Behaviour report

[chocybickie]

Ds1 is 6 and has a behavioural issues concerning frustration and anger in school.
He likes school but often finds himself left out due to his reactions which makes him very upset and angry.
This is all being handled very well by the school and the pupils, I'm happy with all of that but I find the school pick up incredibly distressing sometimes.
I can be having a lovely relaxing day with ds2, go to pick ds1 up and be confronted with a report from the teacher (infront of the other parents) about his behaviour and any outbursts along with his peers coming up to me or their parents complaining about him. I realise that the children themselves find it interesting and newsworthy and often exaggerate wildly thats ok. However this puts me in a very stressful situation and have often walked out the back way to avoid any looks and confrontration.
We then have a long walk home with this hanging over me and I have nothing to say to him but "WHY??" Which isn't very helpful considering that the teacher has already handled the incident and he has had a good day apart from that. Sometimes I have gone too far and lost the plot due to the stress.
I'm trying to think of a way that I can have a breakdown of his behaviour that isn't so immediate, that doesn't ruin our day so completely.
Any help would be gladly received. I'm dreading tomorrow.

What about a home/school contact book? You write down anything you feel that the teacher should be aware of and she does the same for you.

I agree that it's not good to be told about the behaviour etc in front of all the other parents. Does the school have any long-term strategies to deal with the behaviour or do they just take each incident as it comes?

Ds1 has a lot of support and the teachers work incredibly hard with him. He can be absolutely fine and out of the blue he will just lose it. So I think they just deal with each incident as it arises and help him to learn positive ways to deal with upsetting situations.
When I hear about some of the outbursts I am completely shocked and feel so down. But I have to remember that it is getting better and outside of school he is fine.
I think a report book would be a much better idea than being told infront of the other parents. I hope I don't seem pushy by asking for that though.

That's not on- you need a home/school contact book.

ok is that something that the teachers would know about?

Our school went one further than a general home/school contact book (which - I agree with the other posters - MUST be the first step, and asking for that is not pushy at all, especially if you say the school is handling him well, so must be being supportive?): for the last term and a bit of last year, our school did a lesson-by-lesson report book on ds - just a sentence per lesson noting whether his behaviour in that lesson was good/bad/indifferent (and why, which is of course easy to identify when memory is fresh!).

It was SO helpful - showed us where he was being lovely, and pinpointed exactly where the problems were, so that we could then try and address them precisely. I really do think it made a breakthrough.

(Ds is 7 by the way - he was in year 2 last year.)

I work in a secondary school. We use a time table based report, where every teacher comments of the child's behavior. That way the parents (and staff) can see where the trigger points are...eg if a child is iffy every lesson just before lunch is low blood sugar an issue? Is there a particular problem with a specific subject/teacher? The parents sign it every night, but it is a single sheet of paper and lets upi see the bigger picture over the whol;e week.

mb, that's exactly what our school did with ds - inc. me signing the report every night.

As example for chocky: ds turned out to be consistently lovely in French lessons. We investigated why - it's because the teaching is all game-based, with everyone involved, so zero scope for boredom.

This sounds wrong to me, especially the telling you in front of other people. That's very bad indeed. Is he angry and frustrated at home? If not, what is happening in school? Are they really handling this as well as you think? They need to look in a bit of detail at the lead up to each outburst to find out the triggers for these outbursts. I'm not sure I quite believe there is no reason for his behaviour. I'd be pretty snippy with any kids telling tales on my child, I'm afraid.

I agree that the school should start recording what was happening just before the outbursts. They may seem to be out of the blue but I strongly suspect that something is triggering them.

Asking for a contact book is not pushy. You may find that it's actually easier for the teacher rather than having to call you over and tell you what's happened while trying to supervise the other children as they leave the classroom.

