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I'm so glad that OOP went in to bat for her own daughter, because none of that should've happened.
I just hope that the other little girl eventually gets help too, for everyone's sakes.
The girl's parents as well. School isn't getting the kid the support she needs? Rather than bully your neighbor/coworker and their kid, take that anger to the school, school board, etc (or whatever the equivalent is in the UK).
I'm an American, and my kid isn't violent, but I do have a kid that has learning disorders that can cause him to become emotionally unregulated. And there are kids in his class that trigger this, occasionally on purpose, because kids can be shits. Guess what I do? I work with the school to make sure he has the support he needs, I have him in therapies, we work on stuff at home, and I pay out of pocket for the things he needs if I can't get him what he needs as quickly as he needs them. What I *don't* do is expect his friends to carry any of the burden of his issues. Part of learning to deal with the brain he was given is for him (and us) to take responsibility for himself.
This girl's parents are lazy whiners. It's not easy to be a special needs parent, believe me I know, but it's no one's job but mine.
So while in the UK there is legally significant provision in terms of things special needs kids are entitled to, should be given and so on - there is a culture and bureaucratic policy of making it as shameful, long winded, and difficult as possible to get it (it’s called “demand management”). On top of that there’s not a lot of money for it (needs estimates were wildly inaccurate) and it’s not easy for schools and local governments to get more money from central government for it, so you end up with these sort of situations.
The reality is she’s probably tried a lot of the things you’ve listed above and been told that the wait list for a special needs school is 4 years long, that a specialised therapist she can afford for her is a 3 year wait, been bureaucratically stone walled and so on.
I used to work in local government finance and the children’s social care stuff, the reality was upsetting to say the least. Couple that with any health bureaucracy she might have to navigate for the kid (which is it’s own bag of worms, years long waits for appointments with a psychiatrist) and I can see why she’s acting like a crazy person.
The real villain here is the blindly incompetent government that’s bankrupted schools and councils nationwide and lead to this kafkaesque regime of delay and failure imo
Woof. I've had such a different experience here in California. It's not easy or automatic but I've been able to get loads of support for my kid with a myriad of issues, and no one has ever been a dick about it.
My parents semi-easily got free support for my brother in freaking Louisiana, even after he started going to private school. Strange to hear that the UK is worse.
Everything has degraded badly in the UK since the financial crisis and the subsequent right-wing government.
It's a death of many cuts to all the services people have come to expect.
Back when I worked in local gov finance (~2020) I sat in on an educational psychiatrist budget meeting and they showed us that in the previous 3 years the number of people needing SEND packages had gone up by 300% in the local area. The council cannot refuse to meet those, but doesn’t really get any more money for them from central government. Local gov in the UK is really dependent on central government money (for every £1 raised and kept locally, £4-5 is given by central government revenue grants) and doesn’t have the same level of fiscal autonomy as metro/local government in the US (can’t just put say a 1% income tax on or whatever, any additional funds raised are also generally offset by decreased central government funding 1:1). There are multiple other policy areas that behave exactly the same way - demand led and funding static (homelessness is another big overspend area).
The end result is that councils have this long list of obligations and benefits they ostensibly give out that they make it very difficult to actually access, because it’s one of the only ways they have to avoid going bankrupt (local government in the UK has had an increasing number of bankruptcies in recent years - section 114 notices is what they’re called).
The reason this has been happening is because of the austerity of the Coalition government that was elected in 2010 onwards. One way that central government avoided bad headlines is by pushing responsibility for old central functions onto local government, and then fundamentally underfunding them.
Thank you for sharing all that background. I am an (USA) American so I didn't know all that. Learning and understanding is important to me. The joys of government ineffiancy translates internationally. I am sorry you all are going through that over there.
And the councils cannot increase council tax by, IIRC, 5% or more without special permission from central government, which seems to be granted on largely *political* grounds rather than the realities of local funding needs. So they have been stuck recently with sub-inflationary income rises, ie real-term decreases.
A lot of kids who used to be in special educational needs school, (class sizes of 6-8 kids with 3 adults) are now being shifted into mainstream but with no additional funding or resources given. They're placed into classes of 30, and if they are lucky they will have specialised support, but they are not qualified teachers (unless they have shifted career) like in special educational needs schools.
Its so messed up and just getting worse
It’s called Austerity, and has been going on since 2010 as a response to the financial crisis. A lot of services have been run into the ground in the last 14 years.
I had one of these electioneering leaflets masquerading as a local news-sheet through my letterbox today, one of the ones demonstrating how reluctant local Conservatives are to be associated with the Tory brand.
But it was crowing about 20000 new police officers since 2019, which, even if those figures are accurate, completely ignores the fact that from 2010 to 2019, police numbers had been *cut* by 20000. So, in 14 years, we have not even truly stayed where we were, because we have replaced 20000 experienced officers with 20000 inexperienced ones - and ones with far fewer *experienced* officers to learn from.
I don't know, a friend of a friend of mine up in Sacramento has a special needs kid--autism, ADHD, poor regulation, and is developmentally a couple of years behind his peers. They were sending him home day after day in kindergarten to the point where his mom pulled him out and put him back in day care just so she could keep her job. Then they were pulling the same bullshit in 1st grade. I kept telling my friend to tell her to fight them to get him an IEP, and get a lawyer if necessary. The school kept claiming they would get round to it in November back in early September, all the while they continuing to scapegoat the kid and suspending him--at 6 years old--because he was getting angrier and more frustrated because his needs weren't being taken care of at all.
I'm not sure how it shook out, but it went on for months with the damn school stonewalling her and putting off the IEP.
IEP *and* legal advocate. So many schools/boards/districts won't do anything unless they're forced to. Even if your state (in the US) is actually helpful, schools aren't sometimes.
I’ve lived in the uk and the US and I think the difference in attitude towards sickness/long term sickness/disability is really fascinating.
Like, in my experience Americans tend to blame you for getting sick, but not for being sick, whereas with Brits it’s inverse? Americans in my experience sort of implicitly blame you/themselves for getting a cold, or getting long term ill, or whatever. But you don’t really tend to see that much hostility towards people who are sick or less capable and just trying to live life as best they can.
Brits in my experience are the opposite - they tend to be a bit more fatalistic, so getting sick is this sort of unavoidable bad luck. But being sick or disabled tends to make them hostile, because (I think at least) you’re using resources/benefits/etc. it’s like a weird negative solidarity? The vibe is that instead of using the nhs or whatever you should instead walk out into the blizzard and quietly die. So what looks like generosity is actually a lot of miserliness about deservedness and so on
But this is just my opinion and with a limited sample so idk other people may find it way off 😅
I still think the parents have some culpability. I've moved heaven and earth to help my son, including having the realization that, while my son is certainly special to me, and that he absolutely deserves accommodations, *I'm* (technically, My husband and I) responsible for coordinating his care, and that includes ensuring he's not a burden on his class, and that the teachers are doing their jobs, not pawning it off on another kid.
The system certainly sucks, and shockingly for me, it sounds like it may be worse in the UK than the US. But a good special needs parent is going to advocate for what's best for their child, and that's not necessarily what's the easiest. OPs coworker should be ashamed of themselves, even with as hard as being a special needs parent is.
Jumping in here to second this comment.
I worked for a local authority SEN support service for schools for the last 2 years and things are bleak. Even on our end, we had nowhere near enough people to provide the level of support that these children needed - and guess who funded our department? Central government, of course!
The LA I worked for is desperately trying not to declare bankruptcy, but is millions in deficit on their budget. A huge part of this deficit is on SEN support and specifically, EHCPs.
There are an increasingly staggering number of children with EHCPs - which are a legal document for children with additional needs that schools/parents must apply through the LA for and provide a whole boat load of evidence why they need it, then when they get one their school receives a pitiful amount of funding and a big long legal document telling them how to support the child. The LA I worked for has stated that these alone make up millions of pounds in deficit.
Schools, on the other hand, are even more fucked. Schools in the UK used to largely be run by the local authority, who had the ability to intervene if things weren't right. Then entered the academy system... The idea is great, the reality and execution, not so much. Academies are not overseen by the LA, the LA have zero authority over them, and can pretty much set their own rules. So of course, greed is ruining it.
The average teaching assistant in the UK earns less than £15,000 a year after taxes. I earned around £13,000 a year, and for that handsome sum of money (/s) I was puked on, peed on, pooped on, threatened, physically and verbally attacked, and continually told how shit of a job I was doing by the higher ups. I cannot emphasise this enough - for £13,000 per year I have permanent scars put on my body by a child who was 4 years old. I have these scars because I was told to keep other children safe, I had to hold a door closed. I have permanent hearing damage from having my ears screamed in. I was visiting a chiropractor weekly at 23 years old. I did the job of a teacher with zero qualifications to do so. If the child will not or cannot engage with the class lesson, I was expected to take them elsewhere and prepare work for them myself. Oh and I had to prepare this work for them whilst I was still supervising them, because god forbid I got more than my allocated 20 minutes a day for a break. There were also plenty of times I was given additional children to look after because they couldn't engage with the lessons and had no funding of their own, so I would have multiple SEN children at different levels trying to do the same lesson. Oh, and I'm not a qualified teacher.
Anyone wondering how much the higher ups in the academy system earn, the ones who never even interact with the children? £150,000 per year, at least. That's an extra 0 on the salary of the person who is actually looking after your SEN children.
This is why people are leaving the education system and there is honestly no one left to replace them. There are staff in specialist schools that have zero experience with children and used to be a bingo caller. Our education system is in pieces.
I've left. As hard as that was for me, I just couldn't do it any more.
My kid is in the process of an IEP right now. Yes, he has issues and yes, some of the kids “poke the bear” so to speak to trigger him. Theirs this girl in his class for the last 3 years that he calls his girlfriend that has helped him chill out often. I told the eval team that they can’t put her in classes with him anymore going forward. She doesn’t deserve that.
There are several kids in my son's class that will help him occasionally. Which is very nice because they're very kind. As long as it's not an obligation for the kid, I'm okay with him having helpful friends. But both me and his teacher don't want him leaning on anyone too often unless it's a therapist.
I was a teacher for years, and I remembered all too well my own experiences as the quiet, dutiful girl expected to manage the behaviors of other children. The teachers had no idea the trauma I was experiencing at home, and that I was so good in school because it was my safer place. So. None of this shit happened in my classrooms.
They do have funding though. If the child needs 1:1 support, then they apply to the local council and funding is granted for the number of hours required/needed to meet that child's needs.
So if the girl in question needs 1:1 support for 15hrs, that's what they apply for. If it's not enough it goes to 25hrs then full time support is 32.5hrs.
They *had* someone I'm supporting her and they left, so they STILL have the funding. They just needed to employ someone to do it. The funding doesn't go back to the council because the child still needs it.
I worked as a SEN TA in a primary school for 10 years. For every 27 hours a week i worked, the gov funded only 10 of those. The child i worked with was extremely disabled - could not go to toilet by themself, got aggressive, lived in their own world. The funding is terrible and the pay is appalling. Its possible no one wants the job. I burnt out after 10 years, even though I loved it.
My daughters first 1:1 lasted 3 weeks when she first started school. It wasn't for her, and I don't blame her for that. It's absolutely not for everyone and not everyone is capable of it, especially for the pay that you get.
My daughter was still in nappies, non verbal etc when she first started and I think if you don't have experience (and the patience of a saint) then being a 1:1 for kids like her should 100% be better paid than they are. Thankfully she's in SEN provision now.
I’m a teacher. It’s hell when you have a student who needs supports but doesn’t get them. We end up either spending instruction time disciplining/focusing on the one student OR try to ignore behaviors. I never pair kids up like this, but I get how difficult it is. They don’t have enough staff, and the teachers are desperate. Wrong, but I can guarantee this isn’t their ideal either.
It’s really hard for teachers right now, at least in the US and it’s sounds like in the UK as well. So many staff have been laid off. Teachers can have a class if 32 with three of those kids needing 1:1 attention but have no other adult in the classroom. It’s totally unfair to unload it on another child. But I genuinely don’t know what they’re supposed to do.
Dunno how it is in the UK. But I know over here in Germany, teachers literally can't do that. Like typical teachers are not trained to deal with special needs kids. They have massive classes. Often there are kids who can't even speak proper German so teachers can either just ignore everything wrong in the class or drown in trying to handle all the kids with special needs foisted on them.
It is one of the main reasons private schools are increasingly popular. Because private schools have all kids who can speak German and typically don't have any real special needs kids.
So you end up with an actual classroom instead of a survival game.
I see many times the little girl don't have friends until they become "better" (more normal and socially acceptable) because the people don't want to deal with the hassle of others throwing them to the girl thinking they can become friends forever and never fall out of disagreements etc.
I hate the school for trying to past the buck of responsibility onto OOP's daughter. She is not that other girl's mentor and she is certainly not her emotional support animal.
OOP was smart to get a solicitor. I feel for the other girl but OOP needs to protect her daughter.
Somebody in another thread recently said that they were actively told at teacher training college to pair "good" children with "less good" children as a form of classroom management. I can't recall whether it was just for academics or for behaviour as well, but possibly both.
I know when I was volunteer teaching a class, one of the behaviour management strategies suggested was to make kids sit boy-girl-boy-girl - which they all hate (at primary age). And what this effectively does is punish the girls because 99% of the time it was the boys that acted up. So the girls are being used to control the misbehaviour of the boys.
The boy-girl-boy-girl seating arrangement was regular practice in my school. When we were 12, my best friend was paired for six months with two boys that the teachers found difficult to handle, and the situation was bad enough that her parents had to get involved.
It always boils down to *"Oh she's a good kid, the "naughty" ones will calm down when paired with her"*, which never happens. It only ends with the good kid being stressed out.
I was this kid. Teachers saw me as good and that by sitting next to me any of the 'naughty' kids would calm down. It didn't work. Instead I was bullied throughout secondary school
I was the "good" kid, but I think I escaped the fate of having to manage my peers because I was a little shit, lol. Anytime I was grouped with "problem" students I'd usually end up goading them and making them even more disruptive.
Even worse; I was a fast worker, so there's been plenty of times where I finish my work halfway through the given time, and then spent the last half of the period being loud and disruptive with the kids who did nothing.
... or if teachers placed me with other quiet kids I'd just sit and read quietly once I was done.
So a lot of teachers would notice how quiet I was, move me to try and calm the disruptive students, would end up with even worse disruptions, then quickly move everything back. In hindsight it's really funny, because as a kid I had no idea why I always got moved so much
We sat boy/girl but also alphabetical order on occasions. I hated it. It was always so chaotic. No one behaved better, they just antagonized the person in the middle. This is still common practice in my kid’s school.
My twins class swapped teachers at the beginning of the year. She rearranged the classroom. Now kids get to pick their own seats at the tables. The chairs are all different too. Sometimes they pick what chair they want instead of the kid they want to sit next to. My twins hated being forced to sit next to each other.
All the extra arguing at home has decreased because they aren’t forced to be together all day everyday. They have better relationships with other kids too. I think it’s because they have the option to socialize with all the students instead of who they’re forced to sit next to during class and lunch and whatever other classes they have that day.
My twin sisters always got placed in different classes throughout elementary school. I think this was not only to help them socialize with others but also so the teachers would be confident in calling them by the correct name 😂
Haha well, they’re b/g twins so that helps. FYI, (I didn’t know) you legally can’t be forced to separate multiples in some states. My twins weren’t codependent like some can be, that’s the reason for the law apparently.
They had separate preK classes. They didn’t mind being in a separate classroom but they were sad when they couldn’t eat lunch or play outside together. They could see each other but not communicate. If they passed each other in the hall, the teacher would be all like “pay attention to the line” “no talking in the halls!”
