Is this rude from a child? Age 6, furious reaction from teacher

I would believe him, poor lad.

Yes, I would speak to the teachers about this. It's not on. He asked an entirely reasonable question.

We have no idea if the OP’s son had been interrupting in a similar way earlier in the lesson.

I am trying to understand why so many people are convinced that pain and injury are the same.
When you have a headache - what is the injury?
If you have a cut does it always hurt?

It has been said the boy is intelligent because he questioned two words that are similar but at the same not intelligent enough to understand the teacher didn’t want interruptions.

As for if she didn’t want interruptions she shouldn’t have let him speak - maybe she thought he was going to say something that was allowed.

I’d be interested if the boy could demonstrate his understanding of two minutes in a different situation.

If he was so upset why did he say nothing to Dad at pick up?

He seemed awfully distressed for being told to be quiet.
Is he usually inconsolable over protracted periods?

Thus encapsulating why so many children today are how they are, 'gentle', aka neglectful, parenting drifting down into schools. These children will go through school knowing no discipline because mummsy thinks that her little cherub is perfect and no one is allowed an alternative opinion. Dealing with one child's misbehaviour, or probably ignoring it, in the home is totally different from a class of 30 in a classroom situation where the needs of everyone have to be considered, not just the special one.

Would lawyers, accountants or doctors allow you to just rock up and bend their ear without an appointment?

I don’t think so!

You win the thread for the most ridiculous, simplistic and ignorant interpretation of the OP.

Egos 🙄

It’s almost as if you thought being a teacher was the same as being a mummy, all on her own with her one child. I mean, we know that teachers have oodles of spare time to banter with one 6 year old while the other 29 sit in obedient silence awaiting further instructions.

To use a phrase I admit I hate - educate yourself.

Can I add that this type of parent thinks they can just appear in school to 'have a word', if they had to make an appointment to see the teacher at a time convenient to both, as one does with other professional people, they may decide that their petty moan isn't really all that important. No teacher should be expected to speak to parents at the end of school without notice.

For trying to be smart, not for asking a sensible question

My friend is retiring because of the change in behaviour of recent intake. As well as being expected to change nappies she has to put up with 4 & 5 year olds hitting and kicking her and shouting at her when she tries to deal with them. She has loved her job and you can see she’s been popular as we’ve bumped into many of her former children and their parents and they all clearly love to see her. She has to shout so that the children listen to her. It’s sad to see she’s lost the job she loved

So many errors here. First, no-one was 'outsmarted', the child was wrong. Second the child was rude and probably disruptive, trying to get a cheap laugh.

I agree with the poster earlier, teachers very rarely shout at anyone. I only heard it once in 5 years, and that was because of something very dangerous.

Read @MotherMary14 very sensible reply, suspect you are one of those parents.
My teachers in the 60s were fine, i loved school.

Have those teachers come from the 1960s or something? “I don’t want to hear from you…” and yelling at a child. Sounds absolutely dismal for those kids.

Honestly, catching up with this thread is making me even more supportive of my DP's decision to quit teaching in the next year. Too many parents thinking teachers have no right to admonish a child who blatantly ignored a clear instruction that the rest of the class was able to follow fine. Too many parents thinking they know better than teachers about how to run a classroom despite having never stepped inside one since they were at school themselves. You'd have to be mad to train to be a teacher these days. The entitlement of parents is off the scale.

Yes, he was likely upset and embarrassed about being told off in front of his friends, and has reacted sensitively. He is also maybe worried that the teacher may approach you with the full/true picture that won’t show him in the best light. A good lesson learned for him, that there are times when it’s necessary to shut up.

I don't think that teachers (or anyone) should ever be shouting at 6 year olds. Shouting to make themselves heard maybe, but not at.

My particular concern in this situation is that the teacher doesn't know your child very well yet, and if he turns out to have a brain that is very literal (eg with autism) and also has problems with impulsive behaviour (eg from ADHD) then she has just behaved really badly to a child who has not been at all malicious.

