Is the school doing enough or do I escalate?

[Hersetta427]

For background, DD is 6 and in yr 2. She is the youngest in the year (missed out on being in the year below by 9 hrs) but looks older and is the tallest girl in her class. She is a kind and thoughtful (if somewhat noisy) little girl who regularly offers to help her teacher clear away after activities instead of having her own choosing time.

In her class there is a boy (he has been diagnosed with ADHD, although not sure this is relevant) who has physically attacked my DD 6 times this calendar year (5 times he has punched her in the stomach or chest and once he rugby tackled her as she ran across the playground which resulted in her tearing her tights and having to have both knees heavily plastered. All these attacks have been unprovoked and there have been many witnesses to them.

The schools answer after the first 3 or 4 incidents was for my DD to just away from the boy (which is obviously difficult as they are in the same class) and they would keep a closer eye on him and he would be supervised. They have also asked that DD not interact with him in the classroom at all. In an email from her teacher this week she has said that even though he has hurt her, my DD still likes him and wants to be friends with him so does things for him which the teacher said are kind and helpful (helping him tidy up his things in class etc), but he finds this annoying and makes him lash out and she has been punched twice in the last week.

The second time resulted in him being excluded for half a day (the second time that I know of as he was also excluded earlier in the term for punching two boys in the classroom in the same day).

The head is involved and has said the boy will now be on restricted play times and will be supervised by a TA. We have told DD that there is no point trying to be friends with the boy and to have nothing to do with him but obviously she cannot completely avoid him and she shouldnt have to look over her shoulder all the time to check if he is nearby.

Do you think the school are doing enough to keep my DD safe? What should I do to escalate?

I think I'd ask to see the Head and say it's great that they're going to supervise the more, but what happens if that doesn't work and your DD gets hit again? If the Head can't answer what's next then I'd think about putting a complaint in writing and copying in the Chair of the Governors. It does sound like they've got a plan though, so hopefully they have and it will work.

If this school has a violent child, and he is, they should be taking much stronger action than they are doing. You must also make it very clear to your DD that this child is not a suitable friend and she must stay away from him and not help him in any way. She should help someone else. 6 is not too young to learn these rather harsh lessons. My DD learnt to avoid the biters at Nursery. It is a hard lesson to learn that not every child is pleasant but self preservation has to kick in. I do accept complete avoidance is difficult but the TA will help with this and closer supervision of the boy should help.

The school is very lucky that you have been so benign about this. Most parents would want action very quickly and this child should have been the subject of a behaviour plan following his exclusion and closer supervision much earlier as he is a repeat offender. I would speak urgently to the Head and ask how he/she proposes to keep the children safe in that class. We used to have an off site provision for behaviour therapy in my LA when I worked there. Does your LA have anything similar so he can get specialist help? We had specialist teachers who helped the children settle through play and behaviour strategies. They worked closely with the classroom teachers on strategies too. It was wildly over subscribed of course! I hope your DD gets a better deal at school from now on.

Thanks Milly.

Husband is fuming but for now we are trying to play the calm, rational parents and work with the school, but if it happens again then I believe he will go ballistic. We have had one meeting and two emails with the head in the last week and I know she is taking it seriously, but she is leaving at the end of the term (no replacement yet) so wonder what will happen next year.

I am sceptical that the TA will do anything to stop these attacks as they seem to come out of nowhere - one was 2 days ago when they were lining up to return to class after PE, they were in separate lines, one line moved faster than the other so they ended up next to each other and he hit DD 4 times. The one last week happened at lunchtime when he was supposed to be supervised.

The head has told all the staff that the boy should at all times be kept away from my DD but if there is a behavious plan in place, she didn't mention it formally to us.

The HT has a duty of confidentiality to the boy as much as to your dd so she will be unable to tell you what action they are taking. It can take a long time though for the school and parents to access support so whilst you think they are doing nothing there is probably a lot going on behind the scenes. In our experience exclusions just make the situation worse as they increase the child's stress and it may be that the child is hitting out because of anxiety rather than just naughtiness.