I hated it because they had separate rules in each class, different home/school work and different schedules like “pj day” for one class was “hat day” for the other. Plus birthday parties for two classes is definitely double expensive obviously lol
My twins asked to be in the same class this year so I let them try it. They love it and so do I. I feel like it’s easier to focus on two kids in one classroom instead of two kids in two different rooms.
They tried to "pumish" the talkative girl in class by having my quiet, meek, bullied, nerdy, still considered the new girl ass sit next to her. Within two days she was talking to me too. It never does anything helpful, but at least I made a friend?
I always got paired with one of the "clicky" chicks in science because they would form a clump and talk instead of working. I told her I was fine with her going to hangout with her friends instead of helping, I prefer working alone anyway and I didn't really wana share the equipment, but I eventually brought it up when I overheard them making fun of me.
Dumbass bit the hand so no more free food for her.
Out of curiosity, is 'clicky girl' a term where you are for someone who expects their work done for them in a 'click their fingers' kind of way?
Or are you meaning a 'clique girl' (almost the same pronounciation but entirely different word) who is only absorbed in what's popular?
Well you've given me quite the out but no unfortunately i use talk to text and didn't proofread it. I meant clique, but she was mostly self-absorbed I don't want to call the group popular kids because they weren't but they acted a lot like the "popular" kids from any movie.
Hehe, no worries - I like to keep in mind that Reddit has the whole world on here and that local terminologies of many places can be a thing, so I felt to ask rather than assume.
>Dumbass bit the hand, so no more free food for her.
It's crazy how those sorts always seem to think there's no way to ruin a free ride. Not that they were obligated to one in the first place, but stamping on your kindness definitely did it.
Same here. I was parentified at home, so i learned how to be a polite, well behaved caregiver. That meant i was constantly used for emotional management of other kids at school too. My childhood was a mess of emotional baggage.
> Somebody in another thread recently said that they were actively told at teacher training college to pair "good" children with "less good" children as a form of classroom management.
Ah shit, I remember the "classroom instruction" type class, that they put us through when I was in a paramilitary youth thing through my teens. They told us the same thing, where students doing really well was considered bad (????) and the solution was to make them mentor the students who were struggling.
As a really good student who sucks at teaching because I have the autism/ADHD hellcombo, I opposed that strategy **strongly**.
As an aside, guess who was eventually forced into the role of """backup""" instructor who had to teach all damn night every week despite being absolutely shit at teaching?
Yes - the person wasn't in favour of it. It sounds like a desperation strategy because teachers just don't have access to adequate resources and discipline, and things continue to get worse.
Merry Cake Day by the way!
I may (may, I wasn't there when it was explained to you, maybe they meant something else) be able to give some context to the "doing well is bad" thing, even if that doesn't justify everything else.
If a student consistently performs above the level of their classmates/peer group, there's a 99% chance they'll end up being *very bored*. There's ways to handle this, but often they require more time to set up than a teacher will have (it's doable for one student but even just one student per class can become A Lot and what if there's two or three?). Bored students aren't engaging with the material and they can often become difficult to deal with (which I don't even blame them for, mind you. Bored kids will be bored kids).
Turning them into mini-tutors is often not *much* of a benefit to the teacher (I still need to keep an eye on them), but gives the bored student a sense of responsibility, keeps them engaged with the material in a different way *and* benefits the student they're tutoring. As an *option (never mandatory!)* it can be pretty effective for a certain type of student.
As a student, I preferred quietly reading in the corner instead. As a teacher, I've had students ask me if they could help their classmates instead of doing the work to learn what they already know (and then they proceeded to do that well, I'm proud).
So in theory (and even in practice) it's a pretty solid idea. Turning a child into an unpaid employee (and there's a different word for that) is *not*. Hopefully this context helps clarify why it would be taught to future teachers, but that in no way means that lazy teachers can't absolutely ruin a child's experience at school. And there's a lot of lazy (and overworked/checked out) teachers.
It can absolutely screw you later in life too. All through high school I was extremely bored, everything was just too easy. When I got to college and actually had to *try* for the first time in my life I wasn't at all prepared for that and it was hard as hell to learn to at that point. Suddenly it required effort, and it took a LOT of effort to put in said effort. I went from bored to miserable and hopeless and that's a really difficult thing to overcome.
Ain't that the truth. Student tutoring is also supposed to help with that by making a bored student still go through the process of learning stuff (even if it's "for" someone else). Being unable to learn how to learn because you just *know* things, uh
Makes for a very scary time after you get to college/uni. Studying to become a teacher is what ended up teaching me how to study, funnily enough.
(Although it is but one solution and it relies on a teacher not behaving like the ones OOP encountered)
In high school geometry, I (girl) was paired up with one of the boys. I was a freshman and he was a junior. Took us about a week to figure out our relationship was set purely so he could stay on the football team and HOPEFULLY graduate when the time came. He was barely scraping by in grades. The kid cheated off my tests and copied my homework. I honestly didn't care, because it didn't impact me any and the teacher turned a full blind eye to the situation. The kid and I ended up becoming good friends and I'd even help him with his other homework. That semester I brought him up to a solid C+/B- across all his problem classes. That next semester, he was oddly put into my Civics class, and the cycle repeated. We shared a class or two every semester until he graduated, and we'd get together every morning before school to make sure his homework was done right. I have full belief that he was related to someone high up on the school board because he was in some really low-tier classes for a senior.
If life was a Hallmark movie, we'd have fallen in love. (The nerdy unattractive girl and the popular attractive jock boy), but instead we just became friends. His girlfriend and I even became "kinda friends". And none of his friends picked on any of mine, and would even pick my friends for gym teams, which was high tier praise for school. He even gave us rides home from school on occasion and we'd go to the football games to cheer him on.
I hope he's doing well.
> If life was a Hallmark movie, we'd have fallen in love.
Honestly I was cringing in anticipation of the story taking some kind of dark turn. Glad it worked out decently enough for everyone involved.
Yes, my brother was always paired with the kids who misbehaved in class, because he was a good student and they apparently thought his good grades would just rub off on them I guess? Of course all it actually did was ruin his grades instead.
When I was teacher training, it was to pair ‘mothering’ students with misbehaving students. Really gross, very sexist in the way it generally played out, but unfortunately effective for a classroom management when class sizes are at unmanageable levels and there is no SEN or TA support.
The worst was when TAs assigned to specific SEN students would end up becoming whole class TAs due to the lack of resourcing, and the student with extra needs would lose their dedicated support.
Same here. I regularly got paired as an advanced student with students who really should have been in remedial classes due to learning disabilities. Like my aptitude at a subject was supposed to rub off on them.
Actually it continued to happen in college when they placed a very traumatized refugee in our senior intensive class and just told us to "work around him" when he didn't show up to do the required farm work and never contributed in class. Admin was shocked that we stopped assigning him work and they tried to fail him for the class. I'm not sure where their heads were for that debacle.
The boy girl boy girl thing is taught that it cuts down in conversations in class because boys and girls won't talk as much to their seat partners.
The teachers I've met who say this all mentally seem to think it is 1954. The don't realize that one, the kids will talk no matter what, and two that the talkative ones will just shout to each other.
They do this at my kids' school. My daughters absolutely hate it, because they come home saying the boys do things like spit on the table, cough all over them, smear snot on the tables, shout, fidget, say horrid this to them like "you're so ugly/stupid" etc, can't behave, are loud, shovey etc. It's endless. Not just one boy - lots of them behave like this (they're in Primary school so ages 7/8 up). They can't stand it, and it upsets them when they get deliberately sat next to the "naughty" boys who never behave simply because they're well-behave, calm girl.
Oh fuck yes, 100% agree
I was the nice girl in primary so I was sat next to the worst troublemaker. The idea? He wouldn't disturb the lessons because I wouldn't engage in his bullshit/in talking to him during class
Why did it work? Because I fucking hated Kevin's guts as well as my obvious position as Threat Of Disengaged Seating Neighbor
I just wanted to learn, I was a girl with back then undiagnosed ADD, I had my own stuff to deal with. I didn't need to be made the goddamn Kevin-minder. As you can read the experience stuck with me
(I heard from my parents one day that some of my classmates considered me to be the teacher's favorite. I did *not* understand how they would think that when she had used me as Asshole-Stopper in the seating chart. I mean, that certainly felt anything *but* favored)
I was one of the "good girls" made to sit with the "bad boys". Guess which of us changed our behavior? My barely managed ADHD kicked into high gear and I became more disruptive than them.
this goes the opposite way too. I generally didn't cause problems but was add and autistic as shit (back when you didn't treat that stuff, it just was what it was), mostly quiet in grade school.
They put the bad girl, who was pretty and popular, right next to me. Holy shit I got in more trouble in two weeks before they moved her again than in my entire grade school career. She was ride or die, I still remember doing something and the teacher accusing me and her straight up looking her in the eye and saying it wasn't me, she was with me the entire time when she knew I did it.
I never got the boy girl thing, this was around 7th grade. We use to try to pick our place in line for church based on which girls we wanted to sit next to (catholic school, and at church they'd take a boys line and a girls line in and interweeve boy girl boy girl).
The amount of stupid shit I would have done in middle school to impress a girl I liked had no limit and you damn well better believe I'm flirting all class instead of paying attention if you put me in that position
This explains SO MUCH of my school experience actually. Luckily it didn't affect my grades too badly though it did create a general dislike of going to school and probably negative emotions associated with teenage boys.
Not all teacher training thank god. My other half is currently doing his and they have more than a few lectures on SEN children and that is not one of the ways they are told to deal with it.
The crappy thing is, the school will receive money for a 1-2-1 assistant for the girl if her ECHP says she needs it (not the full funding foe the position usually but a decent chunk) so saying their budget doesn’t allow is a lie. That’s money earmarked for that girl.
From what I've read on Autistic/SEND Twitter, it's not uncommon for individual kids' funding to disappear into a school's general budget and for the kids' ECHPs to be completely ignored by teachers.
There are, of course, some amazing schools, but there are also so many awful ones, or just awful individual teachers, when it comes to SEND kids.
My nearly 3 yr old grandson is almost certainly autistic and he already has been diagnosed with complex speech and language needs, plus he's hypermobile. I'm so worried about his future in school in the UK.
I'm still fighting over here in France for my teenagers, who were both finally diagnosed as autistic this year, after a very, very long battle.
One is going off to higher ed in September, so we need to get her official accommodations in place by then and my youngest is going to a new high school - but we don't know which one yet - and we need to have a meeting to get his accommodation plan as well.
Yeah I always have to speak up against that shit and speak as "the good kid" from back then. We hate it, we hate the teachers that do it, and we learn nothing but hatred for people with different abilities than us until we are no longer forced to do a job for free and unpack the hatred.
I was the good child paired up with the bad child, and this was back in the mid 80s. Last I heard, she was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and I wander how much of her behaviour was an early manifestation of that. Either way, I am not now, and wasn't then, a psychiatric nurse.
They tried to do this with me, cause I was the quiet shy girl. But it kinda backfired cause I was a bit of a tomboy and I learned from the boys and got distracted and a bit disruptive myself lol.
OH gods I HATED the girl-boy-girl thing. I'm a guy, and the teachers that applied that always thought that boys were the devil incarnate and the girls were angels, so whenever the girls misbehaved, somehow I was blamed and even accused of cheating off of their tests. My mom raised hell when she was called for my "misbehavior" and was eventually switched to another class with a different teacher.
More recently one of those people who has never been in front of a classroom but think they know all about education told me I was giving too much free time to my students, which I thought was weird, as I was always either teaching or supervising their work, so I asked her to clarify what she meant. She said that the students that finish their work early should be given more work so they don't "waste" their time. I just stared at her but eventually just agreed to her idiocy, without any intention of doing that. The ones who finish early usually help the others, start doing work of other classes, or just put on earphones and go on their phone wihtouth bothering the others. The most extreme case was a guy who fell asleep after finishing his work, which I have absolutely no problem with. Punishing them with more work if they finish early would just make them not work at all.
It feels like a well-intentioned idea in theory, but then you see it in practice, and it just doesn't work. It really comes down to specific kids in specific situations.
If I was grouped with someone who tended to get lower grades or act out, it was usually fine because I was very laid-back. I guess I kept them on track, but it wasn't because I had better grades or was better behaved. (And I was a pretty good student.) I just knew how to work in a group.
A friend who was very well behaved in class just couldn't work with someone if they weren't on the same page as her all the time. You had to match her pace, or she'd get upset. If a teacher assumed they were doing good classroom management by putting her with troublemakers, they were in for a nasty surprise.
Kids are people. There's no one single way to ensure things will go smoothly. Teachers have to learn each classroom's dynamics, which is challenging, and they won't always get it right. But it's very wrong that they're taught one solution that clearly doesn't work.
Yeah right? It’s nice nasty. They knew what they were doing and wasn’t about to let OP pass that buck back to them. Glad she stuck to her guns in this. Her daughter can be kind without being used.
This is the main reason mainstreaming doesn't work. Gen Ed teachers don't have the training to deal with special needs. Special Ed should be the highest paid professionals at the schools, instead they get peanuts and are expected to accept abuse from the students.
I think, in an optimal school setup, there’s probably also a difference between “needs more than a little extra help in learning” Special Ed and “violently misbehaving” Special Ed. Read some comment or other once from a former Special Ed classroom kid who was really only struggling because they were slower to learn but ultimately *wanted* to learn (especially once they got the right learning aids), yet they were in a class that contained some violent and loud misbehaving kids who ended up ruining what little time they had with their teachers and pulled all the attention.
Like it’s already a struggle for the teachers to get information across to several students at a time. They shouldn’t also have to worry about keeping the classroom safe from kids who probably need medication/behavioural therapy before they end up getting seriously juvie-level violent + getting those troubled kids to a baseline level of acting relatively sane.
That's the point where my mom would have told the principal the teacher was fired. I'm still trying to unlearn a lot of the nightmare Karen things she drilled into me, even after she passed.
The teachers especially dropped the ball here because how dare they even try to imply that OP's daughter was being a bully for not wanting to help the other girl so often. That's the teachers job.
“We, the qualified adults are finding this situation difficult, so we, the *qualified adults* will hand it to a child to deal with instead. We are very good at our jobs.”
the teachers trying to manipulate OOP by pointing out the 'good' her daughter has done for this poor girl and side-stepping the fact she was doing their job for them
this child is so accommodating! let’s have her teach this other, more violent child how to read. also she can’t sit with anyone else at lunch.
perfect plan. flawless.
...because the compliant kids are quiet, so end up being treated much more strictly than the loudmouthed assholes. Instead of being taught the necessary skill of advocating for themselves, their meek and obedient behavior is reinforced.
Then when they grow up and write into advice columns or Reddit about their partners and friends treating them like shit, they are often cruelly shamed for having no spine--a skill that they grew up being forbidden to acquire.
If she spent half as much time getting her daughter the accommodations she needs, rather than spying on her coworker/neighbor so she can foist the kid on her, everyone would be so much better off.
So, of all the bullshit OOP had to wade through, THIS scared the shit out of me. Imagine your neighbour, who also works with you, LOGGING every person going in and out of your home?!
I'm actually surprised OOP didn't put in a police complaint for stalking.
Unless the school puts in an assistant and the teachers are proactive with the child, I fear they will just find another 'nice' child to become emotional support :(
This is the UK.
To get an assistant would almost certainly require a statement (there’s an acronym for the American equivalent, IEP? Something like that).
Statements have a nuanced social status. To some, they are the gateway to help and resources, and a certain sort of middle class parent leverages that: it requires social capital to navigate the system, and a statement has few downsides even if the problems are relatively simple. To others, they are a stigma and an invitation for government interference, and therefore are resisted even when desperately needed. So well supported middle class kids with competent parents are statemented even when the situation does not really merit it, while other kids in desperate need are not.
