Violent child in primary class

[Choufleuretbattenberg]

Looking to find out what we can do about a violent child in our daughters primary class. Happy to out myself if necessary. A boy in the class has behaved in a pretty shocking way for a long time now, and this week was my daughters turn to be on the recieveing end. He verbally threatened her to 'stab her in the eye', and then left the area, collected a pencil and then returned and poked her in the ear with it - fortunately not the eye.

School say they are doing all they can for the boy. They say there is no chance of him being moved, it's an inclusive society and they have a duty of care to all students. Even if he had blinded my daughter with the pencil, he would still have continued at school with them.

They also warned that if we move our daughters class or school there could be worse problems elsewhere.

I'm checking to see if this is actually correct? Does anyone have any experience of dealing with a violent child? Is this really all I can do for my daughter?

You can move schools

School say they are doing all they can for the boy

You need to take the focus off the boy, he's not your concern. As a parent your concern is your DD.
You need to ask the school what steps they are taking to keep your DD safe at school. And also ask the teacher to communicate to DD what she should do in certain situations, the school will have risk assessments and protocols in place for dealing with the behaviour.

Exactly what a PP said, ask the school how they are keeping your child safe in the classroom where they are responsible for her.

Ask to see documentation on their policies. If you mention the other boy they can easily dodge your questions. Make it about your child and her safety.

This is a huge problem in Scottish schools at the moment. Depending on age, get the police involved. An adult female being threatened by an adult male ( stabbing) would be taken seriously. It's shocking that children are experiencing violence on a near daily basis in schools.

After being in a similar situation, I agree with PP’s, the line you take with the school is ‘how are you keeping my child safe’. Don’t even mention the other child, just factually state the violence directed towards yours. If you talk about the other child it just lets them derail your complaint by saying they can’t discuss them with you. Focus solely on your child and their safety. Try very hard to keep your emotion out of it when you are dealing with the school or else they will just disregard you as being hysterical.

Email them every time there is an incident, referring to your previous emails, create a paper trail. Ask them for a process or system to enable your child to seek safety when she is threatened. Be calm, polite but relentless.

Don't make it about the other child. They can't discuss him with you anyway.

Ask what they are doing to keep your child safe.

Please advocate for your daughter…. Put your concerns and facts on paper/email and send to headteacher, local mp and MSP, Nicola S, shirley Anne S etc…This isn't an isolated case and needs to be addressed. A few years ago one of my friends (a primary teacher) had a breakdown over a child in her lower primary class who was a violent. The school and council responded each time by sending her on courses about wearing protective under clothing etc She lived in hope that parents would complain but they never did. It was awful for everyone. Please stand up for your daughter and all other children in similar situations.

They have a duty of care to your daughter to keep her safe. I had a similar problem with one of my children being attacked. The school gave me verbal reassurances that they were dealing with it but it wasn't until I emailed the head requesting a point by point written explanation of what they were going to do to keep my child safe from physical, criminal assault that they actually did something. Whenever they mentioned the other child in our subsequent meeting it was to tell me what a tough life she had and whilst I have sympathy for this, I repeated, I don't need to hear about the other child, I'm here to discuss exactly how you can keep my child safe and what you can do to support my child to safely stay within the class setting. Some of the strategies they used:

They applied for special funding to provide the violent child with a full time worker.

They offered my child and others a safe space within the school that they could access any lunch or play time. No questions asked.

The violent child was expected to have lunch out of school on at least three occasions a week to enable the other children to relax in the playground.

They stopped downplaying the violence and provided my child and others affected with appropriate support and stopped victim blaming, which had been a problem.

I did at one point say to the school that if my child had witnessed and been subject to this level of violence and abuse at home he would have been removed by social services.

As a teacher I have full sympathy and completely share your frustration. It is one of the reasons I want to leave my job...we are failing both the children with these issues and the children round about them. I have a child who can be violent and I am quite simply unable to deal with him. We are obviously not allowed to physically restrain him, he scares the children and staff around him. He is in need of so much support but none is forthcoming and in the meantime he comes to school every day and is threatening, violent and aggressive. He is not a unique case.

I read fiftynotniftys post. I would ask her what she would do if her child was in the class with the violent child? She may get have some ideas on how to tackle his

This situation

Remove your child - the law has gone bonkers with this

inclusive regardless of violence, pain or the mental health of others

My children have been in classes with children like this over the years, one was injured in a similar manner to the OP's.
I had full sympathy for the staff and children involved. I know the issues and constraints. Lack of funding means lack of staff and lack of suitable provision for those children who are not ready to be in a classroom situation.

This is a huge problem in schools and why I voted for strike action. You can’t exclude as they often have SEN so it’s not allowed but you can’t get the help needed either.
It’s a nightmare in schools ATM. We are blamed for everything and told to sort society’s problem with no funding or support.

When it happened in DS' class it took several violent incidents and many parents writing to the head as well as speaking to the class teacher for anything to change. The boy needed extra support for his behaviour issues, only by the pressure other parents put on the school did he get this.
The difference from then (2 years ago) to now is night and day. No more violent incidents, and the boy has lots of friends (according to DS). Had nothing changed I would have asked for DS to move class, and failing that, removed DS from the school.
It's ridiculous that the school couldn't do anything until enough complaints had been made, but according to my teacher friends that is how things are done these days because additional support resources are so stretched.

@Strictly1 agree - I'm a secondary teacher, and the school I teach in is in a MUCH rougher area, but we have the resources to remove a child for a period of time of they are making violent threats. My daughters primary doesn't, so it seems.

I had thought the primary head at my daughters school might have found my complaint useful and been able to use it as evidence they need more support with this student.

Had this with one of mine. The school isn't dealing with it

You will have to and by that I mean move her. He will be disrupting her learning every single day no doubt. Move her I did and no regrets, other than I wish I did it sooner

Thanks everyone for your responses. You are all right, next time we won't even mention the violent child and will be simply asking how they will protect my child. Its ridiculous though, because there is a huge background story that we have to pretend not to know 🙄 when actually all of the violent incidents are common knowledge.

Essentially all we can do then is move my daughter if this continues which is rubbish! Every other aspect of this school is wonderful.

Complain to the head of education for your council. We have, as a staff, advised parents to do this when children are being hurt.

@Nightynightnight this is brilliant. I needed this post. Its exactly what I will do. Thank you

@FiftyNotNifty I think the head was trying to tell me that I shouldn't move my daughter because she could end up in a much worse situation, and that they at least had more adults than average in my daughters class, but she was being very careful with her words.
I honestly can't imagine what it must be like being in a room with a violent child ALL DAY every day. As a secondary teacher in Scotland I have options to have a violent child removed, but it seems primary are trapped?

I will thanks @Staggie . I wish they had said this to me in the meeting. I think they believe they cam truly help this violent student, but I just want my daughter to go to school safely!

Unfortunately as it's seen as a good thing for schools to have no exclusions, HTs/ SMT often want to downplay violence etc. Might be different in secondary? And it's not completely across the board in primary as I've worked in excellent schools ( where this behaviour is not normalised) however I've been utterly shocked recently.

Good luck OP, it is a horrible situation and you are handling it well.

The difficulty is that you never know when a child like this is going to join your school or class. Due to the very nature of their issues they are likely to move around, maybe through home circumstances changing, or exclusion from previous schools. So you could move your daughter to what seems like a safe environment only for that to change very suddenly.

In a small primary there is often physically no room for a child to work on their own or in a small group away from the class. And support staff working with them are not necessarily FT or 1:1. So there are "gaps".