school exclusion

[sugarandsweet]

what do they achieve? so I've picked my son up again today (2nd time) as he's been excluded. I've heard of nurture groups? are these for educational or behaviour challenging children?

Our school doesn't seem to have one. So instead he gets sent home. How many daily exclusions until they permantely exclude?

a very distressed and frustrated mother.

The astonishing thing about language is that, no matter how simply we express our thoughts, someone will always misunderstand and waste a little more of her life arguing against something that has never been said.

For the benefit of others who may be hard of thinking, please understand that I made the point that a violent child is usually reluctant to attack those who he knows won't hesitate to return his violence 'times 10' - and, as far as I know, teachers do not fall into that group.

And have any of the posters on this thread suggested or inferred that their dcs would not hit out at a stronger, bigger, less restrained child?

Nope. Not that I can see. But please show me if they have, because otherwise all your posturing about physical punishment in the context of the op is irrelevant, random and misplaced.

"If the answer is 'No, he's never done that', then we might very usefully ask 'Why not?"

We might if we had no experience or knowledge of the behaviour of some SNs and trauma-experienced children. We might go a bit further and draw ill-informed conclusions about children being in control of their behaviour and cite the fact that they only attack those weaker than them as evidence to support this spurious assertion.

But then we would leave ourselves open to have our opinions dismissed as we clearly don't have a bloody clue what we're talking about.

We might also ask ourselves why you felt the need to join MN just to make that point. It's certainly an interesting first post.

It's certainly an interesting first post.

Thank you.

Hi all - desparate newbie here looking for support. My 10 year old son has been excluded from after school club for alledgedly hitting the after school (AS) teacher (who’s a nursery member of staff). I had the call from the Headteacher this afternoon that she was excluding him. No notice period, no meeting with me, just heard one side of the story from the AS. I was furious. I have no family around here, work full time as a semi-senior manager with a large team to manage therefore taking time off work isn’t an option. My DS has always had difficulty in social situations, reading cues, behaving appropriately at times. I have long suspected from the age of 2 that he displays mild signs of autism. Over the years I have sought help from a range of professionals both within and outside of school but to no avail. Only his childminder who cared from him from 12 months to 9 years thought he had issues. She finally threw the towel in with him a year ago and said she couldn’t look after him any more. I’m desperately worried about him. He has no friends at school. He has said on many occasions that he wishes he was dead. He has obsessive behaviour and compulsions. I’m at my wits end and I really don’t know where to turn to get help. I’ve tried through school, I’ve had 3 weeks of 1 hour emotional support from a senco type lady visiting him at school to discuss emotions etc but that was short lived and didn’t address the root causes. Please please can someone help? Or at least empathise with similar situations? This is not bad behaviour from a child with no boundaries. I have a younger daughter who is the complete opposite and responds appropriately to my parenting (and social situations). Both are bright intelligent kids. I really just do not know what to do and who to turn to 😔

I think you should post your own thread rather than resurrect one that is 3yrs old.

Have you done anything to get your son assessed. If your childminder who knows him well won't take him anymore is does point to an underlying issue and a consistent level of behaviour.

By the way it sounds like you don't believe the after school teacher that your son could act this way. The head will have to support the teacher so this won't win you any arguments I am afraid.

Thanks for the message. Didn’t realise the thread was 3yrs old! Never been on here before and a little too keen to post! There have been ongoing issues with the after school teacher which have been raised by myself and others over the years. Too many to go into detail about and probably not appropriate at this stage of proceedings.

Your child is being violent, and your work situation and lack of a babysitter is not the school's problem. Your child needs to be removed for the safety of others. Sometimes the only way to get through to a parent that they need to pay attention and responsibility is to make parenting inconvenient for them.

I had to give up work when I found out my ds had many issues. I loved my job, but I love my ds more.

I am quite puzzled you haven't seem to have done anything when his child minder finally gave up on him.

It would be better to start your own thread, maybe in SN.

I would suggest first port of call is your GP to get referred to both CAMHS and Paed. Wait times for both can be very long but they can't really say there is no problem now he has been excluded for hitting an adult. In the mean time you could keep a diary of the social interaction problems and write up an honest account of everything, from your earliest concern to now, to take with you when you do get an appointment.

I would also arrange a meeting with the SENCo and ask the school to put together a report of their observations and concerns too.

Thanks for the reply. Hearing that you had to give up work did make me think. I am sorry too as I know how much my job means to me in terms of self respect and confidence (but paying the bills mainly of course). There’s so much more to our story than I have written. I have tried many many times over the years to get help through school. When the childminder gave up we both met with school and had a big meeting to voice our concerns jointly. They didn’t agree with us and no further action was deemed necessary. I have been made to feel like the hypercondriac mother always fussing that something is wrong with my boy. I am a single working mum, I split with his father over 2 years ago and I had to leave the family home with the kids after he became aggressive (dad). I’d endured years of emotional abuse and controlling behaviour. I worry that some of this is carried in DS genes. I work for a very good employer and I’m considering putting a proposal in place to work shorter hours so I can drop off and pick up every day and work from home to make up the time. We need my salary, I’m in rented accomodation until the settlement is through, at which point I need to find a house and get a mortgage. If I don’t have financial stability I dread to think how we’d cope.

Hi there, thanks for the reply. I completely agree that violent agressive children need to be removed however my son isn’t this way. He has endured years of bullying and torment at that school and I have brought him up to never ever hit back. Sometimes I think this is why it has continued. He is different to the other children and they don’t accept him. I am 99% certain he didn’t hit the AS teacher because he told me he didn’t and he told me the situation from his perspective....the AS was physically handling him after he’d removed himself from the situation and he was trying to shake her off. He is not a tactile person at the best of times. He doesn’t ask for or give physical affection (unlike his sister). He has always been like this, even as a baby he would wriggle away and slide off knees - noticeably so. This all contributes to my feeling of him being somewhere on the spectrum of something. But it’s not blatantly obvious and that the problem. You have to spend considerable amount of time with him to see the whole picture and all the little signs/symptoms. I agree that now this is escalated, school must sit up and take notice and take action. It’s so very sad that it had to get to such an awful stage for help to be offered. He broke down inconsolably last night when I told him he wasn’t allowed to go to after school club anymore. So heartbreaking.

Lily, sorry for commenting without knowing whole story.
I hope everything works out and you can find the way to help your ds.

As lowdoor suggested, I agree it maybe better to start your own thread. Some people do ignore the revived zombie threads.

Good luck.

Thank you so much for taking the time out to respond. X

Thank you, some good suggestions and I feel better equipped for the meeting with school on Tuesday.

There is an interesting question here, outside of the obvious one of getting to the bottom of your son's behaviour, and that is whether the school can actually exclude your son for something that happened at the after school club.
I think you need to go to the meeting on Tuesday with the attitude of my son needs some help and the school needs to understand that and then listen to what is being said.
Is the after-school club organised by the school or is it separate? From your post I suspect it is organised by the school but actually it will always be separate from the school. I assume that you pay for the time spent at the club. As such the head teacher can bar your son from attending the club, either for a time or permanently, as it is separate from the school and it is up to them to decide who they allow in the club . Reading the exclusion guidance I think the school would struggle to justify an "official " exclusion from the school unless there have been significant other incidents during school time.
I think you do need to be thinking about some alternate arrangement for after school as this could become a significant issue. Local childminder?