Thanks for the replies.
Ds1 has always had problems with dealing with frustration even at home however at home he doesn't have anyone provoking him and no real distractions. So this is something that he has to learn to deal with.
The children enjoy provoking him, I don't hold this against them they are children after all. One incident caused me a lot of distress though. A girl approached one morning to tell me that another girl had the police round to their house to report ds1 hitting her! the parents of both girls just looked on. I went straight to the teacher with this but once she realised which little girl it was she said it was just children telling tales and nothing to worry about. I disagree. I think it is bullying.
Anyway tomorrow I'm going to go in stronger than I have been and ask about the book. I think it is a great idea.

chocybickie - your experiences of school sound so like mine with DS2. We had a home/school link book, but to be honest, the teachers never seemed to have time to fill it in. Then they wanted DS2 to have a sticker chart, which they brought to the school gate and showed me in front of my son and everyone else. (OMG! I can't believe what I put up with, but I thought that they must know best as they were the professionals!) Eventually, after much discussion with the headteacher, we decided that I would go into school 10 or 15 minutes before the end of school every day. I collected his coat and bag, and this gave the staff the chance to have a quiet word if necessary, and meant that I could also delay leaving in order to avoid that awful 'school gate' situation. It also meant that DS2 remained in the classroom whilst the staff spoke to me, and therefore he didn't have to stand and listen whilst his every move was described in detail. It wasn't ideal, and may be more difficult if you have younger children, but it stopped us from being the focus of attention with the other parents looking on (and often earwigging too!). Good luck to you and your son for the new term.

thank you
that sounds very similar to my experience.
at one point i stopped waiting with the other parents and sat in the cloak room to pick him up and went out the back way to avoid everyone. it was ridiculous but better than standing under the full gaze of those parents.
i know that his last teacher spent 40% of her time just keeping an eye on ds1 so i am nervous about suggesting something else that will take up her time but i really think it will improve things for us.
i'll broach the subject tomorrow if i get a chance.

yes he is. thanks for showing me that. i didn't really need to take the test but he scored 16 points, not that it will do any good.
since he started at playgroup he has had psychological, behavioural tests with no answers. he's just sensitive and frustrated they said. well i know that lol.
he is very big for his age and often people don't realise that he is extremely shy, worried and sensitive.

Hi, I know exactly what you mean. I felt like my child took up a lot of time, and that the school would see me as critical or ungrateful if I suggested any changes. I listened to them and agreed to their methods, but still my son was angry and sad, so something was not working. Being perfectly honest, I spent a lot of time being angry that my son did not settle in school, plus I was embarrassed and saddened by it all. I was a very quiet as a child, and never caused a moment's trouble to my parents or my teachers, so how could my son be like this? I withdrew socially, and only a few close friends bothered to ask how I was. I put up with veiled (and not so veiled!) criticism of my parenting, (from teachers and other parents) and ended up referring to my elder son frequently as an example of how I wasn't an unfit mother! (DS1 is very outgoing, chatty, laid back and biddable!) I can understand you needing to keep an open and communicative relationship with the school, but the bottom line is that he is a pupil to them, and a son to you. I really felt it was my responsibility as a mother to do all I could to ensure that my son was understood, and I think the school should come up with something more constructive than a daily list of misdemeanours. Sorry if this sounds like a rant, but I hate to think of someone getting as stressed and unhappy by this sort of situation as I was - it affected our whole family life, and took us a while to get over it all. We used to joke that we couldn't get critical with the school or the LEA, or disagree with them, as they would just smile knowingly and comment something like "Ah, now we know where the behavioural problems come from!"

Also meant to add that we eventually found out that DS2 has allergies to wheat and dairy, plus he is profoundly dyslexic, so no wonder he was stressed out at school!

When ds2 was 5 or 6 his teacher did this: 2 or 3 times a week she would "have a moan" at the school gate, in public, not in a terribly constructive way. Also I had 5 mins (if they came out on time) to go round to collect ds1, who would be worried if I was late: so I didn't have time for a chat either.

In the end we made an appointment to see the teacher, and managed to persuade her that a home-school book was her idea
We agreed that we and she would write in positive and negative things about ds2 each day.

It was fantastic, because it made her "notice" ds2 more, and realise that for 95% of the day he was actually a delight, and it was only at the very end when he was tired that he would be a pain! So she improved her attitude to him, he benefitted from extra praise and attention, their relationship improved immensely, and we never looked back. (We only kept the book up for about 4 weeks.)