Frustrated with school dealing with 4 year olds behaviour

[Ella19902]

I am currently struggling to deal with DD1’s school. She started Reception in September & has settled in well. She loves school & doing homework & practicing her phonics. How ever, I was called in to school a few weeks ago as the teacher told me she had concerns about her behaviour & that she is very disruptive in class that she has to remove her a a couple of times a week. Apparently she has tantrums if she doesn’t get chosen for something & is always seeking out attention. She wants to refer her to SENCO for extra support. I was very shocked to hear this. She has always been a sensitive & emotional little girl but very bright & articulate & the behaviour the teacher described is not how she is at home. My childminder who does her wrap around care was also suprised as she has no issues at all with my daughter. I took her to the GP & the GP told me that the behavior is normal at 4 years old & wouldn’t be cause for concern. I told the school my feedback & they got very defensive & are insistent she needs a SEN assessment. I am not happy at all with this & feel there must be something at school upsetting her. My daughter doesn’t say anything has upset me & is happy to go into school each day.
i feel stuck here as I feel that the school are being very harsh… can I refuse this assessment or am I better to just go along with it?

Go along with it. Maybe she needs help to control her emotions and interact better. Her behaviour is probably distracting to the other children's learning and routine.

It is very hard. We have this expectation that our chidlren will go to school and settle, forgetting that in fact school is an artificial construct that has nothing at all to do with natural societies and family organisation.

Some chidlren will find it hard - and the whole need for "crowd control" in school, because of the numbers, means that children need to deal with challenges that are inappropriate for their age.

Your DD is 4 - a few short years ago she was in the womb; but now we want her to sit quietly and listen, to share, to understand the needs of others, to not show emotion when she is passed over for something she wants ... it's a hell of an ask!

All children are different and develop at different rates. My simple answer to you would be that she is too young for all this and does not have the brain wiring to deal with it yet - she will get it in time, but this feels too much too soon.

Yes, you can refuse the assessment. I taught many children over the years whose parents did this. It just meant they didn’t get the intervention they needed until they were in secondary school but by which point the gap between them and their peers had continued to widen every year and this had a compound negative impact on their self esteem.

Her teacher and the SENCO will have taught hundreds of children between them and will have a good idea of the range of normal behaviour.

Why would you refuse the assessment? If there’s no problem then that will be the conclusion.

Children can behave very differently at home vs school. She could be finding the busy/loud school environment overwhelming, hence the behaviour that the school say they are seeing. Go along with the assessment and at least you can rule out different reasons for the behaviour.

My DS played up in Reception on/off for months and the cause was found to be that he was anxious about the lack of routine (3-form entry, free flow between all classes except for twice a day), whereas he settled down immediately in y1 when schooling become more formal and there was routine. Just an example anyway of a non-SEN reason for disruptive behaviour.

Some issues only present themselves in a busy school and not at home / childminders which are quieter and where parents/carers may have inadvertently adjusted things to suit the child.

Teachers will know what is usual behaviour for in school. They are flagging up your DD's behaviour as outside this. Listen to them, let her be assessed.

I'm a primary teacher and would advise you to go for the assessment. Regular tantrums requiring removal from class is not that common, even in Reception. She could have some sensory needs, for example, and an assessment would help identify any possible issues and ways to support her.

Why on earth would you refuse the assessment? Maybe she's struggling in school. Why deny her of any support she needs?

A class full of 30 noisy kids is different to home (which childminder also is)

They want to help her. I'm surprised you don't want them to when she's having to be removed from the class.

I don't think it's "harsh" to suggest an assessment or referral. It sounds like your daughter is struggling more than her peers (or other Reception children they have taught) and they are wondering whether extra support could be beneficial. How is that not a good thing?

You’re very lucky that they want an assessment. Must schools are spread so thin now that we can only really send our most desperate cases. Grab it with both hands and say thank you. If she’s fine, she’s fine. If she’s not, better to know now than when it’s too late.

School is a completely different environment to home or a childminder's setting. If she is a child who needs more attention, she'll be 'competing' with up to 29 other children to get it.

Asking for an assessment isn't about being "harsh". It just means that the school feel that an outside opinion will help them to support your daughter. With respect to your GP, he/she will not have witnessed the behaviour that's occurring in school. It's fairly normal for a 4yr-old to still have tantrums. It's not quite so typical for these to be to the extent that the child has to be removed from the classroom.

If there genuinely are no issues, the assessment will show this. If your daughter is in need of further help, the advice of a professional will help to guide both you and the school.

I know it’s hard to hear this sort of thing but I agree with a PP - the school will have lots of experience of dealing with a wide range of behaviour and they wouldn’t have raised the issue unless there were some clear concerns. A childminder’s setting is very different from a class of 30. I work with so many children whose parents ‘didn’t want them labelled’ when they were younger, only to find that the problems and wait-times of getting a diagnosis and help post-Covid are much worse when everything implodes at secondary than they would have been with earlier intervention. With my ‘parent of late-diagnosed autistic teen’ hat on, the parenting-skills and strategies I have learnt from the Early Help Team, CAMHS and from autism charities have been invaluable for me in parenting an ND teen and also in my job. There may well not be a SEND issue at all but I would take the help offered, in your position.