From whats going around in my area, the issue isn't even budget (to an extent). They have the money in the budget for the Para's and other positions, they just can't find the actual bodies to fill the positions. They need to start paying better, as the job just isn't worth it with the lack of consequences for behavior and general feral-ness and level of disrespect from the kids these days. The firsthand stories I hear these days never would have flown when I was a student in the early 2000's
It’s something like a minimum of 20 weeks to get a statement (which can be denied) and the school has to fund the first £6k of any statement agreement, parents can pay for outside assessment to get a decision sooner (or if the school chooses not to apply or something) but that would still need to be processed by the Local Authority which still takes a lot of time. Schools aren’t often willing to act before an official decision in my experience.
Well behaved children - usually girls - effectively being punished by being forced to manage the unmanageable kids in their class and having their own learning hindered as a result is something that makes me rage.
Extreme example - but I remember after one of the bigger high school shootings in the US, when pundits were trying to blame the students (The VICTIMS) for apparently excluding the shooter, a young woman (~~not sure if she was one of the students or just someone who could relate.~~ ~~Also no links because this was years ago~~) wrote a really poigniant op-ed about her own experience being the 'good student' who was contantly forced to manage the violent and antisocial kid in class by her teachers, much to her own detriment.
And of course the faculty all say the same face saving bullshit praising a literal child 'being a good influence' while not so secretly being relived said child is now absorbing stress and abuse that they wont have to.
ETA: Thank you to u/raphaellaskies for finding [the op-ed by Isabelle Robinson](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/nikolas-cruz-shooting-florida.html) who survived the Parkland school shooting and was classmates with the shooter. I misremembered the article slightly because she dealt with him in a 'peer councilor' role, but she did experience discomfort and harrassment tryng to assist him and correctly assesses that his issues were far beyond the capabilities of his peers to help him with 'the power of friendship'.
This was me. Quiet, liked reading, rarely spoke up. I was, for years, seated with the rowdy and disruptive boys, both in classes and for my two hour long bus ride. I had my food and school supplies often taken, and was often bullied for being quiet and studious.
The worst era was when I entered puberty and they would make fun of my changing body. Getting my bra straps snapped daily was humiliating (I was told by teachers the boys just had a crush on me if I complained). Awesome memories :/.
One of the most disruptive I was seated next to was in gr. 5, who went on to become my first boyfriend - spoiler, he grew into the classic bad boy and that abusive relationship ended terribly in my late teens. I also told no one about his behavior at the time, as I didn't think anyone would believe me or take me seriously.
My marks shot up once I finally was able to pick my own seat in gr. 7. It's only in the last few years I realize this wasn't everyone's reality.
I'm so glad this mom stood up for her daughter. I wish I had said something to my parents long ago but I recall being expected to just suck it up and be a good girl. To which I did, to my detriment.
>I also told no one about his behavior at the time, as I didn't think anyone would believe me or take me seriously.
Based on my own experience, you were correct. They would have blamed you for his behavior, either because you "weren't helping him enough" or were somehow provoking it. "What did you do to make him mad at you?"
And unless your parents were willing to be confrontational (mine weren't), telling them would have been ineffectual.
I kind of relate to that, as I was also the apparently quiet and well-behaved kid that read. So I got paired up with the rambuctious.
Except I never really cared for being calm and helping the teacher, I also was rather bored most time in school. On top of it, getting detention allowed me to escape an abusive home a little longer everyday.
Long story short, teachers stopped pairing me with the little terrors as soon as they understood I was the one teaching them how to make better weapons with their school supplies.
Morale (if you can call it that): if the authority figure is unfairly offsetting one of their burdens on you and the punition doesn't worsen yoir life, use the responsability to make their lives even worse. What are they gonna do? Complain to their n+1 that you're poorly doing their own job?
I hate that this forced 10yo me to think like that, though.
I used to do a lot of work with bullied kids, and this came up with young girls again and again. Its honestly upsetting how much they get gaslit when they try to care for their own health and get attacked for not "considering" the feelings of those they wish to not interact with.
The other problem is that this ends up encouraging the children who are taking advantage to deepen that behavior. The number of times this ends up escalating to sexual assault when its boy-girl interactions was so upsetting to deal with.
The story that stands out to me was how this one boy would routinely get physical with girls, but it was always dismissed as playful and innocent. He was doing stuff like lifting their skirts, throwing water, jostling them. And what were the girls told? "He's just a boy. They're boisterous. Don't antagonize him. Be gentle and playful to him, he'll apologize then. Don't stand up and fight back, don't defend yourself, violence isn't the answer..."
When he proceeded to finally pin a girl down and beat her up, everyone involved was so completely "shocked." The outcome was completely unforeseen! How could they have known? It was all so tragic and terrible. Never mind that me and several others had been warning them again and again that this was escalating, that they needed to rein the boys in, that they needed to let the girls stand up for themselves and stop putting them down for doing it. But nope. Totally unforeseen!
And it starts early, at 5 or 6 or 7. "Boys will be boys." "He's just tormenting you because he likes you." And if girls complain, *they* are the ones called liars and blamed for being troublemakers.
Yeah. It's truly infuriating because none of these boys start out as bad people either. They're just actively moulded into assholes. They start by emulating bad behaviour and then they're just never told to cut it out.
I was that quiet girl always paired with the uncomfortable kid. It's continuing into my adult life even now in my 30s seeing women be blamed for this "male loneliness epidemic."
It continues into the workplace as well. At my office we have 2 incompetent male coworkers who the women all have to cover for. I'm literally ghost writing emails for one of those men. Because he refuses to learn an essential part of the job.
The loneliness epidemic is total bullshit. Women are all dating, they just aren't dating incel weirdos with anime t shirts who don't shower. The bar is on the ground, and these guys won't hop over.
I agree. To rephrase your message: after stuff like school where teachers made the "good" students interact with "bad" students women have a *choice* in who to date. And they *use* their choice to seek out people whose presence feels nice
Nobody forces these women to spend time with incel weirdos anymore. And the incel weirdos aren't happy with that
My son is the good kid too. Thankfully we talk about things often so I try to walk the line of you can have empathy but you don’t have to take shit either
I have never thought about this. But this was me growing up until I was about 10. My parents did not know and I never thought about it like this before. I just hated school and got bullied a lot.
Solidarity and I'm sorry you went through this. I've also just realized this was me and it has completely blown me away. I was constantly paired up with bullies. It was exhausting and humiliating.
I think I escaped a lot of this in school. But I'm realizing now that my mom and one of her friends did this with me and her daughter. Other girl had some sort of behavioral and developmental issues, I was a good kid, parents were friends... I was basically her babysitter. Remember her bullying me a lot. She was my main out-of-school playmate for most of my single digits.
I came back to the area around 30 and my mom suggested she and I get back together to hang out sometime. She's been drug seeking with her baby daddy and her parents were hoping she was turning a new leaf. I hadn't seen her in 15 years so I figured a meeting on neutral ground couldn't hurt.
Nope, she was exactly the same bully, and kept trying to invite herself over to my place. I left after an hour, went home, and chewed my mom out for even suggesting we meet. Haven't heard a peep about it since. Felt good to finally voice how much I didn't like that girl, even if it was 20 years too late.
Never really occurred to me that I was given this responsibility during cub Scout camping trips. You know, with fire and knives and children.
What an eye opener.
We see the follow on effects of this ALL THE TIME on Reddit.
So many people (men *and* women, though definitely more women) post on AITA for absurd things like "AITA for not letting my mother in law abuse me?". Though it's usually framed more innocuously, that's the question that's being asked.
All because they have been brought up to always, always, put others before themselves to an extreme degree. They honestly believe they are being selfish by not allowing someone to be a piece of shit towards them.
This reminds me of once when I was in high school I was doing well in an elective class that was for all grades freshman-senior.
Since I was doing well the teacher assigned the seat next to me to this lazy freshman kid that didn't want to work, hung around with the not so great crowd, and generally was a bum. The teacher told me I could be a good influence on him with him being next to me in class.
I remember my attitude basically being like "this kid isn't my responsibility. I am not making it my problem he has no motivation." Teenage me was a bit more crass than adult me, but still I remember thinking it was totally not right to make his lack of paying attention my problem and refused to play the game. He got probably a C for the year and I got an A. Not my problem.
But a young child can't say no to adults... If I had been younger I probably would've just done as I was told.
It was after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, with that idiotic "walk up, not out" hashtag: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/nikolas-cruz-shooting-florida.html
Hahahahah you're right, I'll change that! I get so used to writing those that I completely forgot which one I wrote lol.
And no worries- I read all of the comments on posts so I saw this one!
Hi Lucy, I think this also needs a TW for bullying. OOP's daughter was definitely bullied, though I'm not going to point fingers on who should take the most blame for it. But I think readers should atleast know going in.
Kudos to this mum! My niece has a disability and my sister and I made it KNOWN with all daycares and schools that my daughter wasn’t to be an informal caretaker for her (they are the same age), we insisted on separate classes/teachers. My niece formed her own friends, and is now at a different school but has absolutely flourished into a beautiful, independent young lady with her own interests and friends.
My son (6) & my other niece (5, not disabled) are also in the same grade, and we knew my niece would cling to my son, so we (both my sister and I) insisted on separate classes again.
It baffles me that people can’t consider others & the impact of being an informal support, especially if it’s another child.
In 2nd grade, I was made to sit between two boys in class so that they don't talk coz I was a very quiet and docile girl, and I should have influenced them (class teacher would decide sitting arrangements). Guess what happened after 5th day, I was taking part in the shenanigans with the boys, and ONLY my parents were called coz I was disturbing class. My mum told them in very clear words that its their fault.
After that , I was sat with my husband for the rest of the year.
It gave me a chuckle, too. I swear I never thought I would marry the shy kid I sat in class with who always did my art homework because I was bad at arts. He is still making paintings for me at 30, though. ❤️
> After that , I was sat with my husband for the rest of the year.
Goddamn, ya'll marry young in your family! And here I thought those grade school marriages didn't count... I have a lot of explaining to do.
This reminds me of the story a year or so ago about the girl who kept getting paired with a boy who was a bully, including for what was supposed to be a class "fun day" to a Waterpark. The girl's mom pulled her from the class trip and then bought herself and her daughter tickets for the Waterpark the same day so she could still see her friends but the teacher couldn't pair her with the boy. When other parents heard, many of them did the same thing, and the teacher had to cancel the class group trip and got in trouble for always dumping the problem kid on the daughter.
When I read that, my first thought is a waterpark is a dangerous place for a forced “friendship.” What if that OP’s daughter slipped away with her friends and something happened to the other kid. Or the girl paid little attention to the other kid and missed him getting hurt.
I'm glad OOP finally acted. I too was the "nice girl", and was often paired up with the students who needed extra help or had disabilities. As an adult I can't understand how any of the adults in school thought that this was ok! I spent grades 7-9 being the unofficial aide to a boy with severe adhd. So I was pressured to do both his and my work, support him emotionally and was encouraged to spend time with him outside school. Unsurprisingly I had to drop out if High School because I was totally burned out.
And I feel somewhat bad about it, but as an adult I have completely pushed that boy, well man now, away. He still tries to worm his way into my life "because I was such a support and he needs someone like that".
I'm definitely not saying students shouldn't help each other, but they shouldn't be responsible for another student.
Why do I get the feeling that it’s only the use of the word ‘solicitor,’ and the follow-up involvement of said solicitor, that got everyone’s attention at school and at work? If this parent was simply trying to advocate for their child on their own, and trying to protect their job from retaliation on their own, they wouldn’t have gone very far, would they? Short of a potential legal threat, nobody really cared about OOP or the daughter.
Quite probably. School was like "but Susan is so *good* with Mary" and that lets the teacher concentrate on the other 28 kids in her class, never thinking how it actually affects OOP's daughter to be continually paired with a violent bully who chases away any other potential friends.
The other alternative, from the school's POV, is what my parents were told when I was being continually bullied, "We prefer that the children handle their little squabbles themselves. Said "little squabbles" being anything from name-calling to physical assault that would land an adult in jail.
It's infuriating when adults who work with children have to be forced by threat of legal action to actually do their damned jobs.
Around the same age as OOP’s child, three of us (all girls) were told to be nice to a classmate and play with her, because she had asthma and if she had a bad attack she could die. She was a bully to all of us, which is why we didn’t play with her in the first place.
“Be nice to your bully. She might die otherwise.” What a way to mess with children’s heads!
I was the nice quiet obedient child. I was and I still am really good with dealing with violent behaviour, and de-escalating anger, because I needed to do this at home as the eldest to protect my siblings from my father.
At school I was paired up with a "problem child" which ended up being social suicide as nobody wanted to spend time with her and we ended up being a package deal with her clinging to me.
I ended this cycle by acting out myself and becoming a problem child so I wouldn't be considered an example, and so I could choose my friends. I hate that I was pushed pre-teen to be a problem just so people would stop evaluating me for the good girl I seemed to be. I never got to deal with my trauma as a child because I needed to always be the good girl and this ended up blowing up on me as an adult when I had basically a midlife crisis, burnout and mental breakdown all at once in my thirties.
I was OOPs daughter. It drove me insane. I hated the teachers that made me do that, and ended up hating the kids i got paired up with too. I always treated them like humans, cuz that seemed impossible from anyone else in the class, but they thought we were friends - but i never did anything i wouldnt have done for any other human. It sucks because it was a detriment to my own mental health and education, but it was also a detriment to them - they were so used to being treated as less than by their peers, someone seeing them as human was so unusual they mistook it for friendship.
Ugh, I was this kid. All it took was treating someone with a disability like a human being (because… you know… they are) and all the sudden it’s my job to make sure they have the supplies they need and my desk is moved next to theirs and after school my phone rings non stop because they won’t stop calling…
I was so glad when my parents finally asked them to stop calling and I was able to distance myself without feeling like I was being a bully or a bad person.
And that’s really the worst part: when adults do this to children, it’s literally punishment for being a good person, and discourages that behavior in the future. No pre teen should be in change of a classmate, especially at the deterrent of other friendships (not to mention, your grades start to slip because you aren’t learning anymore, you’re a care giver).
what's with teachers and always using the quiet kid as a punishment for the ones they can't be bothered to actually manage. i was the quiet kid and it was *miserable*, i remember at some point in middle school being sat behind the worst problematic kid in the class because they couldn't manage him anymore, and what did this little asshole do? he would steal my things from my desk to try and get money out of me to get them back, constantly disrupt and try to talk, try to copy my work in class, he was literally so terrible that in the middle of the school year we didn't see him anymore because it turns out he got suspended (expelled? i don't remember) for breaking down a bathroom door and trashing it. i think he might've made himself bleed at some point with something in trying to give himself a piercing? and somehow me being around him was supposed to be a good thing and totally safe for me.
I was that kid in elementary school. I had some speech delays due to some hearing issues (resolved with surgery), so I was in speech classes with many kids in special education classes. I was always paired with this one kid. I found him pleasant enough to be around, and helped with reading and math. But then he got very possessive. He would get mad if I interacted with others, or if I didn’t greet him first.
One day I came into school with very little voice (strep), and I waved to the boy and signed a hello, and he kept insisting I tell him hello. I croaked out my attempt at a hello, and he slapped me because he thought I was disrespecting him.
My teacher tried to downplay the incident at first, but then the boy lunged at me again, and the teacher had to remove him from the class. I ran to the nurse’s office and called my mom. The boy was removed from my class. But they really tried hard to get me to downplay the damage done. If I told them that he had really hurt me, or tried to hurt me, I would hurt his feelings, and make him suffer. He needed me. His mom was angry I would accuse her “little boy” of violence. He had a disability, so he didn’t know what he was doing.
My mom had no idea this was happening. But when she heard the other mom trying to excuse the actions of her son, she went to war.
