Son suspended and going downhill

[3teenhell]

Hi

My son is 12 in yr 7 and since he started secondary school has had no end of problems.
Was a good boy before mo issues in primary school.
Now has been on report, appears to be turning into a bully and today has a got a one day suspension on monday for threatening to kill another child.

Where have i gone wrong? What can i do to turn it around?
He gets punished by being grounded and losing xbox ipod or laptop( or all)
Am at my witts end

Sorry to hear your trouble. Has he fallen in with the wrong crowd since starting sec. school?

Yes he has, and i no longer allow him to see a few outside school. However i can't blame them he makes his own decisions diesn't he.
Feel i have gone badly wrong somewhere but not sure where

What do the school say, is he disruptive in class or is it issues at break and lunch time when outside?

Its both, although the behaviour in class is more class clown alot of the time, though there have been incidents of rudeness to staff as well.
He's not like it at home really, though is a bit of a clown.

We had to deal with this, albeit under very different circumstances (adopted child).

What we did was go to the school and say we backed them to the hilt when it came to dealing with his behaviour and would back up their actions at home. Then take away the xbox and phone and allow it back in hours/days in reward for good behaviour. Our school was on side and emailed through all behaviour, good and bad. So we could often reward him.

There was A LOT of unpleasantness, anger and tears but he managed to turn his behaviour around. I was extra generous with puddings and other treats to soften the blow without undermining the message.

Thanks, i have done all if that but will continue to do so.

How long did it take for him to improve?

I suppose it was about six months although it felt like forever. I think what happens is they become desperate to fit in and once they find a group that accepts them, they will do what they have to, to keep their status. In our case, DN started a new school with friends and always picked the wrong sort.

Punishments are a bit of a quagmire. I often got myself in knots - that's why eventually we went down the rewards route instead. Inside, he still wants to be good, he just needs to remember how much nicer it is to get attention for being good, rather than constantly in the firing line at school and at home.

His school offered different sorts of reports. He was always on the bad behaviour one but then, at his own request, he was put on a positive monitoring one. He was always proud to come home and show me his scores.

You just have to keep going and trust your instincts. Firm, fair, sense of humour, but absolutely not for turning. Good luck!

Thank you good to hear others have been through it and there is hope

Honestly, he will be FINE. He is very young and has supportive parents. Just keep at it and do all you can to increase the time he spends in the family, not in his room. Watch whatever nonsense telly he likes, or play one of his computer games with him. He needs you.

Have you talked to the school about possible strategies?

At my school we find monitoring booklets very useful for students who need constant pressure to keep them working to the best of their ability. Every lesson they give it to the teacher who fills in an effort grade for that lesson and writes a comment.

At the end of the day the booklet is shown to the form teacher or HOY and also to the parent. Improved efforts can be praised, slip ups can be discussed and avoided in future. The student gets a lot of attention and encouragement. It is usually a very effective strategy.

Hi empire

Yes i have he has been on report and now taken off. He also has a PIP inplace with the school which is a personal improvement plan, setting out the target we wish him to meet. They are simple like being nice to others and remembering PE kit, but he still seems to be failing most of them.
I always thought he was a freindly populer boy but he appears to be turning into a bit of a bully, and i don't know why.

Really at a loss with what will help.....

I might be tempted to ask the school to continue with the daily report. Then you can monitor his effort and behaviour each day. Give stickers for good days when he is in no trouble and works hard.

After 10 good days say he could get a treat, look at the average efforts per day or per week too. Gradual small improvements don't show much but looking at the averages will help.

Also make sure he isn't allowed to sit with anyone who he might distract or who will distract him in class and encourage him to hang out with the more sensible characters at break.

Discuss strategies for him to walk away from trouble, and practise actually saying the conversations. It sounds silly but I've seen it work.

Also work on self esteem at home by helping with homework and revision and finding lots of things DS is good at/enjoys.

I suspect this is going to take many many months of constant encouragement and effort on your part I'm afraid .

thanks empire, some really good advice there that i will try to put into action.

