Child unwell on school trip

Uber don’t let under 18 year olds have an account, nor are you supposed to order a ride for someone under 18 in France. Leaving DLP on his own would almost certainly have been against the trip rules. If he had left he would still have been on his own and had it not simply been D&V he would have had an even harder time accessing help if he needed it.

One of his friends should have stayed with him, but since they didn’t and it was a school trip with adults who were there to be in loco parentis one of them should have gone to find him straight away, assess if he needed more medical attention or to go back to the hotel and either stayed with him, or arranged for a friend to stay with him and call if he deteriorated depending on how serious it seemed, what he preferred and where he was going to be (and the willingness of friends).

OP for future reference, teach your child to use Uber. He would have been able to easily Uber back to his hotel from DLP and gone to bed in his own room.

Or, for future reference, theme parks often have medical centers he could have gone to hang out at, maybe they could have given him some anti diarrhea tablets.

As an aside, as it's the Easter holidays the teacher could legitimately have been queueing for over 90 mins for a ride and been 5 mins from the loading bay when they got the call, and honestly I wouldn't blame them for going on the ride rather than rushing to a 16 year old (which could have legitimately been there without adults) who was simply having a bit of D&V.

I get as his parent you're hard wired to worry, I clearly would too as a parent, but realistically what was the teacher meant to do for him?

I hope you get this resolved OP. As others have said make sure you get the full story. But if it's as your son described then the teacher/s deserve to be reprimanded. I'm a teacher, been on loads of school trips. They are bloody exhausting both in terms of organising them and being present on one. Most teachers deserve a medal for even contemplating putting one on. That said there is a small minority of lazy teachers who are bloody annoying to take on trips and see it as a jolly. They tend not to be invited again and never to go the trouble of organising their own trip.

@G172125 Is he ok?

Thought story was about a boy in New York.

@OnceUponARainbow88

Yes that is the one. It's awful to read about it. She was similar age to OPs son & I don't think the adults on this thread understand how a school trip works. Students can't just go back to their room alone like some seem to be suggesting. They are still classed as minors & have to do what they're told.

@converseandjeans

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-57065283.amp

Very very sad for all involved.

@Usernamechange1234

What on earth is going on on in this thread. I teach so am ‘team teacher’ most of the time but you don’t leave a child (even if they’re 16) to make their own way back to a hotel. You have no idea how ill they could potentially be. You have a duty of care

I'm also baffled by the responses. I remember a story about a school trip to New York where a child was complaining that he felt exhausted and unwell & was just left alone at hotel while rest of staff went sightseeing. He ended up dying of I think sepsis. He was also phoning home & it must have been traumatic for everyone involved. I've always been cautious with students but this story was shocking as I imagine everyone thought the teenager was being OTT.

I'm surprised by MN saying teacher was fine to carry on going on rides & leave him to it. Usually they can't do anything right 🤷🏻‍♀️

In general Mumsnet used to make me feel better about the world. You might get ‘educated’ on something which might sting but overall wasn’t a bad thing (thank you FWR boards!) or see women supported through abusive relationships or pregnancy issues and grief. There was always snark and contrary responses but the good outweighed the bad.

There were always people coming along like this too and lamenting the loss of the good old days. While I’m not sure about the general idea of ‘good old days’ and understand change is inevitable and not necessarily bad, the thing that’s finally making me wonder if the scales have tipped for me is the onslaught of breathtaking callousness and sometimes, honestly, plain thickness. And this is coming from someone who generally doesn’t think well of the “be kind“ movement when aimed at women. I don’t know if it’s a new generation or a different demographic or societal malaise but it’s pretty dispiriting.

Is he back home yet @G172125?

I dunno. I've sympathy here for the teacher. Sounds like he is a strapping 16 year old with a tummy bug. Where you expecting a 'check in' to look like. With respect if there is just one big bus. It's probably a case of settle him in near the loos with some sparking water. I'm sure he doesn't want an audience every time he needs to run to loo.
I'm assuming she'll go over to him soon to see how's he's getting on. Fifteen minutes either way won't make kind of a difference especially if she's queued up for a long time and was near the top!

He wasn't left to go back to the hotel alone though?

He became unwell, his friends left him, he called his mum.

He then called a teacher.

He told his mum the teacher said she wasn't coming because she was "in a queue". That's all he said.

In the meantime mum had sent the teacher his location. Disney village, which, depending on where you are in the park can be a bit of a trek, particularly through school holiday crowds.

OP then later added that the teacher had told her they were trying to call his friends, and they were also going to him - for all we know they may have struggled to find him.

He was located, OP says, two hours later, and taken to sit in a cafe, with a teacher, until the coach came to take them all back to the accommodation.

A teacher DID go to him, and did then stay with him - the issue seems to be how long it took for them to get there.

DLP is large though, and crowded, and he was in the village which is a fair trek from the opposite end. It can also be quite difficult to find someone based on a location sent by a third party - what if he'd nipped into the loo to be ill and wasn't at the spot? They would have gone to look elsewhere.

The OP needs more information about what happened from the teachers before she complains.