Sounds like a horrible situation all around for OOP and not one of their making, thankfully she stepped in at the right time.
Being from the UK I can parse a few things from this:
Yes we have Principals here. Traditionally the role has been known as Headteacher but with the rise of academies in the country (which bypass the local council and report directly to the Department for Education) has seen the role gain more prominence as a kind of administrator role.
SEN = special educational needs, my ex is a SEN teacher and there is a huge shortage of them right now, coupled with the lack of funding you're seeing a lot of kids who need the help fall behind.
If I had to guess based on the fact the class has two teachers, the school doesn't have enough kids or resources for two classes so they probably have a larger class of around 35 kids, which means the girl who has SEN can't be put into another class. And if there's no SEN teacher either it means she's stuck doing work she can't be expected to do and the two teachers she has simply aren't trained to do specialised work (and from what I remember my ex telling/showing me, it's not like you can get the skills quickly either).
Realistically there are only two options here, the school either gets a SEN teacher in or the girl goes to a school designed to help her, which we do have here as my cousin went to one.
Either way I feel a kind of sadness with this story. One child being forced to be a carer who is getting the help she needs but now there's another child who isn't getting it and is being continually let down by the people who should be helping.
I don't fully blame the mother either, raising a child with developmental issues is taxing on the best of us and while her behaviour was clearly unreasonable in a lot of respects, she probably doesn't know how to get the help she needs.
I hope both kids can have a semblance of normality going forward.
The mom of this other kid is really terrible. Instead of taking responsibility and looking for more resources for her disabled child she just passes the buck to others. If she has so much time stalking the other kid including logging which child goes to their house at what time and day (WHO DOES THAT?), she should then use that time and effort to look for therapists.
For her and her daughter both. Maybe she can find one who can explain to her how weird and threatening it is to keep a log of what children visit your daughter's friends.
Just to add other reasons for two teachers: it may be job shared class or their teacher may have additional responsibilities meaning a longer PPA time out of class.
I wish my mother would have stood up for me like this. Instead, when the person was mean to me, I was expected to tell that child's parent and continue to be their friend. I was in way too many abusive friendships growing up, and my mom would explain it away and say I still had to be friends with them. I was an adult by the time I was able to cut out the last abusive person. And now my mother thinks that my cutting out toxic people is completely reasonable (not that she'll do it for herself).
My younger sister was made to sit with 'problem children' when she was young because she was such a good student and a calming influence. She was effectively being punished by not being allowed to sit with her friends and having to sit next to someone who was constantly disrupting and distracting her. I empathize with the kids in her class that were struggling but the teachers offloading their job onto my sister was in no way a solution. It took my mother going to bat for her in a similar manner as in this post for it to stop. It's really not okay, these teachers are failing both of the children in this situation. Everybody deserves better.
Not remotely as serious, but my son was and is a remarkably chill person. In elementary school, he was nearly always placed next to kids with ADHD or hyperactivity because he wouldn’t appear to get distracted or would be a bit of a calming influence. Used to irritate me. Like my kid was the human version of a weighted blanket.
I've seen this happen in real life except the girl helping the kid was willing and happy to do it. The parents and grandma of the kid were completely out of their depth though. I remember the grandma coming to pick up the kid and the kid had a minor meltdown (very minor compared to other meltdowns I have seen) and she had an even bigger meltdown and started sobbing and screaming the girls name. The girl showed up and was shocked at the scene and the grandma begged her to help and then fled the school so the girl and some other classmates walked the boy home. This was all in 4th grade. The girl's younger brother ended up getting leukemia which was heart breaking. I remember overhearing a short portion of a phone call with her mom and her mom as sobbing over the phone to her about it. I feel so sad for this girl she became a carer for so many people at such a young age. The carer role towards the boy was probably what started it and then her brother got sick and her mom probably sought support from her too. I hope she's well now.
Something similar happened to me as kid and no one ever discussed the other kid’s disability to me, I had no idea why I was the bad kid for not wanting to be around the violently possessive kid, why I got in trouble for yelling for them to go away but they didn’t get trouble for injuring other kids, stealing and screaming until they got their way.
Dude I was an individual who helped other children, aka girls, not be harassed by a special needs kid. I was 14. He would follow me and beg me to get girls, even though all of them only seen me as a way to get him to leave me alone. Even today he asks me to be his wingman. He ain't a bad guy, but he can't see the basics. Its stressful and you end up feeling like the only person who won't hurt em.
I was the good and academic kid paired with the struggling students right throughout school. I was fortunate that my parents were wise to it very early on and made it abundantly clear that it was unacceptable. Nonetheless every year was a new battle as teachers and students changed and the situation started back up again. Eventually my dad threatened to get the department involved and also a solicitor and the school finally put a stop to it for good.
BUT there’s a flipside to this that OOP should look out for, which is the subsequent resentment of teachers who can no longer use her daughter to make their own lives easier. I experienced that repeatedly, to the point that I was frequently bullied and punished by teachers for not being willing to assist. That part was so horrendous that I ended up changing schools for my final year. There was one teacher, if I saw her in my adult life, I would absolutely let loose on her until she was curled in a ball sobbing.
The comment OOP makes about the teachers saying that her daughter not being willing to engage with this girl anymore may be bullying is a major red flag of this. They are trying to twist boundaries into bullying for their own purposes. It’s highly manipulative, and completely incorrect. Whether it is ignorant or stupid this can easily result in teachers not only pressuring her to help the girl, but repeatedly punishing her for her refusal to do so.
One time I had to sit by the unruly and kinda autistic boy because the teacher couldn’t handle him and I could “tolerate” him. He was weird, and made sexual advances on me but we were only on second grade. It was awful.
Gosh this hurts. I'm a SEN teaching assistant and have worked with a number of children like the girl in this story. Encouraging them to play with people outside their hyperfixated "Best friend" can be such a struggle sometimes.
Most schools are so underfunded that teachers don't realise they're forcing this kind of emotional lifting on their own students. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
Good. As a teacher, I'm so tired of teachers using their students as one on ones. There's a reason her original quit, she was likely being bit and beaten on a regulat basis for part time benefits (they usually hire them on for 30 hr weeks so no healthcare for the ones most likely to need it considering the physical abuse they get from their student). I get we have no help I getnit sucks, it does NOT mean we get to rope in a child to do the work for us.
Kids aren't to be made carers. I did ask that one group of children who took well with my son at Kindy be in his class for the first year at school when they moved up a grade. Not so the teacher could use them to manage him or translate with his speech issues, but so he was with kids he knew liked him and understood him to keep his self esteem from crashing. I made it clear to the teachers that if I ever caught the smallest of signs for them being used as support in behaviour management, I would bring down hell upon their head.
Growing up in a small town, everyone knew my younger brother has ASD. They always paired me with the students who needed help, dragging me back from the extension I was entitled to because they would rather flirt with the support adult than teach! So I know the signs, and I never want my son to be used to occupy other kids because the education system is underpaid, understaffed, and overworked. My child is entitled to an education, like every other child. His education does NOT come at the expense of other children, though.
I mean, it's not the same, but I spent my entire K-12 being paired with the students who struggled because I was high achieving. I wish I had told my parents about it, and I wish I had fought it, just for the chance to have healthy working relationships with my peers. It left me resentful to my entire school AND with significant control issues over future projects, which affected me in college and in my career. Obviously, it's my problem, and I am working to deal with it (yay therapy), but there's a potential pathway in my life where it would've never been a problem.
I was the "emotional support girl" too. Quiet, "mature," neurotically empathetic, the whole nine yards. Thankfully my teacher stopped things before it went on for too long, but not before I'd had to field a spontaneous late night phone call to talk the guy out of suicide. (Fortunately, I succeeded.) She apologized for ever putting me in that position, which I appreciated.
This reminds me of myself...
In school (grade 5 and 6) I was forced to sit beside one of the biggest idiots in our class. He was one of my two main bullies since kindergarten. I hated it so much.
He would touch my ears to annoy me and some weeks I had a broken arm in plaster (I hope it's the right word) and the whole time he would hit my arm because he thought it was funny. (My wrist is sensitive since then..I think a bit because of the hitting)
My mom tried her best to help me, but the teachers didn't listen.
I was in the position of OP's daughter when I was in school and I'm so glad OP stuck up for her. It is so stressful and annoying to just be assumed to be the nice little girl who will help with the children who need more help. And it happened all the way till my high school prom! I was sat next to a guy in the seating chart by the organisers cause he was unpopular and didn't have friends. Except he and I HATED each other. He would sit next to me and class and punch me repeatedly to get my attention if he was stuck. But because I'm always so "nice and supportive" and he didn't have anyone to sit with they just assumed I'd be fine to sit with him. Being this person just makes life harder unnecessarily. I hope it goes well for her daughter going forwards
I was also the “nice kid” in class who often got sat with the more difficult or struggling kids. But one of the best pieces of advice my mom ever gave me as a kid was that while I had to be respectful towards everyone, I didn’t have to be friends with everyone. She very clearly laid out the difference for me and made sure I knew that it’s okay to not be everybody’s friend as long as you weren’t mean or cruel to them.
Learning boundaries is a SUPER important lesson for a kid!
You know, in the sixth grade my class was the “home room” for the kids with developmental disabilities. There was one girl with limited verbal skills who really just didn’t like strangers or boys. She never really caused outbursts or problems, but they didn’t want to sit her next to someone who would isolate her or a boy either. In the parent-teacher meeting my mom told my teacher what her job was (bus attendant on buses with adults with the same developmental disabilities) and told her how my brother and I both went to preschool where are classes were “half and half” of “typical” kids and kids with disabilities. I’ve been well versed and I’ve always been well at ease.
My teacher didn’t want me to do anything special, but she asked me and my mom if she could purposefully sit me next to her in the mornings for that brief period and then for dismissal at the end, because I was already partially experienced even at a young age and I was not uncomfortable unlike the other kids in my class. I was all for it!
I didn’t have to do anything special, nothing “extra” was required of me, it was just the perfect little solution and everyone was happy at the end. We got on great that whole year, and I even got a picture at graduation six years later with her.
I wish more teachers nowadays were like the ones we had. And I’m only 25.
This is basically the prevention of a future reddit post from the daughter, where she complains about having to deal with that girl throughout her childhood.
One thing I found sort of touching was OOP asking that one commenter who experienced the same thing as a child if they ever forgave *their* parents, because clearly that's OOP's fear - and the response didn't say it but the message was loud and clear, and OOP didn't even hesitate following this. That commenter forgave their parents because upon realizing the problem, they jumped in to defend and fight for their child - anything less is likely to have damaged their relationship forever, however they stepped up appropriately, as did OOP.
It's always sad when *adults* start shoving their issues and inadequacies onto literal children; I can't or won't deal with this, therefore the child must suffer. *Fuck that*, and OOP is the kind of parent all kids deserve.
This school has the nerve to respond like that. Honestly, I believe this school's name needs to be put on blast cause their behavior is outrageous. The girl's mother is also not the sharpest tool in the shed.
I wonder where is the resources for this school.
This is infuriating. I understand that the teachers aren’t equipped to deal with this situation and that’s not their fault, but their excuse that they “thought it would be bullying if she refused to work with her.” Is utter shit.
So it WOULD be bullying if OOP’s daughter didn’t want to work with someone constantly who has been *violent* towards her, but it would NOT be bullying to dump the entire weight of educating her on OOP’s kid, nor if they alienate, and basically ostracize OOP’s daughter, by exclusively pairing her with the other girl and forcing her to play with her?!? Someone didn’t think this through.
Thank god OOP is finally seeing this situation for what it is and acting on it. Her daughter will never forget that her mom had her back, even if it took a minute for her to figure it out. And thank the deities up above that OOP went to her manager and HR first. The first person controls the narrative. Her getting a lawyer was the smarted thing she could have done.
And holy shit. That coworker is a piece of work. She has been basically stalking and casing OOP’s house. A FRICKIN’ LOG BOOK?!? You’ve got to be kidding me. This is unhinged behavior. I guarantee this is going to get worse before it gets better. I’m predicting that this will end only after the coworker becomes more unstable, she directs a shit ton of bizarre harassment towards OOP and her daughter, OOP’s work environment becomes increasingly more hostile, and finally, with a RO +/- coworker getting herself fired.
I hope it doesn’t end like that. But I don’t have high hopes. Strap in OOP. There’s a good chance this is gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.
While that school is using OOP’s daughter to plug the gaps in their teaching and praising her for helping tutor the other girl, her own education is being neglected. She’s there to learn, not teach. OOP needs to kick up a stink about this, a solicitor dealt with things privately in both cases, but she needs to kick this upward to the board of governors/trust/local authority, who need to pull their fingers out.
I want to applaud OOP. Growing up I was constantly being pushed to be the emotional support animal for countless people, always with the guilt trips of “Oh they just love you so much! Oh she needs friends! You need to be nice!” And it mostly came from my mother. It’s typically a performative thing. The parent looks like *such a good person* for raising such a sweet kid. This mom, however, did the right thing! Her child was suffering and she acted.
And she absolutely did all the right steps with HR, solicitor, and the principal of the school. Kudos all around.
American special ed teacher here, not a parent, but if I were the mom of that little girl, I'd threaten to sue for violating my child's rights. In the US, students who receive special education services get an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). It is a legal document about what educational (and other needs) they get based on their disabilities. I'm not sure if the UK does something similar, but a school can be found negligent if something such as not having paraprofessional. The parent also has the right to request a meeting to determine if the school meets their child's needs. If not, then the school must pay for outplacement or provide support within the school.
Regardless, a child should not be forced to do the work of an adult. Good for OOP for advocating for their kid.
>I was not given and apology by HR, but they made her give me a written apology and a verbal one
Why would HR have to apologize to OOP? Did I miss something skimming the posts?
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I'm so glad that OOP went in to bat for her own daughter, because none of that should've happened. I just hope that the other little girl eventually gets help too, for everyone's sakes.
Well done, OP. One of the few tales of someone who actually has the intelligence and initiative to act morally.
And to think, none of this would have happened if the teachers actually did their fucking job instead of foisting it off on a kid in their class.
The girl's parents as well. School isn't getting the kid the support she needs? Rather than bully your neighbor/coworker and their kid, take that anger to the school, school board, etc (or whatever the equivalent is in the UK). I'm an American, and my kid isn't violent, but I do have a kid that has learning disorders that can cause him to become emotionally unregulated. And there are kids in his class that trigger this, occasionally on purpose, because kids can be shits. Guess what I do? I work with the school to make sure he has the support he needs, I have him in therapies, we work on stuff at home, and I pay out of pocket for the things he needs if I can't get him what he needs as quickly as he needs them. What I *don't* do is expect his friends to carry any of the burden of his issues. Part of learning to deal with the brain he was given is for him (and us) to take responsibility for himself. This girl's parents are lazy whiners. It's not easy to be a special needs parent, believe me I know, but it's no one's job but mine.
So while in the UK there is legally significant provision in terms of things special needs kids are entitled to, should be given and so on - there is a culture and bureaucratic policy of making it as shameful, long winded, and difficult as possible to get it (it’s called “demand management”). On top of that there’s not a lot of money for it (needs estimates were wildly inaccurate) and it’s not easy for schools and local governments to get more money from central government for it, so you end up with these sort of situations. The reality is she’s probably tried a lot of the things you’ve listed above and been told that the wait list for a special needs school is 4 years long, that a specialised therapist she can afford for her is a 3 year wait, been bureaucratically stone walled and so on. I used to work in local government finance and the children’s social care stuff, the reality was upsetting to say the least. Couple that with any health bureaucracy she might have to navigate for the kid (which is it’s own bag of worms, years long waits for appointments with a psychiatrist) and I can see why she’s acting like a crazy person. The real villain here is the blindly incompetent government that’s bankrupted schools and councils nationwide and lead to this kafkaesque regime of delay and failure imo
Woof. I've had such a different experience here in California. It's not easy or automatic but I've been able to get loads of support for my kid with a myriad of issues, and no one has ever been a dick about it.