I am going into school tomorrow morning so i will ask they about putting him back onto the monitoring system, i did think it was odd to take him off just because he was ok for a week!

He is the one i thought the tranisition to big school would be easiest for , shows how wrong you can be

Thank you for your advice

Been into school this morning and they want to do a CAF assesment, does anyone know what this involves?

Bump, please help if you can

CAF stands for Common Assessment Framework. It is an assessment used when a school (or any other agency) has concerns about a child or young person (CYP). The aim is to (a) identify a CYP's needs early, before problems become really serious, and (b) make sure that agencies co-ordinate their response and work together so that no CYP 'falls through the gaps' (which can happen if the agencies all assume someone else is taking action). It builds up a 'whole picture' of a CYP's needs - their health, development, welfare, behaviour, progress in learning or any other aspect of their well-being.

It's voluntary, you don't have to consent, BUT it is a good thing that the school is taking your son's needs seriously and taking this 'joined up' approach. :) It means that if your son needs any support that the school can't give directly, it should be easier to get it. The CAF is basically a request for further support.

You and your family are central - you are the 'experts' on your son, so your views will be a key part of the assessment.

It does NOT mean there are any safeguarding/child protection concerns about your son. Lots of parents worry about this, but in fact there are separate processes for that. If the school or any agency thinks a CYP is 'at risk' in any way, they have to use/follow local safeguarding procedures, not CAF.

The assessment will lead to an 'action and delivery plan' for your son. You said the school has already got a PIP in place for your son, and the new plan will be quite like this, but it will (probably) include support from other services too.

There will be a 'lead practitioner' responsible for doing the CAF, working with you and your son, getting in touch with other agencies, making the plan, etc... This will probably be someone from school with whom your son already has a relationship - ideally someone he has a good relationship with. This person can be crucial to the support your son gets, so try to judge whether they are someone who cares and will get things done, and push for a different 'lead practitioner' if you feel, after a few weeks, that nothing is getting done.

There is a lot of other information here, including all the forms they will use during the CAF process:
www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/strategy/integratedworking/caf/a0068957/the-caf-process

Hope that helps :)

flow thank you, that was really helpful and has put my mind at rest. It wasn't explained very well to me this morning and they just kept refering to outside agencies, without me knowing what they meant!
Not sure what i was imagining, but i do think they should explain it better!!

So really its just getting support from other people if needed, i like that idea. Though he really isn't an issue at home i am finding hard not to punish too much at home cos of the bad behaviour at school.

Have just had an email saying he's got a detention for disruptive beahviour though so maybe we have a long way to go.

You're welcome, 3teen :) I think 'professionals' sometimes forget that ordinary folk don't live and breathe jargon like they do! ;)

I think the issue of how far you back up the school's 'discipline' can become very tricky if you have a child who is struggling long-term, rather than just 'being naughty'. I started out backing school to the hilt, making sure that if my son was in trouble at school, he was also in trouble at home with me. But over the years (he has left school now) it gradually became clear to me that he was getting into trouble often because he genuinely found it very hard to "sit still, do nothing and listen"... I wanted the school to recognise this and offer opportunities for him to be more actively involved - to engage him constructively in his learning - but they couldn't. I started to feel like I was 'ganging up' on him with them :(

It also felt like it was ruining our home life: he was in trouble at school, but he was generally fine at home, and yet I was punishing him too. Backing the school drew me constantly into negative interactions with him instead of positive ones. Sometimes, if he did something wrong at home too, it felt like he was drowning in punishment - whole weeks and occasionally months went by when he had no spending money, no playstation, no treats... So I drew a line and separated what happened at school from what was going on at home. When he was in trouble at school, I said "oh dear" and discussed the incident and gave him my take on the rights and wrongs of the situation, but I no longer reinforced school discipline.

I may not have been right, but that's how it felt to me, and you just do what think is best, dontcha?!

Good luck with the CAF :)

Thanks again, so nice to have it explained and talk to others who have gad trouble!

Fingers crossed it gets better!!