There's a little boy at my girls' school who seems, every day, to physically attack one of the girls. The intensity varies but some of it has been pretty serious - hands round a girl's neck, jumping on top of them and punching them, stuff like that. He's only 6. His mum's very pleasant to talk to (quite shy) and the little sister is allright according to my kids, they get on with her all right.
It's got so bad with him that all the school gate mums are complaining about him, and this morning someone told me that one of the school mums used to live upstairs from the family and she used to hear a lot of fights between the mum and dad, and wasn't surprised that the kid had started to have problems. It sounds very much like the dad is abusive to the mum, verbally, maybe also physically, and it seems likely that the kid is seeing this in the house and acting it out in the school playground.
It's a total mess, and I wish I could do something about it, but what could be done? Everything I know about it I know second hand - we've had a few problems with the kid but he's not targeted my girls particularly, and even if he had it's not like I could go into the school and start telling them what's what, you know? But it's such a stupid, shitty situation - I feel like we're watching this kid go off the rails and we all suspect his dad's an abuser and we're just going to sit on our hands. Which is why I say, I wish you could take Mumsnet into real life. Imagine she posted on here to say her son was getting into trouble at school: within about 2 and a half pages you lot would have it out that the husband was abusive and you'd be sending her links to Women's Aid and she'd be making plans to get out.
I guess I find all this particularly hard to take because my mother was emotionally abusive and I used to wonder why nobody ever noticed. And it makes me think, maybe they did, and they just didn't see how they could get involved.
If anyone does have any ideas about how I could be a positive influence on this situation please tell me!