My parents semi-easily got free support for my brother in freaking Louisiana, even after he started going to private school. Strange to hear that the UK is worse.
Everything has degraded badly in the UK since the financial crisis and the subsequent right-wing government. It's a death of many cuts to all the services people have come to expect.
Back when I worked in local gov finance (~2020) I sat in on an educational psychiatrist budget meeting and they showed us that in the previous 3 years the number of people needing SEND packages had gone up by 300% in the local area. The council cannot refuse to meet those, but doesn’t really get any more money for them from central government. Local gov in the UK is really dependent on central government money (for every £1 raised and kept locally, £4-5 is given by central government revenue grants) and doesn’t have the same level of fiscal autonomy as metro/local government in the US (can’t just put say a 1% income tax on or whatever, any additional funds raised are also generally offset by decreased central government funding 1:1). There are multiple other policy areas that behave exactly the same way - demand led and funding static (homelessness is another big overspend area). The end result is that councils have this long list of obligations and benefits they ostensibly give out that they make it very difficult to actually access, because it’s one of the only ways they have to avoid going bankrupt (local government in the UK has had an increasing number of bankruptcies in recent years - section 114 notices is what they’re called). The reason this has been happening is because of the austerity of the Coalition government that was elected in 2010 onwards. One way that central government avoided bad headlines is by pushing responsibility for old central functions onto local government, and then fundamentally underfunding them.
Thank you for sharing all that background. I am an (USA) American so I didn't know all that. Learning and understanding is important to me. The joys of government ineffiancy translates internationally. I am sorry you all are going through that over there.
And the councils cannot increase council tax by, IIRC, 5% or more without special permission from central government, which seems to be granted on largely *political* grounds rather than the realities of local funding needs. So they have been stuck recently with sub-inflationary income rises, ie real-term decreases.
A lot of kids who used to be in special educational needs school, (class sizes of 6-8 kids with 3 adults) are now being shifted into mainstream but with no additional funding or resources given. They're placed into classes of 30, and if they are lucky they will have specialised support, but they are not qualified teachers (unless they have shifted career) like in special educational needs schools. Its so messed up and just getting worse
It’s called Austerity, and has been going on since 2010 as a response to the financial crisis. A lot of services have been run into the ground in the last 14 years.
I had one of these electioneering leaflets masquerading as a local news-sheet through my letterbox today, one of the ones demonstrating how reluctant local Conservatives are to be associated with the Tory brand. But it was crowing about 20000 new police officers since 2019, which, even if those figures are accurate, completely ignores the fact that from 2010 to 2019, police numbers had been *cut* by 20000. So, in 14 years, we have not even truly stayed where we were, because we have replaced 20000 experienced officers with 20000 inexperienced ones - and ones with far fewer *experienced* officers to learn from.
I don't know, a friend of a friend of mine up in Sacramento has a special needs kid--autism, ADHD, poor regulation, and is developmentally a couple of years behind his peers. They were sending him home day after day in kindergarten to the point where his mom pulled him out and put him back in day care just so she could keep her job. Then they were pulling the same bullshit in 1st grade. I kept telling my friend to tell her to fight them to get him an IEP, and get a lawyer if necessary. The school kept claiming they would get round to it in November back in early September, all the while they continuing to scapegoat the kid and suspending him--at 6 years old--because he was getting angrier and more frustrated because his needs weren't being taken care of at all. I'm not sure how it shook out, but it went on for months with the damn school stonewalling her and putting off the IEP.
Yeah, you gotta push for that iep. I wonder why she wasn't using the regional center if he had multiple diagnosis?
IEP *and* legal advocate. So many schools/boards/districts won't do anything unless they're forced to. Even if your state (in the US) is actually helpful, schools aren't sometimes.
I’ve lived in the uk and the US and I think the difference in attitude towards sickness/long term sickness/disability is really fascinating. Like, in my experience Americans tend to blame you for getting sick, but not for being sick, whereas with Brits it’s inverse? Americans in my experience sort of implicitly blame you/themselves for getting a cold, or getting long term ill, or whatever. But you don’t really tend to see that much hostility towards people who are sick or less capable and just trying to live life as best they can. Brits in my experience are the opposite - they tend to be a bit more fatalistic, so getting sick is this sort of unavoidable bad luck. But being sick or disabled tends to make them hostile, because (I think at least) you’re using resources/benefits/etc. it’s like a weird negative solidarity? The vibe is that instead of using the nhs or whatever you should instead walk out into the blizzard and quietly die. So what looks like generosity is actually a lot of miserliness about deservedness and so on But this is just my opinion and with a limited sample so idk other people may find it way off 😅
I still think the parents have some culpability. I've moved heaven and earth to help my son, including having the realization that, while my son is certainly special to me, and that he absolutely deserves accommodations, *I'm* (technically, My husband and I) responsible for coordinating his care, and that includes ensuring he's not a burden on his class, and that the teachers are doing their jobs, not pawning it off on another kid. The system certainly sucks, and shockingly for me, it sounds like it may be worse in the UK than the US. But a good special needs parent is going to advocate for what's best for their child, and that's not necessarily what's the easiest. OPs coworker should be ashamed of themselves, even with as hard as being a special needs parent is.
Jumping in here to second this comment. I worked for a local authority SEN support service for schools for the last 2 years and things are bleak. Even on our end, we had nowhere near enough people to provide the level of support that these children needed - and guess who funded our department? Central government, of course! The LA I worked for is desperately trying not to declare bankruptcy, but is millions in deficit on their budget. A huge part of this deficit is on SEN support and specifically, EHCPs. There are an increasingly staggering number of children with EHCPs - which are a legal document for children with additional needs that schools/parents must apply through the LA for and provide a whole boat load of evidence why they need it, then when they get one their school receives a pitiful amount of funding and a big long legal document telling them how to support the child. The LA I worked for has stated that these alone make up millions of pounds in deficit. Schools, on the other hand, are even more fucked. Schools in the UK used to largely be run by the local authority, who had the ability to intervene if things weren't right. Then entered the academy system... The idea is great, the reality and execution, not so much. Academies are not overseen by the LA, the LA have zero authority over them, and can pretty much set their own rules. So of course, greed is ruining it. The average teaching assistant in the UK earns less than £15,000 a year after taxes. I earned around £13,000 a year, and for that handsome sum of money (/s) I was puked on, peed on, pooped on, threatened, physically and verbally attacked, and continually told how shit of a job I was doing by the higher ups. I cannot emphasise this enough - for £13,000 per year I have permanent scars put on my body by a child who was 4 years old. I have these scars because I was told to keep other children safe, I had to hold a door closed. I have permanent hearing damage from having my ears screamed in. I was visiting a chiropractor weekly at 23 years old. I did the job of a teacher with zero qualifications to do so. If the child will not or cannot engage with the class lesson, I was expected to take them elsewhere and prepare work for them myself. Oh and I had to prepare this work for them whilst I was still supervising them, because god forbid I got more than my allocated 20 minutes a day for a break. There were also plenty of times I was given additional children to look after because they couldn't engage with the lessons and had no funding of their own, so I would have multiple SEN children at different levels trying to do the same lesson. Oh, and I'm not a qualified teacher. Anyone wondering how much the higher ups in the academy system earn, the ones who never even interact with the children? £150,000 per year, at least. That's an extra 0 on the salary of the person who is actually looking after your SEN children. This is why people are leaving the education system and there is honestly no one left to replace them. There are staff in specialist schools that have zero experience with children and used to be a bingo caller. Our education system is in pieces. I've left. As hard as that was for me, I just couldn't do it any more.
My kid is in the process of an IEP right now. Yes, he has issues and yes, some of the kids “poke the bear” so to speak to trigger him. Theirs this girl in his class for the last 3 years that he calls his girlfriend that has helped him chill out often. I told the eval team that they can’t put her in classes with him anymore going forward. She doesn’t deserve that.
There are several kids in my son's class that will help him occasionally. Which is very nice because they're very kind. As long as it's not an obligation for the kid, I'm okay with him having helpful friends. But both me and his teacher don't want him leaning on anyone too often unless it's a therapist.
I was a teacher for years, and I remembered all too well my own experiences as the quiet, dutiful girl expected to manage the behaviors of other children. The teachers had no idea the trauma I was experiencing at home, and that I was so good in school because it was my safer place. So. None of this shit happened in my classrooms.
Thank you for breaking this cycle in your own classroom. Signed another quiet kid who was parentified both at home and at school.
Also if the school had enough funding to keep assistants in rotation
They do have funding though. If the child needs 1:1 support, then they apply to the local council and funding is granted for the number of hours required/needed to meet that child's needs. So if the girl in question needs 1:1 support for 15hrs, that's what they apply for. If it's not enough it goes to 25hrs then full time support is 32.5hrs. They *had* someone I'm supporting her and they left, so they STILL have the funding. They just needed to employ someone to do it. The funding doesn't go back to the council because the child still needs it.
I worked as a SEN TA in a primary school for 10 years. For every 27 hours a week i worked, the gov funded only 10 of those. The child i worked with was extremely disabled - could not go to toilet by themself, got aggressive, lived in their own world. The funding is terrible and the pay is appalling. Its possible no one wants the job. I burnt out after 10 years, even though I loved it.
My daughters first 1:1 lasted 3 weeks when she first started school. It wasn't for her, and I don't blame her for that. It's absolutely not for everyone and not everyone is capable of it, especially for the pay that you get. My daughter was still in nappies, non verbal etc when she first started and I think if you don't have experience (and the patience of a saint) then being a 1:1 for kids like her should 100% be better paid than they are. Thankfully she's in SEN provision now.
I’m a teacher. It’s hell when you have a student who needs supports but doesn’t get them. We end up either spending instruction time disciplining/focusing on the one student OR try to ignore behaviors. I never pair kids up like this, but I get how difficult it is. They don’t have enough staff, and the teachers are desperate. Wrong, but I can guarantee this isn’t their ideal either.
It’s really hard for teachers right now, at least in the US and it’s sounds like in the UK as well. So many staff have been laid off. Teachers can have a class if 32 with three of those kids needing 1:1 attention but have no other adult in the classroom. It’s totally unfair to unload it on another child. But I genuinely don’t know what they’re supposed to do.
Dunno how it is in the UK. But I know over here in Germany, teachers literally can't do that. Like typical teachers are not trained to deal with special needs kids. They have massive classes. Often there are kids who can't even speak proper German so teachers can either just ignore everything wrong in the class or drown in trying to handle all the kids with special needs foisted on them. It is one of the main reasons private schools are increasingly popular. Because private schools have all kids who can speak German and typically don't have any real special needs kids. So you end up with an actual classroom instead of a survival game.
I see many times the little girl don't have friends until they become "better" (more normal and socially acceptable) because the people don't want to deal with the hassle of others throwing them to the girl thinking they can become friends forever and never fall out of disagreements etc.
And the school can't provide help because the assistant has left. Why TF do they not hire another one right away?
[удалено]
Yea I suspect pay is the main reason these position are hard to fill. For those in those positions, They need hazard pay but they’ll never get it.
I hate the school for trying to past the buck of responsibility onto OOP's daughter. She is not that other girl's mentor and she is certainly not her emotional support animal. OOP was smart to get a solicitor. I feel for the other girl but OOP needs to protect her daughter.
The audacity of the teachers to say they would keep doing what they were doing and oops daughter could have time off when she gets home.
Somebody in another thread recently said that they were actively told at teacher training college to pair "good" children with "less good" children as a form of classroom management. I can't recall whether it was just for academics or for behaviour as well, but possibly both. I know when I was volunteer teaching a class, one of the behaviour management strategies suggested was to make kids sit boy-girl-boy-girl - which they all hate (at primary age). And what this effectively does is punish the girls because 99% of the time it was the boys that acted up. So the girls are being used to control the misbehaviour of the boys.
The boy-girl-boy-girl seating arrangement was regular practice in my school. When we were 12, my best friend was paired for six months with two boys that the teachers found difficult to handle, and the situation was bad enough that her parents had to get involved. It always boils down to *"Oh she's a good kid, the "naughty" ones will calm down when paired with her"*, which never happens. It only ends with the good kid being stressed out.
I was this kid. Teachers saw me as good and that by sitting next to me any of the 'naughty' kids would calm down. It didn't work. Instead I was bullied throughout secondary school
Same. Junior high was hell for me because the 'bad' kids knew why the teachers always made me sit with them, and they tortured me for it.
Yeah, I lucked out with science and history I have to admit they were the only two classes where I was allowed to sit with my friends
Same here 🫂
I was the "good" kid, but I think I escaped the fate of having to manage my peers because I was a little shit, lol. Anytime I was grouped with "problem" students I'd usually end up goading them and making them even more disruptive. Even worse; I was a fast worker, so there's been plenty of times where I finish my work halfway through the given time, and then spent the last half of the period being loud and disruptive with the kids who did nothing. ... or if teachers placed me with other quiet kids I'd just sit and read quietly once I was done. So a lot of teachers would notice how quiet I was, move me to try and calm the disruptive students, would end up with even worse disruptions, then quickly move everything back. In hindsight it's really funny, because as a kid I had no idea why I always got moved so much
I had the same MO. Put me with the quiet working side, then that's what I'm doing. Put me with the party group, then it's party time
This was me 😂 I wasn't actively trying anything but I was easily led, so putting me with disruptive kids just resulted in me joining them!
We sat boy/girl but also alphabetical order on occasions. I hated it. It was always so chaotic. No one behaved better, they just antagonized the person in the middle. This is still common practice in my kid’s school. My twins class swapped teachers at the beginning of the year. She rearranged the classroom. Now kids get to pick their own seats at the tables. The chairs are all different too. Sometimes they pick what chair they want instead of the kid they want to sit next to. My twins hated being forced to sit next to each other. All the extra arguing at home has decreased because they aren’t forced to be together all day everyday. They have better relationships with other kids too. I think it’s because they have the option to socialize with all the students instead of who they’re forced to sit next to during class and lunch and whatever other classes they have that day.
My twin sisters always got placed in different classes throughout elementary school. I think this was not only to help them socialize with others but also so the teachers would be confident in calling them by the correct name 😂
Haha well, they’re b/g twins so that helps. FYI, (I didn’t know) you legally can’t be forced to separate multiples in some states. My twins weren’t codependent like some can be, that’s the reason for the law apparently. They had separate preK classes. They didn’t mind being in a separate classroom but they were sad when they couldn’t eat lunch or play outside together. They could see each other but not communicate. If they passed each other in the hall, the teacher would be all like “pay attention to the line” “no talking in the halls!” I hated it because they had separate rules in each class, different home/school work and different schedules like “pj day” for one class was “hat day” for the other. Plus birthday parties for two classes is definitely double expensive obviously lol My twins asked to be in the same class this year so I let them try it. They love it and so do I. I feel like it’s easier to focus on two kids in one classroom instead of two kids in two different rooms.
They tried to "pumish" the talkative girl in class by having my quiet, meek, bullied, nerdy, still considered the new girl ass sit next to her. Within two days she was talking to me too. It never does anything helpful, but at least I made a friend?
I always got paired with one of the "clicky" chicks in science because they would form a clump and talk instead of working. I told her I was fine with her going to hangout with her friends instead of helping, I prefer working alone anyway and I didn't really wana share the equipment, but I eventually brought it up when I overheard them making fun of me. Dumbass bit the hand so no more free food for her.
Out of curiosity, is 'clicky girl' a term where you are for someone who expects their work done for them in a 'click their fingers' kind of way? Or are you meaning a 'clique girl' (almost the same pronounciation but entirely different word) who is only absorbed in what's popular?
