is keeping a child in at playtime a standard punishment in infant school?

[Divastrop]

ds2 is in reception and his behaviour is,erm,somewhat challenging at times(have posted about it before).today he pushed his friend off of the climbing frame,the head called me into see her when i picked him up and explained that they had been messing about and play-fighting and ds2 had gone too far.

she said he is being punished by losing his playtimes next week and will have to sit in the heads office instead.

now,while i totally agree he has behaved badly and should be punished,i really dont like the idea of missing playtimes,and i cant help thinking it will make him worse as he will be climbing the walls if he doesnt get a run around.he is only 4(5 next month).

is this a normal punishment or is it a bit crap?

The trouble with the reward sticker system with a superstar sticker for 10 stars is that the poor well behaved DC is just expected to do it, without having any stars.

collision - is your ds at school with my ds?
he's extremely lazy and they can't get him to do anything... but he gets kept in at playtime... not given a star chart. as he's more of a carrot boy, than stick, i'd go for carrot every time. stick makes him even more stubborn.
so, here, you get kept in at playtime, but it is a bit pointless imho. a week is truly bizarre at 4 - whatever happened to immediate consequences and then new start?

Message withdrawn

he has a sticker chart already.i can only assume that he is on last resort punishment then

this is all new to me,ds1 and dd1 have always been perfectly well behaved at school(only at school though)and never entered the heads office unless they were doing a job for her or something.

abbeyA-i agree with you about reward systems,i dont think its fair and in a way its rewarding bad behaviour imo.

'Maybe you could suggest an alternative punishment which you think is more appropriate, or which you think your son would react to in a better way. '

erm,bring back the cane?i honestly dont know,although dh says i need to be harsher with him at home as he is taking me for a mug and has no respect for me,and that is why he doesnt respect his teachers.maybe he's just the product of guitly parenting and my PND

divastrop don't be sad. He's 4 and he pushed someone off a climbing frame. I teach in the juniors and that kind of thing happens (no climbing frame but lots of fights about football!) You've spoken to the other mum and they are okay with you. Don't beat yourself up about it.

The reason I asked whether you could think of an alternative punishment is that you are clearly unhappy with they way this is being dealt with. If this punishment is a bit crap in your mind then you obviously feel that there could be another way of dealing with this, and if there is then it's worth discussing it with the teachers; they will almost undoubtedly be interested to hear if there is anything else he would respond better to.

Do you think your son is taking you for a mug and has no respect for you? Because if your dh is right then you probably do need to address some of his behaviour yourself. It is hard for a child to treat teaching staff and other figures of authority with respect if he doesn't have any respect for his parents.

4 seems young to be kept in for a week- their memories tend to work on a short basis.

If he'd been 6 or 7 it would have seemed more reasonable. Ds was repeatedly knocked down by another boy when they were 7 and this was the punishment meted out. It worked well then on two counts: the other boy stopped his behaviour and ds had a few days to get his confidence back before he had to deal with playtimes with this very boisterous and much bigger (though same age) boy.

But at 4, I'm not so sure. Seems a bit OTT.

Anyway, I wouldn't worry too much about a 4yo being a bit boisterous. They are really only little.

i wish i knew a punishment that would work,i really do.i like the ball-cleaning one mentioned earlier but i doubt they would do anything like that these days.when i was at school 2 boys fighting would get their heads banged together.i remember the one and only time i got sent to the heads office when i was in reception(for asking to use the loo during lesson time)she made me draw a picture which showed what i had done wrong(?).

i never got in real trouble,i was terrified she would phone my mother.

clearly this isnt an issue with ds

hi divastrop have not read the entire thread so might be repeating this but i am a reception teacher and i wouldn't let your son use the climbing frame again, for at least the rest of the day depending on whether this is the first time he has done it, this would i was taking away somthing her really liked doing.

you need to ask to see a copy of the schools discipline policy, they should have a sequence of steps to deal with bad behaviour, if you are aware of these steps then you could talk them through with your son (i know he's only 4 but should understand, "if you do X again, then a b and c will happen")

i have taken childrens playtimes away in the past but if the problem is roughness in childinitiated/choosing time then it really needs to be dealt with in that time eg last week i had one little boy who ignored my warnings about not driving the bike into other children, he was then not allowed on the bikes for the rest of the day, he hasnt done it again, yet!

i spoke to his class teacher today,who wasnt in on friday and didnt know anything other than there was an 'incident'-so he didnt miss playtime today because nobody bothered to tell her anyway.

ah, oh dear sounds like they not communicating well in this instance, so that wont help your sons behaviour. if she wasnt in on friday then maybe the supply teacher or whoever took the class wasnt adhering to schools discipline policy

Now that is crap.

this is turning into a joke,honestly.he didnt miss playtime again today as i had to take him to the doctors this morning,and when he got to school playtime had started and the secretary sent him out.

but he didnt miss afternoon playtime either as they had had some dance teacher come in who 'wasnt very child orientated,so i felt he needed to get out and run around with the others'(the words of his class teacher).

reading between the lines i dont think his techer thinks keeping him in at playtime is a good idea.if he gets kept in tomorrow he will probably have forgotten what he did in the first place!

my childs school in Crowthorne keep pupils in at playtime at the drop of a hat. My daughter missed playtime yesterday for talking. They also keep pupils in for under achievement (if you don't get high scores in your spelling tests you have to stay in). I think this is appalling. If it was reserved for very bad behaviour then I can see it has a place as the kids hate missing play time, but to punish children for being less able, or not quick enough at their work, or simply writing their homework in pen rather then pencil, as was the case with my son on one occasion, I think is ridiculous. Children need a break and need fresh air. I completely agree that if a child is being disruptive they need their playtime even more to run off the energy - keeping them in just makes it worse. It is a lazy punishment by teachers with no imagination - it doesn't put them out at all as they still have their break and the kids are left alone outside the headmistresses office. Rewarding good behaviour with points and deducting them for bad behaviour seems fairer.

A group of us are going to complain to the school governors with a view to implementing a school policy that this punishment should be used as an exception and not a rule.

I agree extra exercise would help rather than less. Also agree with reward charts. Also, my issue with reception outdoor areas is that despite the fact children are outside, they are not necessarily doing physical exercise, they are merely doing their indoor activities outside eg. Painting, building, etc. and hence still not burning off energy.
Children in a school I worked in got told off for running up and down and were told to find an activity to do. Therefore no actual time to actually run around. (Of course people will say this is not the case in their school and if so, great!)

Zombie thread alert. OP's son should be in year 6 by now and probably has been let out to play since she asked the questionnn