they usually see from children of a similar age.

I'm not sure you appreciate how unusual it is for a 5 year old boy to react to a simple 'tidy up' request in this way. I say this as an infant teacher in inner London schools for many years, I've only ever experienced a handful of kids who acted out to this level, and usually it was a) a precursor to a diagnosis of ASD or some other special need or b) symptomatic of a chaotic home life.

Sometimes the home environment is so effectively set up to understand and meet that child's needs that it's really hard to explain to a parent that the same approach can't always be taken in school as they have to effectively cater for 30 children at once.

Feel free to ignore if this is not helpful, but given the previous involvement of the EP, I wonder has anyone ever mentioned the possibility of a particular special need (e.g. ASD) to you? I only ask as you seem to have researched and ruled out the possibility. Has this been flagged in the past?

I hope your meetings go well this week.

I have sympathy for the teacher in a 'personal' capacity as the victim of an attack BUT I feel that in a 'professional' capacity over a lopnger period she is letting the child down - by not adopting procedures proved to work on Reception, by not meeting the parent, by not following appropriate steps to the utmost before reaching for the ultimate sanction of exclusion.

we are assuming though that these things didn't happen - some of these things may have happened and OP isn't aware of them. Exclusion probably wasn't her decision, in my experience it was something that was taken out of my hands !!

We have seen a massive increase in this kind of behaviour in the classroom. Five years ago, there was one child in our school like this who had a 1-1 worker. Now there is one in reception, three in year 1, one in year 2, two in year 3 and one in year 4. All of these children are disruptive, four of them have been violent towards staff and other pupils. Only one has a 1-1 worker. The others are expected to be managed by the teacher alongside the other children with no additional staff support other than the class ta.

SENCO are involved and lots of strategies are in place and are used (mostly effectively) but it takes a lot of time and individual attention to keep these children on an even keel and keep all the children safe. It is very intensive, hard work, can be quite physically and emotionally draining and impacts the learning of the whole class. I, personally, have been kicked, hit and sworn at by 5 year olds in school. Other children have witnessed this and been frightened by it. Indeed, they have been hit, kicked and sworn at too. It happens unfortunately.

None of these children have been excluded for even a day. I think that there needs to be much more investment in the facilities the school can offer so that these childrens' needs can be met without it being to the detriment of other children and staff.

There should be a well resourced 'calming down' area (not just a cloakroom, as OP has said). There should be specifically trained staff to be with that child when the need arises. And this should all be on top of the staff that are there to teach and support the other children. Unfortunately, it all boils down to funds. It's a tricky problem which I can only see getting worse unless real help is provided to teachers, SN pupils and their families.

But, hey, at least we can all nip off home at 3pm, according to Wilshaw, eh?

Don't get me started!

OP, you keep mentioning that the teacher hasn't spoken to you, I must say I am really surprised that you haven't spoken to her first thing apologising for your son's totally out of order behaviour and making your son apologise to her. I would take a bunch of flowers for her on Monday.

I would have banned playing with trains for a week at home, to let it sink in that we are in serious territory both at school and home.

I would put him on a reward chart and co-ordinate this with school. If at pick up the teacher says he has been good all day he gets a star if not nothing. He needs for example three stars in a row in order to be allowed to play with his trains at home. It is time that he learns that school and home work together.

I am very surprised that he has been excluded this much and this does suggest that there are some really serious issues. The fact that he has been seen by an EP and by the look of it no major issues were uncovered, means that you need to ask your GP for a referral. His behaviour is not normal. The older he gets the more difficult it will be to get him on the right track again.

Also, this is not just about your son, it is also about all the other children in his class who are being impacted on by his behaviour, it is also about his teacher. Many individuals are being affected.

People who are saying make him apologise and take away his trains- that is a highly simplistic view.

IME a child who would shape their behaviour in response to this would not have reached the point where they have had multiple exclusions by the age of 5.

There is a deeper underlying problem here that a telling off will not fix.

"IME a child who would shape their behaviour in response to this would not have reached the point where they have had multiple exclusions by the age of 5."
That presupposes that the child has previously experienced these sanctions, but if the OP's child is fine at home he may not have lost his favourite toy.

Accepted. Although it's pretty rare to meet a child where no attempts at sanctioning have been made. I haven't met one anyway.

What have you received in writing about the exclusions, Pink?
I know the whole thing can be so overwhelmingly you may not have thought to keep every bit of paper, but it's best to. Get a folder going. It's not an exclusion unless they made paperwork for it.

When your son was excluded what work did they send home with him for him to do?

I keep half wondering if he has been formally excluded at all.

I haven't had time to read the whole thread (sorry), but just to say he does sound a bit similar to my ds who was diagnosed with aspergers when he was 8 or 9. My ds would lash out when he got stressed mostly, and needed time out to calm down, although we didn't have many incidents like the ones you describe. One of your posts rings a bell with me, when your ds hurt someone because he wasn't doing what the teacher told him/following the rules. My ds even now at 13 feels very strongly about rules being followed, and used to get overly aggressive if other children weren't doing what the teacher was asking.

I think you are dwelling on the long hair rather too much tbh, but my school does have a rule that all long hair has to be tied back because of nits. My ds2 has longer hair which we had cut this weekend to avoid this. It is still long though! My ds1 (the one with AS) hates having his haircut too.