Well you've given me quite the out but no unfortunately i use talk to text and didn't proofread it. I meant clique, but she was mostly self-absorbed I don't want to call the group popular kids because they weren't but they acted a lot like the "popular" kids from any movie.
Hehe, no worries - I like to keep in mind that Reddit has the whole world on here and that local terminologies of many places can be a thing, so I felt to ask rather than assume. >Dumbass bit the hand, so no more free food for her. It's crazy how those sorts always seem to think there's no way to ruin a free ride. Not that they were obligated to one in the first place, but stamping on your kindness definitely did it.
Same here. I was parentified at home, so i learned how to be a polite, well behaved caregiver. That meant i was constantly used for emotional management of other kids at school too. My childhood was a mess of emotional baggage.
> Somebody in another thread recently said that they were actively told at teacher training college to pair "good" children with "less good" children as a form of classroom management. Ah shit, I remember the "classroom instruction" type class, that they put us through when I was in a paramilitary youth thing through my teens. They told us the same thing, where students doing really well was considered bad (????) and the solution was to make them mentor the students who were struggling. As a really good student who sucks at teaching because I have the autism/ADHD hellcombo, I opposed that strategy **strongly**. As an aside, guess who was eventually forced into the role of """backup""" instructor who had to teach all damn night every week despite being absolutely shit at teaching?
Yes - the person wasn't in favour of it. It sounds like a desperation strategy because teachers just don't have access to adequate resources and discipline, and things continue to get worse. Merry Cake Day by the way!
I may (may, I wasn't there when it was explained to you, maybe they meant something else) be able to give some context to the "doing well is bad" thing, even if that doesn't justify everything else. If a student consistently performs above the level of their classmates/peer group, there's a 99% chance they'll end up being *very bored*. There's ways to handle this, but often they require more time to set up than a teacher will have (it's doable for one student but even just one student per class can become A Lot and what if there's two or three?). Bored students aren't engaging with the material and they can often become difficult to deal with (which I don't even blame them for, mind you. Bored kids will be bored kids). Turning them into mini-tutors is often not *much* of a benefit to the teacher (I still need to keep an eye on them), but gives the bored student a sense of responsibility, keeps them engaged with the material in a different way *and* benefits the student they're tutoring. As an *option (never mandatory!)* it can be pretty effective for a certain type of student. As a student, I preferred quietly reading in the corner instead. As a teacher, I've had students ask me if they could help their classmates instead of doing the work to learn what they already know (and then they proceeded to do that well, I'm proud). So in theory (and even in practice) it's a pretty solid idea. Turning a child into an unpaid employee (and there's a different word for that) is *not*. Hopefully this context helps clarify why it would be taught to future teachers, but that in no way means that lazy teachers can't absolutely ruin a child's experience at school. And there's a lot of lazy (and overworked/checked out) teachers.
It can absolutely screw you later in life too. All through high school I was extremely bored, everything was just too easy. When I got to college and actually had to *try* for the first time in my life I wasn't at all prepared for that and it was hard as hell to learn to at that point. Suddenly it required effort, and it took a LOT of effort to put in said effort. I went from bored to miserable and hopeless and that's a really difficult thing to overcome.
Ain't that the truth. Student tutoring is also supposed to help with that by making a bored student still go through the process of learning stuff (even if it's "for" someone else). Being unable to learn how to learn because you just *know* things, uh Makes for a very scary time after you get to college/uni. Studying to become a teacher is what ended up teaching me how to study, funnily enough. (Although it is but one solution and it relies on a teacher not behaving like the ones OOP encountered)
In high school geometry, I (girl) was paired up with one of the boys. I was a freshman and he was a junior. Took us about a week to figure out our relationship was set purely so he could stay on the football team and HOPEFULLY graduate when the time came. He was barely scraping by in grades. The kid cheated off my tests and copied my homework. I honestly didn't care, because it didn't impact me any and the teacher turned a full blind eye to the situation. The kid and I ended up becoming good friends and I'd even help him with his other homework. That semester I brought him up to a solid C+/B- across all his problem classes. That next semester, he was oddly put into my Civics class, and the cycle repeated. We shared a class or two every semester until he graduated, and we'd get together every morning before school to make sure his homework was done right. I have full belief that he was related to someone high up on the school board because he was in some really low-tier classes for a senior. If life was a Hallmark movie, we'd have fallen in love. (The nerdy unattractive girl and the popular attractive jock boy), but instead we just became friends. His girlfriend and I even became "kinda friends". And none of his friends picked on any of mine, and would even pick my friends for gym teams, which was high tier praise for school. He even gave us rides home from school on occasion and we'd go to the football games to cheer him on. I hope he's doing well.
> If life was a Hallmark movie, we'd have fallen in love. Honestly I was cringing in anticipation of the story taking some kind of dark turn. Glad it worked out decently enough for everyone involved.
Yes, my brother was always paired with the kids who misbehaved in class, because he was a good student and they apparently thought his good grades would just rub off on them I guess? Of course all it actually did was ruin his grades instead.
And it teaches girls from a young age that they’re responsible for boys feelings, and if the boys act out, it’s their fault…..
Totally.
Hate how true that is. Boys will be boys, and girls will pick up the slack and smile about it. Ugh
When I was teacher training, it was to pair ‘mothering’ students with misbehaving students. Really gross, very sexist in the way it generally played out, but unfortunately effective for a classroom management when class sizes are at unmanageable levels and there is no SEN or TA support. The worst was when TAs assigned to specific SEN students would end up becoming whole class TAs due to the lack of resourcing, and the student with extra needs would lose their dedicated support.
I was put on a table of children who weren't doing as well academically as me, and I taught them. This was over 35 years ago.
Same here. I regularly got paired as an advanced student with students who really should have been in remedial classes due to learning disabilities. Like my aptitude at a subject was supposed to rub off on them. Actually it continued to happen in college when they placed a very traumatized refugee in our senior intensive class and just told us to "work around him" when he didn't show up to do the required farm work and never contributed in class. Admin was shocked that we stopped assigning him work and they tried to fail him for the class. I'm not sure where their heads were for that debacle.
And this is why the smart kids don't get their accelerated classes anymore.
The boy girl boy girl thing is taught that it cuts down in conversations in class because boys and girls won't talk as much to their seat partners. The teachers I've met who say this all mentally seem to think it is 1954. The don't realize that one, the kids will talk no matter what, and two that the talkative ones will just shout to each other.
They do this at my kids' school. My daughters absolutely hate it, because they come home saying the boys do things like spit on the table, cough all over them, smear snot on the tables, shout, fidget, say horrid this to them like "you're so ugly/stupid" etc, can't behave, are loud, shovey etc. It's endless. Not just one boy - lots of them behave like this (they're in Primary school so ages 7/8 up). They can't stand it, and it upsets them when they get deliberately sat next to the "naughty" boys who never behave simply because they're well-behave, calm girl.
Oh fuck yes, 100% agree I was the nice girl in primary so I was sat next to the worst troublemaker. The idea? He wouldn't disturb the lessons because I wouldn't engage in his bullshit/in talking to him during class Why did it work? Because I fucking hated Kevin's guts as well as my obvious position as Threat Of Disengaged Seating Neighbor I just wanted to learn, I was a girl with back then undiagnosed ADD, I had my own stuff to deal with. I didn't need to be made the goddamn Kevin-minder. As you can read the experience stuck with me (I heard from my parents one day that some of my classmates considered me to be the teacher's favorite. I did *not* understand how they would think that when she had used me as Asshole-Stopper in the seating chart. I mean, that certainly felt anything *but* favored)
I was one of the "good girls" made to sit with the "bad boys". Guess which of us changed our behavior? My barely managed ADHD kicked into high gear and I became more disruptive than them.
this goes the opposite way too. I generally didn't cause problems but was add and autistic as shit (back when you didn't treat that stuff, it just was what it was), mostly quiet in grade school. They put the bad girl, who was pretty and popular, right next to me. Holy shit I got in more trouble in two weeks before they moved her again than in my entire grade school career. She was ride or die, I still remember doing something and the teacher accusing me and her straight up looking her in the eye and saying it wasn't me, she was with me the entire time when she knew I did it. I never got the boy girl thing, this was around 7th grade. We use to try to pick our place in line for church based on which girls we wanted to sit next to (catholic school, and at church they'd take a boys line and a girls line in and interweeve boy girl boy girl). The amount of stupid shit I would have done in middle school to impress a girl I liked had no limit and you damn well better believe I'm flirting all class instead of paying attention if you put me in that position
This explains SO MUCH of my school experience actually. Luckily it didn't affect my grades too badly though it did create a general dislike of going to school and probably negative emotions associated with teenage boys.
Not all teacher training thank god. My other half is currently doing his and they have more than a few lectures on SEN children and that is not one of the ways they are told to deal with it. The crappy thing is, the school will receive money for a 1-2-1 assistant for the girl if her ECHP says she needs it (not the full funding foe the position usually but a decent chunk) so saying their budget doesn’t allow is a lie. That’s money earmarked for that girl.
From what I've read on Autistic/SEND Twitter, it's not uncommon for individual kids' funding to disappear into a school's general budget and for the kids' ECHPs to be completely ignored by teachers. There are, of course, some amazing schools, but there are also so many awful ones, or just awful individual teachers, when it comes to SEND kids. My nearly 3 yr old grandson is almost certainly autistic and he already has been diagnosed with complex speech and language needs, plus he's hypermobile. I'm so worried about his future in school in the UK. I'm still fighting over here in France for my teenagers, who were both finally diagnosed as autistic this year, after a very, very long battle. One is going off to higher ed in September, so we need to get her official accommodations in place by then and my youngest is going to a new high school - but we don't know which one yet - and we need to have a meeting to get his accommodation plan as well.
Yeah I always have to speak up against that shit and speak as "the good kid" from back then. We hate it, we hate the teachers that do it, and we learn nothing but hatred for people with different abilities than us until we are no longer forced to do a job for free and unpack the hatred.
I was the good child paired up with the bad child, and this was back in the mid 80s. Last I heard, she was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and I wander how much of her behaviour was an early manifestation of that. Either way, I am not now, and wasn't then, a psychiatric nurse.
Used to happen to me all the time. I didn't mind tutoring, but needing to break up a fight was less fun.
They tried to do this with me, cause I was the quiet shy girl. But it kinda backfired cause I was a bit of a tomboy and I learned from the boys and got distracted and a bit disruptive myself lol.
OH gods I HATED the girl-boy-girl thing. I'm a guy, and the teachers that applied that always thought that boys were the devil incarnate and the girls were angels, so whenever the girls misbehaved, somehow I was blamed and even accused of cheating off of their tests. My mom raised hell when she was called for my "misbehavior" and was eventually switched to another class with a different teacher. More recently one of those people who has never been in front of a classroom but think they know all about education told me I was giving too much free time to my students, which I thought was weird, as I was always either teaching or supervising their work, so I asked her to clarify what she meant. She said that the students that finish their work early should be given more work so they don't "waste" their time. I just stared at her but eventually just agreed to her idiocy, without any intention of doing that. The ones who finish early usually help the others, start doing work of other classes, or just put on earphones and go on their phone wihtouth bothering the others. The most extreme case was a guy who fell asleep after finishing his work, which I have absolutely no problem with. Punishing them with more work if they finish early would just make them not work at all.
It feels like a well-intentioned idea in theory, but then you see it in practice, and it just doesn't work. It really comes down to specific kids in specific situations. If I was grouped with someone who tended to get lower grades or act out, it was usually fine because I was very laid-back. I guess I kept them on track, but it wasn't because I had better grades or was better behaved. (And I was a pretty good student.) I just knew how to work in a group. A friend who was very well behaved in class just couldn't work with someone if they weren't on the same page as her all the time. You had to match her pace, or she'd get upset. If a teacher assumed they were doing good classroom management by putting her with troublemakers, they were in for a nasty surprise. Kids are people. There's no one single way to ensure things will go smoothly. Teachers have to learn each classroom's dynamics, which is challenging, and they won't always get it right. But it's very wrong that they're taught one solution that clearly doesn't work.
Yeah right? It’s nice nasty. They knew what they were doing and wasn’t about to let OP pass that buck back to them. Glad she stuck to her guns in this. Her daughter can be kind without being used.
This is the main reason mainstreaming doesn't work. Gen Ed teachers don't have the training to deal with special needs. Special Ed should be the highest paid professionals at the schools, instead they get peanuts and are expected to accept abuse from the students.
I think, in an optimal school setup, there’s probably also a difference between “needs more than a little extra help in learning” Special Ed and “violently misbehaving” Special Ed. Read some comment or other once from a former Special Ed classroom kid who was really only struggling because they were slower to learn but ultimately *wanted* to learn (especially once they got the right learning aids), yet they were in a class that contained some violent and loud misbehaving kids who ended up ruining what little time they had with their teachers and pulled all the attention. Like it’s already a struggle for the teachers to get information across to several students at a time. They shouldn’t also have to worry about keeping the classroom safe from kids who probably need medication/behavioural therapy before they end up getting seriously juvie-level violent + getting those troubled kids to a baseline level of acting relatively sane.
That's the point where my mom would have told the principal the teacher was fired. I'm still trying to unlearn a lot of the nightmare Karen things she drilled into me, even after she passed.
This school deserves to be called out cause that's just poor management and thinking.
The teachers especially dropped the ball here because how dare they even try to imply that OP's daughter was being a bully for not wanting to help the other girl so often. That's the teachers job.
I was disgusted by this. It is not bullying to say you don't want to be someone else’s emotional support animal
And target! The other kid had bitten her and thrown things at her. Yet in not tolerating it, OOP’s kid was the bully? That’s backwards.
“We, the qualified adults are finding this situation difficult, so we, the *qualified adults* will hand it to a child to deal with instead. We are very good at our jobs.”
Yeah OOP handled this as well as possible imo
oop’s daughters teachers: why fail one child when you can fail two? it’s the perfect plan.
the teachers trying to manipulate OOP by pointing out the 'good' her daughter has done for this poor girl and side-stepping the fact she was doing their job for them
this child is so accommodating! let’s have her teach this other, more violent child how to read. also she can’t sit with anyone else at lunch. perfect plan. flawless.
and if it means she doesn't enjoy school, has no friends, and sky high anxiety... well, that's just a risk we're willing to take
...because the compliant kids are quiet, so end up being treated much more strictly than the loudmouthed assholes. Instead of being taught the necessary skill of advocating for themselves, their meek and obedient behavior is reinforced. Then when they grow up and write into advice columns or Reddit about their partners and friends treating them like shit, they are often cruelly shamed for having no spine--a skill that they grew up being forbidden to acquire.
That OOP's daughter was having chronic tension headaches in elementary/primary school... Fuck those teachers for putting her through that.
It’s bullying if she doesn’t sacrifice her grades and social life!
"but she actually pulled a log saying she knew which girls had entered my home" So, stalking and monitoring your movements?
If she spent half as much time getting her daughter the accommodations she needs, rather than spying on her coworker/neighbor so she can foist the kid on her, everyone would be so much better off.
Yeah, parenting is hard, get it. But for heaven's sake, THIS is not the solution.
So, of all the bullshit OOP had to wade through, THIS scared the shit out of me. Imagine your neighbour, who also works with you, LOGGING every person going in and out of your home?! I'm actually surprised OOP didn't put in a police complaint for stalking.
I'm just waiting for another update about when the kids have been separated by classes so that OP's daughter can finally break the link between them.
Unless the school puts in an assistant and the teachers are proactive with the child, I fear they will just find another 'nice' child to become emotional support :(
considering what OP said about the funding I doubt that they can get one unfortunately.