An assessment wont make your dd have SEN
It might result in strategies to be implemented
Win win

Do it.
Your GP has not had as much training or a chance to professionally observe a 4 year old over 6 months and to determine what is or isn't normal, respectfully.

The SENCo has probably already informally seen the behaviour and agrees and getting an external assessment is often not actually that helpful for the teachers at this stage (suggestions are often visual timetables and now/next boards that teachers would have already tried before speaking to you orneaitijg for a referral). IT'S often more about logging that they have tried early intervention.
It may be that the referral garners an unexpected or different tactic they haven't used or your child may just need a little more time to mature and manage her behaviours more appropriately in a school setting - or school can say they've tried these and more support for your child is needed. If suddenly she doesn't need anything "extra" than any other child might, then great, they wasted their time doing lots of paperwork and meeting you and she's "fixed" now, their mistake.

I would be thanking your child's teachers for perhaps noticing something that hasn't yet been noticed elsewhere so that she can get the support she needs.

If you do not trust this setting and feel something else is amiss and the reason behind her behaviour, then the trust is broken and you might want to look at starting again somewhere else (but gently accept similar feedback of another set of professionals also notice something)

Yeah. They're flagging a potential problem for you, as professionals, with experience of loads of children this age.

It might be nothing- but if it is, you'll be grateful to have started looking into it at an early stage. Trust me. We have Year 11 students who are obviously ASD only just investing now, after the poor child has utterly struggled.

My DS is amazing at home, was awful at nursery and struggled at school at first. Similar- shouting, wouldn't sit still, sensory and attention seeking.

We were offered support and I felt that if we said no now and additional needs became more apparent in future, we might not get offered it again. So we have gone ahead. Referred in October and still waiting.

The issues seem to have largely resolved now but I'd rather be "in the system" in case they crop up e.g. in the transition to Y1 which again is quite a big one.

Why do you respect a GP, whose profession and training is in health, over a teacher, whose profession and training is in education? The concerns are around an educational issue, not a health issue. Over the years teachers get a very good idea of what is typical behaviour for a 4 year old and, for whatever reason, at present your child's behaviour falls outside that. Absolutely no teacher has time to persue an assessment that isn't necessary; it would be far easier to do nothing. If your child outgrows the behaviours great but if not at least you'll have started the process to extra support.

You've said yourself that you don't see the same behaviour from your DD when she's at home or the childminders - where she presumably feels very at home.

It's harder to regulate our behaviour in environments which are unfamiliar, less predictable and/or less suited to our needs. For your DD this might be school.

It's sensible for her teacher to seek advice and guidance on how to improve their teaching practice so that your DD can engage fully in lessons without becoming overwhelmed and upset. To get this advice and guidance it's necessary to assess whether your DD has any specific needs which are different to those of other children.

It might just be her age. Or it might be an early sign of something else. If it is something that will effect her long term then don't you want to know? Even if it's only an issue at school it could have massive implications for her - imagine the impact on GCSEs, further qualifications etc.

To note: I have a ND 6yr old who is "fine" at home but struggles at school.

I don't know if i'm reading your tone wrong, but you sound almost offended that they think your DD might be struggling.

No one will diagnose your child with something she doesn't have , just for the sake of it, so there's no harm in the assessment.

We are all different in home and social settings. Depending how much different your daughter is in school. May be she is born leader and wants to be the star of the class, may be she wants all the attention too much....they would not lie if she is disruptive to that extent

Agree with this.

Schools are so quick to want to label a child as ND or something similar whilst not even contemplating that it could be the dysfunctional environment that is the issue and is causing the child distress.

I refused an ADHD assessment when my daughter was in Reception. By Year 1 she matured and the same teacher was telling me "she's like a changed child". My daughter is now a teen doing extremely well at school and there's never been any sign of ADHD or any other popular modern condition. Not all behaviour is automatically a sign of SEN in children. I would wait until she's a bit older. 4 is too young for school anyway - no wonder kids have difficulties.

As someone who had similar feedback from their DC's teacher in reception, and who was similarly 'offended' / upset that anyone could possibly believe there was anything 'wrong' - please be open minded, OP. An assessment will do no harm. Even if no formal SEN is identified they may be able to put support measures in place to help her and surely that can only be a good thing for her.

I do understand how you feel, I was devastated that my eldest DS was struggling and there was definitely a part of me that was almost mortified that I didn't have the easy, happily achieving high flier that I'd kind of assumed DH and I would produce. (Yes - I am aware that sounds supremely naive/rude/arrogant!). We also didn't see any of the issues school saw at home.

But the professionals were right, as much as I couldn't see it at the time. DS has an ASD/ADHD DX but because of that early intervention he had lots of support, was able to have a positive time at school and achieved strong academic results (excellent GCSE and A level grades and now at uni).

Please listen to them @Ella19902 . Better to be open minded and perhaps get support in place at an early stage than to refuse and then realise much later down the line that DD really isn't coping.

I think you are getting a hard time. It sounds like it's been a shock to hear about the issues at school and it's upsetting to hear about your child being removed from the class. I would go with it as getting any assessment is like finding hens teeth at the moment, so if the teacher and sendco think it's needed then it possibly is. All it will do is identify any other support needed, which is helpful.