assaulted with a fire extinguisher ?

There is a reason that this blog post title has a question mark at the end of it. Now I know the definition of assault, but in my book there’s assault and there’s assault!! When you are raising a child who is prone to aggressive behaviour it’s natural to assume the worst especially when you get a call from the headteacher saying that your child has assaulted a member of staff……. with a fire extinguisher.

This story takes place in Year 8 of N’s first specialist secondary school. A space that had been used to seeing and dealing with a lot of his more challenging, controlling and aggressive ways. Following a few changes in leaderships, meaning new people to get to know, new relationships to build, new rules to follow and lots of uncertainty, N’s behaviour deteriorated and he was regularly getting into trouble and I was quite regularly speaking with school staff about it.

Having fought the local authority for N’s specialist placement from year 7, and him settling in quite well, I had gone back to work at our local college as a Learning Support Assistant. I really enjoyed the job and got a lot of satisfaction from supporting young adults with additional needs. My place of work wasn’t far from where N went to school, perhaps a mile or two, and with deterioration in behaviour came an increase in him leaving school, usually by climbing over the 6+ foot walls, and turning up at my work. Working in the department I did meant that my manager was very understanding, and met Nathaniel on a couple of occasions, but the frequency of phone calls meant me having to leave work to collect N was also increasing.

On this particular occasion it sounded more serious than the usual call I received. The phone rang from the now very familiar number of N’s school. It was the new head teacher and he sounded very stern. “We need you to come and collect N”, he said, “he’s assaulted a member of staff with a fire extinguisher!” My face dropped, visions of what had happened and what might have caused such a reaction from him raced through my mind.

I made my apologies, left work and drove to N’s school. As the door opened and the headteacher stood behind the reception desk I could see the displeasure on his face. He came to speak to me and I asked him to explain what had happened. “N has not been in a good place all day” he said. The headteacher continued to explain how disruptive he and another pupil had been throughout the day, which had become heightened over the lunch period. Staff had tried to distract and redirect N but he just wasn’t having any of it. “It was then..”, said the headteacher “that he removed the fire extinguisher from the wall and soaked two members of staff.”

“Excuse me …what?” I said. The sharp gasp of breath and look of sheer relief on my face, turned to laughter. I hadn’t meant to laugh, but I just couldn’t help myself and it was a kind of nervous response that I had no control over. I had got myself so worked up inside, worried that someone had been hurt, and the severity of how serious it sounded over the phone just wasn’t matching what I had just been told. “I’m sorry…” I said “I don’t mean to laugh, but when you said he had assaulted staff with a fire extinguisher my automatic assumption was that he had hit someone with it, this has come as quite a relief.” The head teacher was not amused at my response and mumbled “well I am glad you are relieved!” N got sent home with an exclusion that day, which was probably appropriate, but in the grand scheme of things it could have been much, much worse and I am very thankful that it wasn’t.