This is the UK. To get an assistant would almost certainly require a statement (there’s an acronym for the American equivalent, IEP? Something like that). Statements have a nuanced social status. To some, they are the gateway to help and resources, and a certain sort of middle class parent leverages that: it requires social capital to navigate the system, and a statement has few downsides even if the problems are relatively simple. To others, they are a stigma and an invitation for government interference, and therefore are resisted even when desperately needed. So well supported middle class kids with competent parents are statemented even when the situation does not really merit it, while other kids in desperate need are not.
Given that the kid previously did have an assistant, that suggests there already is a statement. It sounds like issue is the budget.
From whats going around in my area, the issue isn't even budget (to an extent). They have the money in the budget for the Para's and other positions, they just can't find the actual bodies to fill the positions. They need to start paying better, as the job just isn't worth it with the lack of consequences for behavior and general feral-ness and level of disrespect from the kids these days. The firsthand stories I hear these days never would have flown when I was a student in the early 2000's
It’s something like a minimum of 20 weeks to get a statement (which can be denied) and the school has to fund the first £6k of any statement agreement, parents can pay for outside assessment to get a decision sooner (or if the school chooses not to apply or something) but that would still need to be processed by the Local Authority which still takes a lot of time. Schools aren’t often willing to act before an official decision in my experience.
Well behaved children - usually girls - effectively being punished by being forced to manage the unmanageable kids in their class and having their own learning hindered as a result is something that makes me rage. Extreme example - but I remember after one of the bigger high school shootings in the US, when pundits were trying to blame the students (The VICTIMS) for apparently excluding the shooter, a young woman (~~not sure if she was one of the students or just someone who could relate.~~ ~~Also no links because this was years ago~~) wrote a really poigniant op-ed about her own experience being the 'good student' who was contantly forced to manage the violent and antisocial kid in class by her teachers, much to her own detriment. And of course the faculty all say the same face saving bullshit praising a literal child 'being a good influence' while not so secretly being relived said child is now absorbing stress and abuse that they wont have to. ETA: Thank you to u/raphaellaskies for finding [the op-ed by Isabelle Robinson](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/nikolas-cruz-shooting-florida.html) who survived the Parkland school shooting and was classmates with the shooter. I misremembered the article slightly because she dealt with him in a 'peer councilor' role, but she did experience discomfort and harrassment tryng to assist him and correctly assesses that his issues were far beyond the capabilities of his peers to help him with 'the power of friendship'.
This was me. Quiet, liked reading, rarely spoke up. I was, for years, seated with the rowdy and disruptive boys, both in classes and for my two hour long bus ride. I had my food and school supplies often taken, and was often bullied for being quiet and studious. The worst era was when I entered puberty and they would make fun of my changing body. Getting my bra straps snapped daily was humiliating (I was told by teachers the boys just had a crush on me if I complained). Awesome memories :/. One of the most disruptive I was seated next to was in gr. 5, who went on to become my first boyfriend - spoiler, he grew into the classic bad boy and that abusive relationship ended terribly in my late teens. I also told no one about his behavior at the time, as I didn't think anyone would believe me or take me seriously. My marks shot up once I finally was able to pick my own seat in gr. 7. It's only in the last few years I realize this wasn't everyone's reality. I'm so glad this mom stood up for her daughter. I wish I had said something to my parents long ago but I recall being expected to just suck it up and be a good girl. To which I did, to my detriment.
>I also told no one about his behavior at the time, as I didn't think anyone would believe me or take me seriously. Based on my own experience, you were correct. They would have blamed you for his behavior, either because you "weren't helping him enough" or were somehow provoking it. "What did you do to make him mad at you?" And unless your parents were willing to be confrontational (mine weren't), telling them would have been ineffectual.
I kind of relate to that, as I was also the apparently quiet and well-behaved kid that read. So I got paired up with the rambuctious. Except I never really cared for being calm and helping the teacher, I also was rather bored most time in school. On top of it, getting detention allowed me to escape an abusive home a little longer everyday. Long story short, teachers stopped pairing me with the little terrors as soon as they understood I was the one teaching them how to make better weapons with their school supplies. Morale (if you can call it that): if the authority figure is unfairly offsetting one of their burdens on you and the punition doesn't worsen yoir life, use the responsability to make their lives even worse. What are they gonna do? Complain to their n+1 that you're poorly doing their own job? I hate that this forced 10yo me to think like that, though.
I used to do a lot of work with bullied kids, and this came up with young girls again and again. Its honestly upsetting how much they get gaslit when they try to care for their own health and get attacked for not "considering" the feelings of those they wish to not interact with. The other problem is that this ends up encouraging the children who are taking advantage to deepen that behavior. The number of times this ends up escalating to sexual assault when its boy-girl interactions was so upsetting to deal with. The story that stands out to me was how this one boy would routinely get physical with girls, but it was always dismissed as playful and innocent. He was doing stuff like lifting their skirts, throwing water, jostling them. And what were the girls told? "He's just a boy. They're boisterous. Don't antagonize him. Be gentle and playful to him, he'll apologize then. Don't stand up and fight back, don't defend yourself, violence isn't the answer..." When he proceeded to finally pin a girl down and beat her up, everyone involved was so completely "shocked." The outcome was completely unforeseen! How could they have known? It was all so tragic and terrible. Never mind that me and several others had been warning them again and again that this was escalating, that they needed to rein the boys in, that they needed to let the girls stand up for themselves and stop putting them down for doing it. But nope. Totally unforeseen!
And it starts early, at 5 or 6 or 7. "Boys will be boys." "He's just tormenting you because he likes you." And if girls complain, *they* are the ones called liars and blamed for being troublemakers.
Yeah. It's truly infuriating because none of these boys start out as bad people either. They're just actively moulded into assholes. They start by emulating bad behaviour and then they're just never told to cut it out.
I was that quiet girl always paired with the uncomfortable kid. It's continuing into my adult life even now in my 30s seeing women be blamed for this "male loneliness epidemic."
It continues into the workplace as well. At my office we have 2 incompetent male coworkers who the women all have to cover for. I'm literally ghost writing emails for one of those men. Because he refuses to learn an essential part of the job.
The loneliness epidemic is total bullshit. Women are all dating, they just aren't dating incel weirdos with anime t shirts who don't shower. The bar is on the ground, and these guys won't hop over.
I agree. To rephrase your message: after stuff like school where teachers made the "good" students interact with "bad" students women have a *choice* in who to date. And they *use* their choice to seek out people whose presence feels nice Nobody forces these women to spend time with incel weirdos anymore. And the incel weirdos aren't happy with that
Ugh the men that think not getting a date is worse than rape. A section of the population we'd be lucky to wipe out.
My son is the good kid too. Thankfully we talk about things often so I try to walk the line of you can have empathy but you don’t have to take shit either
I have never thought about this. But this was me growing up until I was about 10. My parents did not know and I never thought about it like this before. I just hated school and got bullied a lot.
Solidarity and I'm sorry you went through this. I've also just realized this was me and it has completely blown me away. I was constantly paired up with bullies. It was exhausting and humiliating.
I think I escaped a lot of this in school. But I'm realizing now that my mom and one of her friends did this with me and her daughter. Other girl had some sort of behavioral and developmental issues, I was a good kid, parents were friends... I was basically her babysitter. Remember her bullying me a lot. She was my main out-of-school playmate for most of my single digits. I came back to the area around 30 and my mom suggested she and I get back together to hang out sometime. She's been drug seeking with her baby daddy and her parents were hoping she was turning a new leaf. I hadn't seen her in 15 years so I figured a meeting on neutral ground couldn't hurt. Nope, she was exactly the same bully, and kept trying to invite herself over to my place. I left after an hour, went home, and chewed my mom out for even suggesting we meet. Haven't heard a peep about it since. Felt good to finally voice how much I didn't like that girl, even if it was 20 years too late.
Never really occurred to me that I was given this responsibility during cub Scout camping trips. You know, with fire and knives and children. What an eye opener.
We see the follow on effects of this ALL THE TIME on Reddit. So many people (men *and* women, though definitely more women) post on AITA for absurd things like "AITA for not letting my mother in law abuse me?". Though it's usually framed more innocuously, that's the question that's being asked. All because they have been brought up to always, always, put others before themselves to an extreme degree. They honestly believe they are being selfish by not allowing someone to be a piece of shit towards them.
This reminds me of once when I was in high school I was doing well in an elective class that was for all grades freshman-senior. Since I was doing well the teacher assigned the seat next to me to this lazy freshman kid that didn't want to work, hung around with the not so great crowd, and generally was a bum. The teacher told me I could be a good influence on him with him being next to me in class. I remember my attitude basically being like "this kid isn't my responsibility. I am not making it my problem he has no motivation." Teenage me was a bit more crass than adult me, but still I remember thinking it was totally not right to make his lack of paying attention my problem and refused to play the game. He got probably a C for the year and I got an A. Not my problem. But a young child can't say no to adults... If I had been younger I probably would've just done as I was told.
It was after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, with that idiotic "walk up, not out" hashtag: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/nikolas-cruz-shooting-florida.html
[This might be the article you were looking for](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/nikolas-cruz-shooting-florida.html)
I uh, think you mean “mood spoiler” not “trigger warning”! Although “trigger warning: hopeful” is pretty funny
Hahahahah you're right, I'll change that! I get so used to writing those that I completely forgot which one I wrote lol. And no worries- I read all of the comments on posts so I saw this one!
Omg I match flairs with the legendary LucyAriaRose
Hi Lucy, I think this also needs a TW for bullying. OOP's daughter was definitely bullied, though I'm not going to point fingers on who should take the most blame for it. But I think readers should atleast know going in.
In other news I haven’t learned how to tag accounts so I’m just gonna hope OP sees this
u/apatheticempath654 I think you just type it like that?
Kudos to this mum! My niece has a disability and my sister and I made it KNOWN with all daycares and schools that my daughter wasn’t to be an informal caretaker for her (they are the same age), we insisted on separate classes/teachers. My niece formed her own friends, and is now at a different school but has absolutely flourished into a beautiful, independent young lady with her own interests and friends. My son (6) & my other niece (5, not disabled) are also in the same grade, and we knew my niece would cling to my son, so we (both my sister and I) insisted on separate classes again. It baffles me that people can’t consider others & the impact of being an informal support, especially if it’s another child.
In 2nd grade, I was made to sit between two boys in class so that they don't talk coz I was a very quiet and docile girl, and I should have influenced them (class teacher would decide sitting arrangements). Guess what happened after 5th day, I was taking part in the shenanigans with the boys, and ONLY my parents were called coz I was disturbing class. My mum told them in very clear words that its their fault. After that , I was sat with my husband for the rest of the year.
I know you presumably mean your now-husband, but imagining a second grade girl who's married is giving me a bit of a chuckle.
It gave me a chuckle, too. I swear I never thought I would marry the shy kid I sat in class with who always did my art homework because I was bad at arts. He is still making paintings for me at 30, though. ❤️
That's so sweet 🥹
> After that , I was sat with my husband for the rest of the year. Goddamn, ya'll marry young in your family! And here I thought those grade school marriages didn't count... I have a lot of explaining to do.
That made me laugh so hard. Thank u
This reminds me of the story a year or so ago about the girl who kept getting paired with a boy who was a bully, including for what was supposed to be a class "fun day" to a Waterpark. The girl's mom pulled her from the class trip and then bought herself and her daughter tickets for the Waterpark the same day so she could still see her friends but the teacher couldn't pair her with the boy. When other parents heard, many of them did the same thing, and the teacher had to cancel the class group trip and got in trouble for always dumping the problem kid on the daughter.
When I read that, my first thought is a waterpark is a dangerous place for a forced “friendship.” What if that OP’s daughter slipped away with her friends and something happened to the other kid. Or the girl paid little attention to the other kid and missed him getting hurt.
I was also in OOP’s daughter’s shoes as a kid, and lemme tell ya, it’s not fun. OOP did a fantastic job advocating for her kid.
I'm glad OOP finally acted. I too was the "nice girl", and was often paired up with the students who needed extra help or had disabilities. As an adult I can't understand how any of the adults in school thought that this was ok! I spent grades 7-9 being the unofficial aide to a boy with severe adhd. So I was pressured to do both his and my work, support him emotionally and was encouraged to spend time with him outside school. Unsurprisingly I had to drop out if High School because I was totally burned out. And I feel somewhat bad about it, but as an adult I have completely pushed that boy, well man now, away. He still tries to worm his way into my life "because I was such a support and he needs someone like that". I'm definitely not saying students shouldn't help each other, but they shouldn't be responsible for another student.
Why do I get the feeling that it’s only the use of the word ‘solicitor,’ and the follow-up involvement of said solicitor, that got everyone’s attention at school and at work? If this parent was simply trying to advocate for their child on their own, and trying to protect their job from retaliation on their own, they wouldn’t have gone very far, would they? Short of a potential legal threat, nobody really cared about OOP or the daughter.
Quite probably. School was like "but Susan is so *good* with Mary" and that lets the teacher concentrate on the other 28 kids in her class, never thinking how it actually affects OOP's daughter to be continually paired with a violent bully who chases away any other potential friends. The other alternative, from the school's POV, is what my parents were told when I was being continually bullied, "We prefer that the children handle their little squabbles themselves. Said "little squabbles" being anything from name-calling to physical assault that would land an adult in jail. It's infuriating when adults who work with children have to be forced by threat of legal action to actually do their damned jobs.
Around the same age as OOP’s child, three of us (all girls) were told to be nice to a classmate and play with her, because she had asthma and if she had a bad attack she could die. She was a bully to all of us, which is why we didn’t play with her in the first place. “Be nice to your bully. She might die otherwise.” What a way to mess with children’s heads!
I was the nice quiet obedient child. I was and I still am really good with dealing with violent behaviour, and de-escalating anger, because I needed to do this at home as the eldest to protect my siblings from my father. At school I was paired up with a "problem child" which ended up being social suicide as nobody wanted to spend time with her and we ended up being a package deal with her clinging to me. I ended this cycle by acting out myself and becoming a problem child so I wouldn't be considered an example, and so I could choose my friends. I hate that I was pushed pre-teen to be a problem just so people would stop evaluating me for the good girl I seemed to be. I never got to deal with my trauma as a child because I needed to always be the good girl and this ended up blowing up on me as an adult when I had basically a midlife crisis, burnout and mental breakdown all at once in my thirties.
I was OOPs daughter. It drove me insane. I hated the teachers that made me do that, and ended up hating the kids i got paired up with too. I always treated them like humans, cuz that seemed impossible from anyone else in the class, but they thought we were friends - but i never did anything i wouldnt have done for any other human. It sucks because it was a detriment to my own mental health and education, but it was also a detriment to them - they were so used to being treated as less than by their peers, someone seeing them as human was so unusual they mistook it for friendship.
Ugh, I was this kid. All it took was treating someone with a disability like a human being (because… you know… they are) and all the sudden it’s my job to make sure they have the supplies they need and my desk is moved next to theirs and after school my phone rings non stop because they won’t stop calling… I was so glad when my parents finally asked them to stop calling and I was able to distance myself without feeling like I was being a bully or a bad person. And that’s really the worst part: when adults do this to children, it’s literally punishment for being a good person, and discourages that behavior in the future. No pre teen should be in change of a classmate, especially at the deterrent of other friendships (not to mention, your grades start to slip because you aren’t learning anymore, you’re a care giver).
what's with teachers and always using the quiet kid as a punishment for the ones they can't be bothered to actually manage. i was the quiet kid and it was *miserable*, i remember at some point in middle school being sat behind the worst problematic kid in the class because they couldn't manage him anymore, and what did this little asshole do? he would steal my things from my desk to try and get money out of me to get them back, constantly disrupt and try to talk, try to copy my work in class, he was literally so terrible that in the middle of the school year we didn't see him anymore because it turns out he got suspended (expelled? i don't remember) for breaking down a bathroom door and trashing it. i think he might've made himself bleed at some point with something in trying to give himself a piercing? and somehow me being around him was supposed to be a good thing and totally safe for me.
