Had a kid I taught in preschool who would get unreasonably angry, violent, and loud for no obvious reason. Everything would be fine and then he would totally snap. All we could do when he did was to usher other kids away and wait for him to calm down.
His mom seemed nice enough when I met her and his dad didn’t appear to be in the picture (he never showed up, was never discussed by mom or child, etc.) One day, mom didn’t show to pick him up. I was the only teacher left, since he was the last kid, and he just sat at the window, sobbing.
She didn’t show up until 7 pm that night and our building closed at 5:30 pm. By that time, he was completely inconsolable and it was all I could to do run down to the kitchen with him, make him a sandwich with the director’s permission, and let him watch movies on my phone.
Over the course of the next few weeks, this started to happen more and no matter how many times the director talked to his mom, she would continue to come late. Then his lunches started to deteriorate and he would come to school hungry, having not been fed breakfast. He was only with us for the 3 months between preschool and kindergarten and I have no idea what happened to him, but the director was paying close attention and (luckily) we never saw any physical abuse. I always brought him breakfast and made sure I had an extra sandwich and caprisun for him when I came to work.
That kid didn’t go hungry on my watch.
Poor kid was just being forgotten :/
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