My dd is in year 8 and hasn’t really settled this year at all. Her behaviour has tanked and she has had endless detentions and at least 5 days of isolation. I’ve received numerous phone calls from the year head and other teachers to discuss her behaviour. Up until now we never had an issue with her at school, she was fine all through primary, year 7 was ok with a few hiccups but nothing major. This year has been on another level though, it’s been a huge shock to hear how she has been.
Rudeness, attitude, disruption, even refusing to do work. Every time I hear from the school it’s to tell me how awful she’s been, never anything positive. Towards the beginning of the year her detentions were mostly homework related, we cracked down on this and now for the most part she does do her homework on time, but the detentions for other reasons just keep coming.
I’m at a loss at this point. I expect a detention email every day, and it’s a surprise when she actually returns home from school on time. We met with the year head last week to discuss things with dd present and had hoped this would improve things, but this week just seems to be more of the same. She was removed from a lesson today for behaviour and refusing to do work resulting in detention this evening and a full day of isolation tomorrow. We have had endless conversations about this, I have raised my voice, tried talking to her calmly, we have consequences for especially bad behaviour in school such as taking her devices away. Yet nothing changes. I think she’s now got a reputation and as such is being watched more closely.
We advise her to just keep her head down, don’t get involved with any silliness from other kids, follow the rules religiously. It just doesn’t sink in. The school is strict and is heavy handed with detentions as punishment, but I still don’t think this is normal or acceptable.
It’s led me to question my parenting, where have I gone wrong, have we let her down somewhere along the line? I’m embarrassed that the school probably thinks very little of us as a family. I work in a school and I hear what staff say about the more troublesome kids and what they think the parents must be like for them to turn out like that. I always thought we tried our best to be decent parents, maybe we are just not.
Dd always has some sort of excuse, it was unfair, x teacher doesn’t like her, other kids were doing x too, it was someone else’s fault. I’m tired of it, I’m tired of dealing with her. I’m finding it very difficult to like her at the moment, although it goes without saying I love her so much. I have asked her if she likes school, she says yes but doesn’t like most of the teachers. I’ve asked her about her mental well being, she says she is fine. Honestly I think i’m more bothered about this than she is, the stress this is causing me is ridiculous and she doesn’t seem to care. I have been in tears on the phone to teachers because of the stress. I dread every week because I just know something is going to happen and we have to go through the same conversations again and again. I have often felt very stuck in the middle of her and the school at times. They haven’t always covered themselves in glory which I won’t go into detail with now as this post is long enough. Despite that I’ve always tried to support their policies and present a united front to dd.
Dd doesn’t seem to care anymore. She does her time and moves on, only to repeat the behaviour next time. I don’t know if there’s some sort of personality clash and that maybe the school isn’t the right fit for her, but we didn’t really get much choice in where we sent her as every school around here is full for her year so it was this school or no school at all. She is on the waiting list for a different school but I doubt she will ever get a place there and the closer she gets to GCSE’s the more reluctant I am to move her. There’s also a chance that it will just be more of the same there anyway.
I just feel stuck, nothing we do seems to be improving the situation. Every day there is something, it’s affecting my mental health, I’m chronically depressed anyway but it’s been worse recently because of all this, my anxiety is sky high. Has anyone been through similar and was there a light at the end of it? Because I can’t do another 3 years of this. I just can’t.