My 6yr old came home from school with a rug burn

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My son came home with a rug burn on his ribcage today. I asked him how it happened and he said he didn't know. He has been bullied by one of the aides at the school before so I am now paranoid that something happened.

Should I talk to the school or treat it like a normal boy issue? I took pictures of the spot as soon as I saw it. He also has a small bruise on his back. He is very accident prone so it may have been something that he did on his own.

I guess I'm paranoid because of the issue with the aide.

That is a tough one your prior experiences I think it should at least be mentioned. I don't know that you should make an accusation as you have no evidence, but I think they should be aware you are watching, you know? Maybe tell them you noticed the marks and that you are worried he is not being sufficiently made safe.

Follow your instincts. Accidents don't push you on the floor with a knee in your back.
My expertise is limited to my experience: I was only in schools from kindergarten through junior year in college. In all that time I never received or witnessed such an injury occurring by accident.

I saw all,kinds of bullying and abuse from adults, though.

I stopped telling my parents because I came to believe there was no point--they could not protect me. They hardly believed me. They did not like to think ill of the twisted adults into whose sadistic care they put me.

My feeling now is to never let this kind of thing go. File a report, make waves in the office, let them know you are a squeaky wheel and probably a litigious bastard. The squeaky wheel.
I don't know how to protect my kids while I am at work but I let their teachers know that i am very ready to be involved, tenacious like a pit bull and ready to leap in at the least provocation. In lower grades I was more hands off and my kids were bullied relentlessly.

Since third grade I have been a relentless son of a b***h, in the most polite way possible, and now my kids are getting excellent services and thriving. This is also has to do with doing lots of research around the IEP meetings rather than just waiting for them to tell me what they thought was right.

Good luck!

I think you know your kid best, so trust your instinct about his emotions when you ask him. In general I wouldnt be automatically suspicious about physical body marks that age, so around kindergarten and ground school, we often choose to play "rumbling and wrestling". (Not as an excuse for bullying but in agreement, so "He, do we want to wrestle? - Yeah! - Ok!" as well as there were rules to it. ) as well that we lived in the countryside, so we had regularly tons of bruises and such stuff. ^^ So I would care more for the reaction of your boy, when you talk to him and ask him about the origins of his bruises, as well as changes of behavior of him and such stuff.

As well as certain bodymarks (knees, ellbows, legs around desk heights are more typical for selfdone bruises, while stuff like face and chest are rather unlikely, because you normally try instinctively to guard that areas, when falling accidentally or other stuff, so normally its much more likely that a kid will hurt his knees, hands or ellbows, when falling, then fall flat on his chest.)

When my kid came home from school the same way, I assumed he's be roughhousing with someone else. We had yet another conversation about what is and is not appropriate at school.

If, however, I'd had bad experiences with aide bullying before, the first thought to run through my head might be completely different.

I'd call the school and ask. Play it paranoid: You're a nervous mom trying very very very hard to do your job to the nines. You saw the rug burn, you're curious what happened-- is he playing inappropriately, did he have another massive meltdown, what's up??

Whether you mention concern about staff bullying or not depends on how comfortable you are with the school...

...but if that stuff becomes anything approximating commonplace, you of course realize that it's time to hit the alternative education trail.

Thanks y'all! I do think I'm just being more cautious because he doesn't talk about things at all. I only know of the issues with the aide because another adult told me in confidence. He wasn't even going to tell me about it. So emotionally he is disconnected from the adults at his school from continued problems at school.
I talked to him more today and I think it is the result of a meltdown but I'm still going to mention it to the school just so they can keep an eye on him after meltdowns. He said he didn't notice his ribs hurt until the end of the school day. He doesn't feel pain like other kids so wouldn't have noticed when it happened. I think he honestly doesn't know what happened or when it happened.