If lining up is a trigger point can the child be placed at the front or the back of the line. There can be a lot of nudging into each other at this sort of time and even though accidental the other child may be taking it as deliberate and retaliating.

Whilst it is totally not your daughter's fault it might be helpful to teach her that everybody is different and some people like to be left alone. We had an incident with ds2 (AS) where he had taken himself off after falling out with a group of friends. Unfortunately, they did not realise he was very upset and approached him and the incident really escalated. It was a great shame as we had been teaching him to walk away when he was starting to get angry which had been working up to this point.

[waves to smee - hope you're doing OK these days]

The school has put measures in place to keep your DD safe. If they are implemented correctly, your DD will be safe and this little boy will have someone helping him to manage his emotions more appropriately and keeping a record of triggers which could help them support him better in the long term.

I think you need to trust them to do what they say they are doing. If you're worried it won't happen, ask for written confirmation of how they plan to keep your DD safe.

If your DD continues to get hurt, that is the time to go back and ask them to put in more effective support. If they say they cannot do this, you will then be justified in writing to the governors.

Could the boy be moved into a different class next year?

If not, in your place I would arrange a meeting with the new/interim Head at the beginning of next term to check that they are aware of the issues and that measures to protect your dd are still in place.

Finally, you need to make it clear to your dd that she must leave that boy alone. One person's kind and helpful is another person's interfering and annoying and it is not kind and helpful to upset someone. That doesn't mean she should be hit, or hurt, or should spend her time in class looking over her shoulder of course, but she does need to stop approaching him.

Have you told your DD to stay away? She's not helping him by 'helping'him to tidy his things away she's interfering and winding him up! She's old enough to follow an instruction and she needs to understand that while she should not expect to get hit in school, she's been told to stay away.

Yes she has been told very definitely now to have nothing more to do with him. However it is in her nature to be helpful and I certainly am not going to discourage that but have emphasied that she is to stay away from him completely.

There is the possibility that he could be moved but 5/6 incidents have come at break or lunch time it really isn't the overall solution.

We will make sure that the interim head is fully aware of the situation at the beginning of next term and will keep our fingers crossed that the school will start to be more diligent in their supervision of him than they have been to date.

"However it is in her nature to be helpful and I certainly am not going to discourage"

Of course, but helpfulness is doing what someone else needs you to do for them, not what you want to do for them. Otherwise it's just plain old interfering.

Perhaps you should read the whole of my paragragh. She knows not to do anything for him and hasn't for a while. That hasn't prevented her being assulted twice in the last week. He also punched a boy in this time as well so it is not just her on the receiving end.

What do you want the school to do Hersetta?

Bloody hell, I would have gone ballistic.

Incidents happen at school. Children with behavioural problems need support and guidance .... But your daughter is not a punchbag. If my dd had been attacked so systematically and regularly, I would have been 'up that school' and I speak as one who has only once, apologetically, approached the class teacher in 7 years!

Your daughter, like every child, has a right to feel physically safe at school. The youngster who hurts her needs measures put in place to stop him hurting your dd OR ANYONE ELSE.

Personally I think a letter to the Head, the Governors and the LEA is l

Sorry, long overdue.

Good luck and deal with it. And make it 100% clear to your daughter she never goes near this child.

The school need to deal with this child's behavioural difficulties and it is not acceptable for children to be hurt in school. As has been said though, the school will not tell you what is in the pipeline in terms of plans for this boy.

I think you should tell your DD to just concern herself with keeping her own things neat and tidy in school and doing her work the best she can and that when it is play time she should play. 'Helping' other children isn't helpful at all and TBH teachers rarely want kids asking for jobs in the classroom. We would rather they played- there is a point to play, even in Y6 Y1 it is part of learning.