Traumarama By Jenny
Who’s safeguarding who?
Another new school, another panicky call from a teacher in the second week. Rosie has been indiscriminately (and forcefully) kissing other kids apparently and all their safeguarding alarm bells are ringing.
We’ve been here before. Two years ago, not long after Rosie started her last school, I had a volley of missed calls one evening from the school Senco. Rosie had told her that she (Rosie) didn’t belong at this school and that she wanted to kill herself.
Not surprising that the Senco was panicking. Go back a few years and if I’d heard that from any 9 year-old, let alone my own daughter, I’d have panicked too. It’s a measure of how normal this kind of high emotion outburst has become, how unfazed I now am.
This is where knowing your child really counts. I knew that she picked up that phrase from a boy at her previous school. They used to bandy it about to each other in response to situations like not getting enough sweets or having to go back to the classroom after the break.
Was she feeling sad, confused and lonely at a new school? Undoubtedly. Did that mean she was about to kill herself? Our judgement was that it was extremely unlikely, and we were proved correct. What she needed was plenty of cuddles, listening to how she felt, and reassurance that in time she would make friends. She also needed adults around her that were delivering her the message that everything would be OK by not panicking. (We tried to deliver on all these).
What she certainly didn’t need was a referral to a health or protection person, a requirement to be questioned by more strangers of which she’s met too many in her short life. Thankfully she didn’t get this. We were very lucky that her teacher had her own reasons to be very clued up about children like Rosie. On the phone the next day she simply asked; “Do you actually think she is at risk or, how can I put this, is this her language for communicating her understandable distress?” Phew.
Safeguarding the vulnerable is very far from straightforward and seems like a constant dance between under-reaction and over-reaction. What happened in this case was exactly right, and good decisions were ultimately made for Rosie. But I wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t got lucky with the wisdom of that teacher.
Back to the present. I regard it as progress that her response to being anxious in a new school is kissing everyone. It also reflects the fact she is an extreme sensory seeker.
We are of, course, nervous about what this could lead to as she moves through puberty. But for now, it’s still sweet (unless you really don’t like being forcibly kissed, fair enough). And I still had to go in to school and be told this isn’t appropriate.