Of course it is possible that your child knew better and has been cheeky, but even at six the ability to control impulses is still being developed (even without any neurodiversity factors). It sounds like the teacher needs support with classroom management/keeping children engaged etc if there is a lot of sitting in silence and he's now hating school. And either way, I think that if he is crying and apologising she should have immediately stopped her rant.

So I think this mostly sounds like a problem with how the teacher handled the situation.

That was a rule at my school too!

I'm a bit younger so things had softened and we just got a very stern "why didn't you go at break?" if we asked to go during class, but it was definitely a big part of what break was intended for and we were expected to use it that way. It was also the time to have a proper drink - not just a few half-hearted slurps on a drink bottle, but a proper fluid top-up.

Obviously physical punishment (or in fact any punishment) for needing the loo outside those times is not something we would condone today, but I still feel that there should be an more general understanding that this is when you ought to try to go.

I think loads of classrooms are full of children slurping on drink bottles like overgrown babies then wandering in and out of class to the loo like a nursery setting.

Calling out the inaccuracy wasn't the issue though. It was him piping and interrupting when the class had been instructed to be silent. And a six-year-old is not a baby! It's that kind of infantilising of children which results in them going to pieces when a teacher tells them off.

Children always use the word shout when describing a firm tone. They've been doing it for the over 30 years I've been teaching!

I volunteered in a school for kids with emotional problems when i was in 6th form in 80s. Corporal punishment was banned maybe 6 years previously, and yet small children with known trauma histories were slapped hard for misbehaviour by one particular teacher. It was shocking then as it would be now.

I think teachers generally have an incredibly hard job, and that infant teachers have the hardest job of all because of the sheer scale of developmental difference between children just a few months apart in age. Teachers face relentless criticism as a profession. And children can and do behave badly at times. And parents can be very much oblivious to their own children's fauults, and over-react when they shouldn't,

All that said, some teachers lack the self control required for the role and it isn't a criticism of an entire profession to recognise red flags and intervene as necessary.

I would imagine there's a considerable backstory here!

It sounds as if the teacher had been trying to get the class quiet for some time and that was her final word on the matter, only for Master Annoying to try to be the class joker.

Non-teachers won't understand, however hard they try, the difficulties and subtleties of classroom management. (Anecdote to follow...optional).

One little jokey remark from student can set the whole class off, especially is the child still persists in coming back with another quip. And another 10 mins is wasted.

Anecdote: this concerns an older child (14). He was the son of a friend who had no experience of teaching. Her son was clever and a bit of a handful. He had his phone under the table and the very young female teacher asked 'Josh (nc obvs) what's that in your hand?' Josh replied 'My penis, Miss'. He was bollocked, bollocked again and made to do a Saturday detention in school uniform. This was about 15 years ago, btw.

My friend was indignant. Her son was just making a joke! Hadn't the teacher got a sense of humour? Josh normally got on well with her, so why did she make such a big deal of it? I had to explain that on many levels he was completely out of order. It was an insolent reply, not a joke. Even if it was a joke, it was out of place in the classroom setting - it's not a one-to-one social event, the teacher has her whole class to manage and can't make exceptions to behaviour rules. But most glaringly of all, it was a sexual remark to a young female teacher...would he have done that to a man? Absolutely out of order, and he needed to learn fast that it wasn't acceptable behaviour.

Moral of anecdote: the rules of the classroom are necessarily different to those of home or a night out with your mates.

I think in all honesty op, unless there are some ND issues involved, 6 years is old enough to recognise that people sometimes use tautologous phrasings, and that it didn't detract from her meaning or require any "exploration."

It may be, as you say, that he didn't mean to be rude in the sense of ridiculing her, but I think he did mean to point out how clever he was to spot it, and 6 is a good time to start learning that that doesn't go down well in a social setting.

However, being shouted at was not acceptable.

It wasn't an inaccuracy...

Normal 6 yr old behaviour. The teacher’s reaction was not normal. At all.