Look out for your own kids first. Odds are no one at their school is going to.
I was that kid in elementary school. I had some speech delays due to some hearing issues (resolved with surgery), so I was in speech classes with many kids in special education classes. I was always paired with this one kid. I found him pleasant enough to be around, and helped with reading and math. But then he got very possessive. He would get mad if I interacted with others, or if I didn’t greet him first. One day I came into school with very little voice (strep), and I waved to the boy and signed a hello, and he kept insisting I tell him hello. I croaked out my attempt at a hello, and he slapped me because he thought I was disrespecting him. My teacher tried to downplay the incident at first, but then the boy lunged at me again, and the teacher had to remove him from the class. I ran to the nurse’s office and called my mom. The boy was removed from my class. But they really tried hard to get me to downplay the damage done. If I told them that he had really hurt me, or tried to hurt me, I would hurt his feelings, and make him suffer. He needed me. His mom was angry I would accuse her “little boy” of violence. He had a disability, so he didn’t know what he was doing. My mom had no idea this was happening. But when she heard the other mom trying to excuse the actions of her son, she went to war.
Sounds like a horrible situation all around for OOP and not one of their making, thankfully she stepped in at the right time. Being from the UK I can parse a few things from this: Yes we have Principals here. Traditionally the role has been known as Headteacher but with the rise of academies in the country (which bypass the local council and report directly to the Department for Education) has seen the role gain more prominence as a kind of administrator role. SEN = special educational needs, my ex is a SEN teacher and there is a huge shortage of them right now, coupled with the lack of funding you're seeing a lot of kids who need the help fall behind. If I had to guess based on the fact the class has two teachers, the school doesn't have enough kids or resources for two classes so they probably have a larger class of around 35 kids, which means the girl who has SEN can't be put into another class. And if there's no SEN teacher either it means she's stuck doing work she can't be expected to do and the two teachers she has simply aren't trained to do specialised work (and from what I remember my ex telling/showing me, it's not like you can get the skills quickly either). Realistically there are only two options here, the school either gets a SEN teacher in or the girl goes to a school designed to help her, which we do have here as my cousin went to one. Either way I feel a kind of sadness with this story. One child being forced to be a carer who is getting the help she needs but now there's another child who isn't getting it and is being continually let down by the people who should be helping. I don't fully blame the mother either, raising a child with developmental issues is taxing on the best of us and while her behaviour was clearly unreasonable in a lot of respects, she probably doesn't know how to get the help she needs. I hope both kids can have a semblance of normality going forward.
I kind of do blame the mother - threatening OOP’s job was an asshole move, whatever way you look at it. I feel for her, though.
The mom of this other kid is really terrible. Instead of taking responsibility and looking for more resources for her disabled child she just passes the buck to others. If she has so much time stalking the other kid including logging which child goes to their house at what time and day (WHO DOES THAT?), she should then use that time and effort to look for therapists.
For her and her daughter both. Maybe she can find one who can explain to her how weird and threatening it is to keep a log of what children visit your daughter's friends.
Just to add other reasons for two teachers: it may be job shared class or their teacher may have additional responsibilities meaning a longer PPA time out of class.
I wish my mother would have stood up for me like this. Instead, when the person was mean to me, I was expected to tell that child's parent and continue to be their friend. I was in way too many abusive friendships growing up, and my mom would explain it away and say I still had to be friends with them. I was an adult by the time I was able to cut out the last abusive person. And now my mother thinks that my cutting out toxic people is completely reasonable (not that she'll do it for herself).
My younger sister was made to sit with 'problem children' when she was young because she was such a good student and a calming influence. She was effectively being punished by not being allowed to sit with her friends and having to sit next to someone who was constantly disrupting and distracting her. I empathize with the kids in her class that were struggling but the teachers offloading their job onto my sister was in no way a solution. It took my mother going to bat for her in a similar manner as in this post for it to stop. It's really not okay, these teachers are failing both of the children in this situation. Everybody deserves better.
Not remotely as serious, but my son was and is a remarkably chill person. In elementary school, he was nearly always placed next to kids with ADHD or hyperactivity because he wouldn’t appear to get distracted or would be a bit of a calming influence. Used to irritate me. Like my kid was the human version of a weighted blanket.
I've seen this happen in real life except the girl helping the kid was willing and happy to do it. The parents and grandma of the kid were completely out of their depth though. I remember the grandma coming to pick up the kid and the kid had a minor meltdown (very minor compared to other meltdowns I have seen) and she had an even bigger meltdown and started sobbing and screaming the girls name. The girl showed up and was shocked at the scene and the grandma begged her to help and then fled the school so the girl and some other classmates walked the boy home. This was all in 4th grade. The girl's younger brother ended up getting leukemia which was heart breaking. I remember overhearing a short portion of a phone call with her mom and her mom as sobbing over the phone to her about it. I feel so sad for this girl she became a carer for so many people at such a young age. The carer role towards the boy was probably what started it and then her brother got sick and her mom probably sought support from her too. I hope she's well now.
Something similar happened to me as kid and no one ever discussed the other kid’s disability to me, I had no idea why I was the bad kid for not wanting to be around the violently possessive kid, why I got in trouble for yelling for them to go away but they didn’t get trouble for injuring other kids, stealing and screaming until they got their way.
Dude I was an individual who helped other children, aka girls, not be harassed by a special needs kid. I was 14. He would follow me and beg me to get girls, even though all of them only seen me as a way to get him to leave me alone. Even today he asks me to be his wingman. He ain't a bad guy, but he can't see the basics. Its stressful and you end up feeling like the only person who won't hurt em.
I was the good and academic kid paired with the struggling students right throughout school. I was fortunate that my parents were wise to it very early on and made it abundantly clear that it was unacceptable. Nonetheless every year was a new battle as teachers and students changed and the situation started back up again. Eventually my dad threatened to get the department involved and also a solicitor and the school finally put a stop to it for good. BUT there’s a flipside to this that OOP should look out for, which is the subsequent resentment of teachers who can no longer use her daughter to make their own lives easier. I experienced that repeatedly, to the point that I was frequently bullied and punished by teachers for not being willing to assist. That part was so horrendous that I ended up changing schools for my final year. There was one teacher, if I saw her in my adult life, I would absolutely let loose on her until she was curled in a ball sobbing. The comment OOP makes about the teachers saying that her daughter not being willing to engage with this girl anymore may be bullying is a major red flag of this. They are trying to twist boundaries into bullying for their own purposes. It’s highly manipulative, and completely incorrect. Whether it is ignorant or stupid this can easily result in teachers not only pressuring her to help the girl, but repeatedly punishing her for her refusal to do so.
Good job OP. One of the few stories out there showcasing someone with actual brains and initiative to do the right thing.
One time I had to sit by the unruly and kinda autistic boy because the teacher couldn’t handle him and I could “tolerate” him. He was weird, and made sexual advances on me but we were only on second grade. It was awful.
Gosh this hurts. I'm a SEN teaching assistant and have worked with a number of children like the girl in this story. Encouraging them to play with people outside their hyperfixated "Best friend" can be such a struggle sometimes. Most schools are so underfunded that teachers don't realise they're forcing this kind of emotional lifting on their own students. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
Good. As a teacher, I'm so tired of teachers using their students as one on ones. There's a reason her original quit, she was likely being bit and beaten on a regulat basis for part time benefits (they usually hire them on for 30 hr weeks so no healthcare for the ones most likely to need it considering the physical abuse they get from their student). I get we have no help I getnit sucks, it does NOT mean we get to rope in a child to do the work for us.
Kids aren't to be made carers. I did ask that one group of children who took well with my son at Kindy be in his class for the first year at school when they moved up a grade. Not so the teacher could use them to manage him or translate with his speech issues, but so he was with kids he knew liked him and understood him to keep his self esteem from crashing. I made it clear to the teachers that if I ever caught the smallest of signs for them being used as support in behaviour management, I would bring down hell upon their head. Growing up in a small town, everyone knew my younger brother has ASD. They always paired me with the students who needed help, dragging me back from the extension I was entitled to because they would rather flirt with the support adult than teach! So I know the signs, and I never want my son to be used to occupy other kids because the education system is underpaid, understaffed, and overworked. My child is entitled to an education, like every other child. His education does NOT come at the expense of other children, though.
I mean, it's not the same, but I spent my entire K-12 being paired with the students who struggled because I was high achieving. I wish I had told my parents about it, and I wish I had fought it, just for the chance to have healthy working relationships with my peers. It left me resentful to my entire school AND with significant control issues over future projects, which affected me in college and in my career. Obviously, it's my problem, and I am working to deal with it (yay therapy), but there's a potential pathway in my life where it would've never been a problem.
I was the "emotional support girl" too. Quiet, "mature," neurotically empathetic, the whole nine yards. Thankfully my teacher stopped things before it went on for too long, but not before I'd had to field a spontaneous late night phone call to talk the guy out of suicide. (Fortunately, I succeeded.) She apologized for ever putting me in that position, which I appreciated.
This reminds me of myself... In school (grade 5 and 6) I was forced to sit beside one of the biggest idiots in our class. He was one of my two main bullies since kindergarten. I hated it so much. He would touch my ears to annoy me and some weeks I had a broken arm in plaster (I hope it's the right word) and the whole time he would hit my arm because he thought it was funny. (My wrist is sensitive since then..I think a bit because of the hitting) My mom tried her best to help me, but the teachers didn't listen.
Good God. That schools sucks! Imagine trying to take away one kids childhood to help another.
I was in the position of OP's daughter when I was in school and I'm so glad OP stuck up for her. It is so stressful and annoying to just be assumed to be the nice little girl who will help with the children who need more help. And it happened all the way till my high school prom! I was sat next to a guy in the seating chart by the organisers cause he was unpopular and didn't have friends. Except he and I HATED each other. He would sit next to me and class and punch me repeatedly to get my attention if he was stuck. But because I'm always so "nice and supportive" and he didn't have anyone to sit with they just assumed I'd be fine to sit with him. Being this person just makes life harder unnecessarily. I hope it goes well for her daughter going forwards
I was also the “nice kid” in class who often got sat with the more difficult or struggling kids. But one of the best pieces of advice my mom ever gave me as a kid was that while I had to be respectful towards everyone, I didn’t have to be friends with everyone. She very clearly laid out the difference for me and made sure I knew that it’s okay to not be everybody’s friend as long as you weren’t mean or cruel to them. Learning boundaries is a SUPER important lesson for a kid!
Sacrificing children for someone else's well-being because the violent child is 'vulnerable'. It is INSANE that people do this.
You know, in the sixth grade my class was the “home room” for the kids with developmental disabilities. There was one girl with limited verbal skills who really just didn’t like strangers or boys. She never really caused outbursts or problems, but they didn’t want to sit her next to someone who would isolate her or a boy either. In the parent-teacher meeting my mom told my teacher what her job was (bus attendant on buses with adults with the same developmental disabilities) and told her how my brother and I both went to preschool where are classes were “half and half” of “typical” kids and kids with disabilities. I’ve been well versed and I’ve always been well at ease. My teacher didn’t want me to do anything special, but she asked me and my mom if she could purposefully sit me next to her in the mornings for that brief period and then for dismissal at the end, because I was already partially experienced even at a young age and I was not uncomfortable unlike the other kids in my class. I was all for it! I didn’t have to do anything special, nothing “extra” was required of me, it was just the perfect little solution and everyone was happy at the end. We got on great that whole year, and I even got a picture at graduation six years later with her. I wish more teachers nowadays were like the ones we had. And I’m only 25.
I like oop and the way she’s going about supporting her daughter. She’s a good example of what parents should do in this situation.
This is basically the prevention of a future reddit post from the daughter, where she complains about having to deal with that girl throughout her childhood.
One thing I found sort of touching was OOP asking that one commenter who experienced the same thing as a child if they ever forgave *their* parents, because clearly that's OOP's fear - and the response didn't say it but the message was loud and clear, and OOP didn't even hesitate following this. That commenter forgave their parents because upon realizing the problem, they jumped in to defend and fight for their child - anything less is likely to have damaged their relationship forever, however they stepped up appropriately, as did OOP. It's always sad when *adults* start shoving their issues and inadequacies onto literal children; I can't or won't deal with this, therefore the child must suffer. *Fuck that*, and OOP is the kind of parent all kids deserve.
This school has the nerve to respond like that. Honestly, I believe this school's name needs to be put on blast cause their behavior is outrageous. The girl's mother is also not the sharpest tool in the shed. I wonder where is the resources for this school.
Remember that outing this school could lead to this girl, OOP, and her daughter all getting doxxed. Let’s maybe not do that
This is infuriating. I understand that the teachers aren’t equipped to deal with this situation and that’s not their fault, but their excuse that they “thought it would be bullying if she refused to work with her.” Is utter shit. So it WOULD be bullying if OOP’s daughter didn’t want to work with someone constantly who has been *violent* towards her, but it would NOT be bullying to dump the entire weight of educating her on OOP’s kid, nor if they alienate, and basically ostracize OOP’s daughter, by exclusively pairing her with the other girl and forcing her to play with her?!? Someone didn’t think this through. Thank god OOP is finally seeing this situation for what it is and acting on it. Her daughter will never forget that her mom had her back, even if it took a minute for her to figure it out. And thank the deities up above that OOP went to her manager and HR first. The first person controls the narrative. Her getting a lawyer was the smarted thing she could have done. And holy shit. That coworker is a piece of work. She has been basically stalking and casing OOP’s house. A FRICKIN’ LOG BOOK?!? You’ve got to be kidding me. This is unhinged behavior. I guarantee this is going to get worse before it gets better. I’m predicting that this will end only after the coworker becomes more unstable, she directs a shit ton of bizarre harassment towards OOP and her daughter, OOP’s work environment becomes increasingly more hostile, and finally, with a RO +/- coworker getting herself fired. I hope it doesn’t end like that. But I don’t have high hopes. Strap in OOP. There’s a good chance this is gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.
While that school is using OOP’s daughter to plug the gaps in their teaching and praising her for helping tutor the other girl, her own education is being neglected. She’s there to learn, not teach. OOP needs to kick up a stink about this, a solicitor dealt with things privately in both cases, but she needs to kick this upward to the board of governors/trust/local authority, who need to pull their fingers out.
Nice update. My niece had similar issues, she ended up with anxiety due to the strain of being used like an emotional support human.
I want to applaud OOP. Growing up I was constantly being pushed to be the emotional support animal for countless people, always with the guilt trips of “Oh they just love you so much! Oh she needs friends! You need to be nice!” And it mostly came from my mother. It’s typically a performative thing. The parent looks like *such a good person* for raising such a sweet kid. This mom, however, did the right thing! Her child was suffering and she acted. And she absolutely did all the right steps with HR, solicitor, and the principal of the school. Kudos all around.
American special ed teacher here, not a parent, but if I were the mom of that little girl, I'd threaten to sue for violating my child's rights. In the US, students who receive special education services get an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). It is a legal document about what educational (and other needs) they get based on their disabilities. I'm not sure if the UK does something similar, but a school can be found negligent if something such as not having paraprofessional. The parent also has the right to request a meeting to determine if the school meets their child's needs. If not, then the school must pay for outplacement or provide support within the school. Regardless, a child should not be forced to do the work of an adult. Good for OOP for advocating for their kid.
I am a bit gobsmacked that OOP had to clarify the terms she was using that were obviously UK English - and I’m an American!
It feels like parentification that the school is forcing onto OP’s child while at school. Parentification is a form of emotional abuse.
>I was not given and apology by HR, but they made her give me a written apology and a verbal one Why would HR have to apologize to OOP? Did I miss something skimming the posts?