I think you need to get an assessment done, have meetings with the school to find out what they propose to do (plainly, excluding him isn't working) and also what you need to do at home to reinforce this - you do sound a bit wishy washy about it, and actually, to be excluded is extremely unusual in KS1, to be excluded so much is very serious. Whether it is justified or whether it's because the school are being crap, is difficult to say.

It's not just the sanctioning, is it, though? If the child has never been required to do anything against his wishes at home (and however irrelevant the hair issue is otherwise, it does seem to indicate that this might be the case), then there may have been no occasions on which sanctioning might have been required, simply because no demands against the child's wishes have ever been made.

We have at least 1 of those.....

I only know of 1 child who has ever been excluded in KS1 - and his emotional and behavioural difficulties are so significant that he now attends a special school.

It is rare, and very serious, and I am really surprised that neither school nor parent seem to be treating it as the extraordinary event that it is.

I know the parents of the child I mention well, and in the period leading up to, around and after the exclusion they had a whole battery of meetings, experts, behavioural plans, suggested school moves, referrals to all kinds of people, and were doing masses at home in an attempt to work with the school to avoid the need for exclusion.

It all seems a bit ... casual .. of the OP and the school...

I agree teacherwith2kids and I also wonder, as lljkk said, whether they are actually excluding him or just asking for him to be picked up.

There should certainly be way, way more being done, at home and at school.

Agree. It is not meant to be a soft option at all from the school's point of view to exclude a child. Lots of procedures and paperwork to wade through, so not just a case of booting out a child who's causing hassle. Also helps to stop the statistics looking too scary.

When he hit the teacher on Thursday I received a letter saying he was excluded for physical assault against an adult and I can appeal to the Governers about it. The other times I don't remember whether I received a letter or not but the headteacher did say she was excluding him. There was no letter for the biting incident.
I did trim some of his hair yesterday so it is shorter. He doesn't have a problem with it being trimmed, I don't have to chase him around the room or anything, he just doesn't want it cut short. Anyway it's been trimmed now so that issue is dealt with.

I suspect this behaviour will continue and escalate. You seem really laid back about it all. I still don't understand why you haven't apologised to this teacher on behalf of your son, sorry that's just incomprehensible to me.

My other question re the school would be what LEA is it in?

In LEAs like mine where there is special SEBD primary provision some schools prefer to clock up enough evidence to get a child an EBD statement and ship them out. I have seen kids come in with quite calculated paperwork that made them look like callous unemotional (our specialism, which some schools have clocked on to) monsters. Then when they arrive it turns out they just need some fairly basic adaptations to their environment and the curriculum and they manage fine.

Other kids come in and we are in awe of how long and how well their mainstream schools have managed them.

Maybe this DC is at a school where they are not perpared to do much to work from where he is.

OP, I would reflect others' opinions that you need to be very pro-active about seeking support for your DS, otherwise he runs the risk of not accessing his full education, not learning as much as he could and not being very happy at school.

The point about the hair OP, is that it isn't really about what he wants at this age. If you wanted his hair cut short, how would he react?

Why don't you request the teacher phone you at a convenient time so you can apologise for your sons behaviour?

Is a time out really appropriate punishment for hitting a teacher and throwing chairs?

My DD is in reception, her hair gets tied back regardless of what the rules are as 1) it reduces the likelihood of nits 2) it's safer, such as won't get pulled or trapped... Is that not common sense, male or female aside?

I apologised to the ht, I know it is not the same but I did not think she would appreciate me going into the classrooom with DS1 and DS2 to apologise after he was excluded. When I took him to school the next day she was not in. Then he was excluded again so I did not see her when I picked him up. Obviously I will try to see her in the morning so that I can apologise.

Again with the hair I check whether he wants it cut short frequently but tbh I like it the way it is. That doesn't mean I wouldn't cut it off if he so desired. If I had a problem with it being long I wouldn't have let it grow.And as I have said, I have trimmed it and it is not long enough to tie up anymore!

I think the point people are driving at, OP, is that at his age you should be able to decide for him how long his hair is (and everything else) and he should accept that. It does sound like you are giving him a lot of power which, TBH, children of that age are not ready for. He would feel more secure knowing you were in (considerate and affectionate) charge.

butterfingerz time out is not most effectively used as a sanction after a crisis. It should be used much earlier on as a preventative strategy, before a child has reached the level of arousal where they might target violence. This means the school (or anyone) need to be able to spot the signals of the child's arousal level rising at a very early stage and support them at that point. The horse has bolted after they've chucked the chair.

Just for those who think that this could all be sorted out with stricter sanctions and a reward chart, children who have poor impulse control seriously struggle to be able to think about the consequences of their actions.

When ds was small we tried a star chart we found it actually made things worse - I can remember a particularly spectacular tantrum about not getting a star. However school did use rewards with him for a long time.

Once we got the school to tell us about each incident we always sat down and talked about it at home. Every time he was very very apologetic, he knew perfectly well he should not have behaved in the way he did, talked about how he would manage it differently next time, but when next time came that all went completely out of the window, because in the grip of his emotions he just couldn't think straight.

He has got much better as he has grown up, has never had a behavioural diagnosis, and is doing very well at school now although we do expect to get to know the deputy (in charge of discipline) in a way that we don't expect for his younger sister.