Let's Talk About Tom

Have you ever stopped to think about what might be happening at home for that child who seems to be in continual crisis?

Nov 17, 2024

Over my years teaching in specialist Social Emotional & Mental Health settings, I have encountered students who have displayed seriously challenging and dangerous behaviour. These include throwing chairs, assaulting other pupils and staff members, being verbally abusive, spitting and causing thousands of pounds worth of damage to the school building. Whilst this behaviour is not acceptable, I have always tried to understand the reason the pupils displayed this behaviour.

In this post, I will unpick some of the potential reasons pupils may act this way. Using a fictional pupil called “Tom”. For this example, I’m going to place Tom at Year 7.

🌄Monday Morning

Tom arrives at school with his hood up, he ignores all the members of staff who attempt to talk to him and makes his way to his desk. A member of staff approaches Tom and politely asks him to remove his coat, Tom tells them to “Go away”. As the staff member walks away, they hear music coming from where Tom is sitting. They realise he’s managed to sneak his phone into the classroom, again. The staff member returns and asks Tom to hand over his phone as he knows he shouldn’t have this in class.

At this point, Tom takes down his hood and tells the member of staff to “F*** off” pushes his desk over and turns his music up. Other children begin to look around at Tom and the overturned desk.

You might be racing through all the things your educational setting would be doing by now. For example, placing Tom in detention, isolation, or even suspending him for being verbally abusive. Staff might have asked Tom why he’s behaving this way, but he’s clearly in no mood to talk.

What the staff don’t know, is that Tom woke up in a cold and empty house. His parents left last night and haven’t returned. He never sleeps when they leave. So he spent most of last night awake, shivering, waiting for morning. Tom had to find his uniform from last week, which hadn’t been washed. When he tried to make himself breakfast there wasn’t enough milk left. He could have used it but he didn’t want the verbal abuse and threats of violence from his Dad for using the last of the milk. That would mean spending most of the night out and about again and the nights are getting colder now. Besides, the place where he usually hung out was being used by some teenagers who were drinking and smoking weed. He knew better to get drawn into that. So Tom went without breakfast, put his unwashed uniform on and put his coat over it. He thought if he managed to keep his coat on all day, no one would notice and he’d be able to get his Mum to wash his uniform tonight.

As soon as Tom got to school, all the adults were speaking to him and asking him to take his coat off. All he wanted was for them all to stop pointing his coat out. He just wanted to sit at the back of the class and disappear. He was thinking about speaking to that nice teacher he likes, the one who lets him play football when he’s feeling angry. Tom wanted to ask that teacher if they could ring home and see if his Mum and Dad were back yet. He was getting worried about them. Sometimes they stay out for days in a row and he has to steal food from shops to feed himself. He didn’t like stealing as he knew it was wrong but he never knew what else to do. Before Tom could ask to see this teacher, his desk was on the floor and everyone was looking at him. He couldn’t even remember pushing his desk over but he must have done.

Tom stands up and pushes past the other children to get to the door of the classroom. One pupil stands in his way as a joke. Tom punches them and reaches for a chair. He’s stopped by a member of staff and guided out of the classroom. Once in the break-out space outside, Tom begins pacing up and down, kicking other classroom doors and hitting his hand against the windows.

Before Tom could even start to calm down, two members of the senior leadership team arrived and began furiously demanding an explanation from Tom about his behaviour. Tom is verbally abusive towards them and is told he’s being suspended for 2 days.

The senior leadership team have no idea how devastating that is for Tom. Two whole days where he doesn’t feel safe and doesn’t know if he’ll definitely get his next meal. Two more days of uncertainty and constantly walking on eggshells around his parents. Never knowing if they’ll treat him like a son or just an unwanted guest. Tom is 12 years old. He’s in an environment which is unsafe and completely out of his control. School should be a protective factor for him but the staff don’t understand what life is really like for Tom.

What you can do to help

I’d like to think, in the scenario described above, that the school understood Tom better than that and that he was supported with his home life via food parcels, safeguarding visits home and such. However, sometimes, especially with new students, it takes staff time to unpick these situations. Below are my top 3 tips I’ve used for pupils like Tom.

🥪Food and Water🫗

My top tip for children like Tom is to make sure they’ve eaten before you begin having a conversation with them. I used to have a boy in one of my old classes who wouldn’t take his hood down or speak to anyone until he’d had a toasted bagel with butter and a cup of tea with 2 sugars. Once he’d had this and had around 30 minutes to sit and relax. He was extremely polite, respectful and funny little lad. Without this though, he would break windows and throw chairs across the classroom.

It’s such an easy thing to do and offer to children. Admittedly, this is harder to accomplish in a mainstream setting. However, having juice, biscuits and fruit on offer first thing in the morning is easily doable.

👂Actually Listen 👂

Children know when you’re not really listening. Pupils like Tom are experts at sussing out if a staff member truly cares about them or not. Listen to what the pupil is telling you and take an interest. If they’re interested in motorbikes, watch a 2-3-minute motorbike video with them on YouTube. Let them explain what their favourite bike is and why. Ask them the difference between road bikes and race bikes etc. Taking 5-10 minutes out of your day will make such a huge impact on children like Tom.

🧘Mindfulness 🍃

Teach these pupils how to become mindful. Talk to them about how to recognise when they’re becoming frustrated. Use examples from your own life. For example, I know I need 5 minutes when I can no longer keep a thought in my head or my thoughts all come back to a particular thing. When I recognise that, I often put a podcast on or go for a walk if I’m at work.

Try and test different mindfulness activities with these pupils. You’ll find some that work! Or transform your classroom into an inclusive one.

🗯️Final thoughts🗯️

Pupils like Tom are really challenging to teach at first but once you get them onside, they are the pupils that made me love teaching. Whatever you do, don’t join the rest of the staff members in labelling them as poorly behaved. Behaviour is communication, you just need to listen to what they’re telling you through their behaviour.