FYI I'm a teacher too, with years of experience. It's taught me to get both sides of the story, not just parents/kids OR just staff, before making a judgement. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

Your son sounds a proper simp. Why's he phoning his mummy to say hes unwell.. why isnt he using the contact number of the teacher in charge (yes he will have had that number)

@Maddy70

What an utterly vile comment.

DD (16) was in school with nausea and stomach pains. She went to 3 different members of staff (HoY, office and first aid room) saying she felt unwell/was going to be sick and had stomach ache.
Office sent her to HoY tbf
HoY said I'll call your mum but you need to go back to class until she calls me back (actually called wrong number, left VM on someone elses phone and didn't try dad)
FA said come back when you've been sick.....which she was 2 minutes later in the corridor.

I was quite annoyed about this as DD was calling me in tears in secret saying sge wanted to go home but I couldn't reach the school.

My point is staff do make mistakes and sometimes their judgement is off when it comes to kids saying they feel unwell.....but I bet they see lots of kids who exaggerate and they have a lot of competing needs.

@AnxiousRabbit I was referring to the people on this thread and their responses (I went back to edit to make this clear but it was beyond the time limit).

tbh I read that they got to him two hours later, but it’s still not good enough. It was just a 24 hour bug, but it might not have been and I personally (as a teacher) I would never have taken that risk with a child in my care.

I don’t know why we’re trying to find a way around this with nonsense about time frames etc. a child was poorly, a teacher was told and their response was slow.

OP has every right to feel aggrieved from what I read.

I actually missed the part in one of the OP's later posts that she was texting for half an hour with another teacher who was actively looking for her son. They found him and gave him medicine as well. Then he dozed off in a cafe until it was time to go home in the group.

It sounds like a very normal school trip to be honest. Some kid always gets sick and teachers are used to dealing with it. It's also possible they asked him whether he wanted to go back to the hotel or wait and he felt well enough to stay there.

It seems like OP saw pictures on social media and is hellbent on accusing the teachers of having a good time and posing with mascots over looking for son. I doubt all the photos were taken in the exact 2 hours nobody came looking for him. Also, the time frame may or may not be an exaggeration. In situations like these, people always have the tendency to round up (eg my flight was delayed for 3 hours! Instead of 2.5. Or we were stuck in traffic for 2 hours instead of 1.5) 1-1.5 hours is not an unrealistic time period to track down someone in a giant theme park with broken communication in between.

I thought his friends went off without him when he was in the loo? That isn't his fault.

But they didn't leave him to make his way back to the hotel alone and the only people who have suggested that would have been an option are on this thread.

It's really not clear what the sequence of communication was, let alone what was actually said. Or if the two hours was from him first being left by his friends, or from the teacher being asked to find him.

Yes I would want the staff to be proactive and caring and I don't think a 16yr old is an adult....but also there is very little anyone can do for vomiting and we don't have enough information to judge.

so a 16 year old, not a child, but a young adult old enough to travel to Disney from the UK entirely alone, in a park with staff and first aiders, was supposed to stay with his friends, but didn't, was slightly unwell, contacted his teachers who came, gave him medicine and put him in a cafe where he could doze, and he is better today.

What exactly is there to complain about?

@GrumpyMiddleAgedCow I’m so sorry you weren’t loved. I hope you’ve since found someone who cares about you. A 16 yo is still a child and it wouldn’t be normal for a parent to not want them checked on on a school trip abroad. When I was ill recently my mum checked in with me daily over the phone and if dh wasn’t with me she’d have driven to my house and I’d do the same for her. When a dc is on a school trip, the teachers have responsibilities beyond ignoring an ill child.

All the year 11’s around at my son’t school are going on their silver DofE expedition this week - 3 days I think. It’s down to parents to decide whether their children can cope with/benefit from a non-revision break over this period.

Frankly, no child’s exam success or failure should hinge on a 3-4 day break over Easter and for many, if they’ve just spent the last term doing repeated mocks and intense revision, a little stress relieving break right now might do them the world of good.

We have a full day off and one afternoon a week scheduled for my son, so a total of at least 4-5 days of no revision factored in (he opted not to do DofE this year) - he’s off to Thorpe park next week.

The point of Ops post is the shocking lack of care for her son.

What on earth is going on on in this thread. I teach so am ‘team teacher’ most of the time but you don’t leave a child (even if they’re 16) to make their own way back to a hotel. You have no idea how ill they could potentially be. You have a duty of care.

OP I’d be angry. You hand your child over and I know damn well I’d not just wonder off and leave my 16 year old feeling awful in a strange place.

It is not OK and I would be raising this.

Because I want to understand more about the sequence of events (which is so far contradictory and makes little sense) before I blame either the teacher or the student?

My 16yr old would have called me and would have been upset if they were that ill....but I suspect there is some exaggeration around the pain....and possibly the diarrhoea as that was added later. And I recognise that there is clearly more to this than we currently know....and a teachers side.

It is unusual though. Dd year 10 on a multi year school trip school expects and assumes no year 11 or 13 would choose to go. Running trips for those year groups at Easter just seems odd to me. No local school state or private round here would do that

My year 11 and their friends are all busy revising for their exams- a trip to Disney sounds crazy!! His friends shouldn’t have ditched him and they should have a meeting point with a teacher available.