My son told me nothing, even when asked for the longest time. Later on sometimes I would find things out during perseverative brain dumps, and it would be things from a couple of years ago. I am still finding things out from PS pre-k, and he is homeschooled 3rd grade now. Luckily none of it is -that bad- but there is a lot of it that I would have addressed with the school had I known about it at the time. Things like putting him in the corner for laughing inappropriately when he didn't understand it was inappropriate.

I really wish the school would set up web cams.

No kidding, right?? I would so completely love to be able to log into EdLine and watch my kids in their classrooms...

Of course, that's also known as a surveillance state, but-- it would sure set my mind at ease to know I could watch the little boogers and 9/10 of everything that happens to them while they're there.

Controlling helicopter mom tendencies?? Nah, not me. NOOOOO.

My BFF says I'm a "drone mom." That's like a helicopter mom, but lazier. "I don't want to screw with the helicopter today-- I'll send out the drone and stay in my jammies."

It's completely terrifying to not know what is going on. Doubly so when you know your kid is likely to be misunderstood, and also when you've had the experience of having to spend massive amounts of time and energy that you would like to be directing to progress cleaning up trauma instead.

BuyerBeware,

Normally, I am not in favor of that kind of thing, at all, either. It was really just worrying to not be able to get my son's side of things or worry (rightfully) that I was not being notified about things by the school that I should have been. I only found out they were restraining him by the obviously adult-lady fingernail marks on his arms, as an example. That was last year, mind you, when things were really bad. I am really wondering what I am going to find out if he starts perseverating heavily about last year. So far the perseveration is only about Pre-K and Kinder when things were "good."

Scary.

This is my fear also. My son almost didn't even admit that the aide was rough with him when the person who witnessed it was in our house asking about it. It definitely made me realize that I probably don't know half of the stuff that happens at school unless the school wants me to know about it. His therapist said that those things don't get to him like it would another kid but still I need to know these things.

I know exactly where you're at.

I rant and rail against the surveillance state, and I'd be livid if someone tried to pull something like that on me...

...but if I thought for ONE SECOND that the school would agree to it, I'd install the webcams myself. I'd probably have a dedicated monitor in my kitchen. KidCam. With massive amounts of storage capacity, so I could go back and make longitudinal comparisons.

Like I said-- drone mom. Part of me thinks I HAVE to get over this. God only knows what would have become of me if my folks had had the ability to do something like that-- it might have been coincidental (the time frame was when I was 9-12 years of age), but I swear I learned the most during the years when my mom was very sick and/or dying and I was pretty much on my own. OTOH, part of me thinks I am doing exactly what I need to be doing (or even not enough-- because I'm NOT pushing for a KidCam or a 1-on-1), because God only knows how many of those early- and middle-childhood traumas could have been minimized or prevented altogether if someone had been watching closely.

Ergh. Parenting sure is interesting, ain't it?? In a good way... but also in the sense of the ancient Chinese curse.

BuyerBeware,

I think it is easier for me to know when to draw the line only b/c although my son is super smart in other ways, he is very socially delayed (.01 percentile on social skills, and, no, that is not a typo. I meant .01 not 1 percentile) so I -know- he isn't learning anything from any of it. It is obvious. Having him unsupervised around kids his own age is about as sensible as putting him in an AP or college calculus class and expecting him to come home learning anything. Well, except much more dangerous.

If he were higher functioning, socially like I was, I wouldn't know what to do. If I could have avoided that hell back then would I be less damaged, but maybe also less functional. Maybe I would be more functional b/c I would be less damaged, but somehow I doubt it. I think those lessons were probably needed though it would have been nice if they were more mercifully managed.

I don't know how I get my son to that point, and I would not know how to advise those with kids who are more socially functional. either.

I like this idea. I would like them to think of me as a drone dad, but not just a surveillance drone: be good to my kids, I'm asking nicely.

I try to be as friendly as possible with all the staff at school, but I shut them down very quickly when they play mind games with me or try to cover up problems. As long as they are ready to address the problems realistically, I am ready to be very flexible to help them make it work. But they do know that I can and will follow up all the way up to the Superintendent if the situation warrants it.