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

What were the other 32 kids doing when he was showing off?

It reads as being sarcastic, which I wouldn't be impressed with. Even if it wasn't, the class had just been asked to be quiet, so it wasn't the time to pick holes in the teacher's choice of words and would easily be seen as rude.

As for the other teacher shouting, I am in two minds. Some teachers are overly harsh, some are too soft; that's just something your child is going to have to learn to live with. But from the teacher's point of view, is it possible your child makes comments like this more often than is appreciated?

He is defo being a smart arse and it’s something my child would say cos he thinks he’s being clever, so yeah he was being rude.

sounds like the teacher had told them to be quiet a number of times and the sentence was directed at the whole class and then your child has made a smart arse comment and had been told off.

i would speak to the teacher and I would hang my hat in them telling you there were 10/15 mins trying to get the class to calm down and be quiet, you son had made smart arse/rude comment and then class had laughed and started again!

Your son talked back to teacher. He was cheeky and trying to be clever He deserved a telling off given that the teacher had just made it clear they were to get on with their task silently. You should be supporting the teacher and tell him not to be cheeky in future. A good school will get stricter as the children grow older

100% you need to address this with the teacher. Yelling at a child is not OK and at age 6 telling them she doesn't want to hear from them is also not ok. If she wants quite time where they focus she says it in a way that the children understand Not "I don't want to hear from you."

That incident could very much knock your child's confidence no matter if they were in the right or wrong. The teacher is the adult and should handle the class appropriately.
The entire encounter sounds 'wrong'. There are some teachers that were never meant to be teachers unfortunately and you must advocate for your child.

The fact the teacher did not mention it to your DH is also an alarm bell........ If they took the time to talk to DH but did not mention your DS getting in trouble to the point of making him cry and the teacher screaming I find that very poor communication.

Others have said your DH was cheeky - that's not the point, maybe he was or maybe he wasn't. The point is he is 6, a very young child, and should not be screamed at and made to cry in front of his entire class. That is crushing for him & I bet he remembers it for a long long time.

In answer to your question, yes it was rude of your child. If you’re concerned, speak to the teacher.

I think he got into trouble for making a cheeky comment. The teacher made clear instructions and your son, even though he put his hand up, made a smart comment. He might not have realised it at the time but another teacher overheard and thought it was rude.

No one here will be able to answer regarding the context of what was going on in class that day. There could have been numerous children shouting out, being silly etc when the teacher is trying to deliver a lesson so has asked everyone to sit quietly and your son has got the brunt of it.
Best thing to do is speak to the teacher to find out what’s happened.

Reassuring parents if a child is still crying about an incident several hours later seems perfectly reasonable to me. Surely it can't happen often enough for that to be a problem but if it is happening enough that it is a problem for the teacher to discuss it with the parents then there is something going badly wrong.

The OP said he put his hand up so no calling out.

Maybe because of slack rules previously, the classroom has become a bit feral. Young children need to be taught boundaries. If no boundaries are put in place, classrooms can reduce to children just following their peers, copying their distracting behaviour. Sounds like your DS wants to be the class clown, and if he made that comment, and you think the strictness is there, he clearly wasn’t scared of the teacher. Maybe have a discussion with him about appropriate behaviour at school, and how not to distract people around him who might want to learn.

If you've injured yourself it will almost certainly cause pain so yes I think pain would have covered it. No real need to clarify but I don't think he was wrong.

Yes, what happened was he was called out on being a smart-arse and now knows better the appropriate way to speak to a teacher. Maybe he’s upset because he’s used to people encouraging his cheeky attitude by praising him or just laughing.

After being told to be quiet unless an emergency, putting his hand up was unnecessary, making an observation or comment was rude.

You can be in pain without being injured.

He is over sensitive. You are over sensitive.

The teacher can’t go “reassuring” parents every time a child is told off. I think you need to get a grip. 6 year olds know when they’re being smart arses.

Because you were a pain and got called out for it?

Wow.

Too much drama here.

He will soon get over being told off.

He answered back, rightly got told off, and perhaps he’ll learn from it. 🙄

It sounds like a smart arse response, but I guess it could have been a genuine query, it depends on tone. I’d probably trust the teacher on that to an extent. You know your child. You know what they are prone to. I suspect you think it could have been a smart arse response otherwise you wouldn’t be wondering. If so, well - if it isn’t the consequences of his actions. He learned a boundary today.

In terms of disproportionate reactions, teachers are human too. If they are using that line, it’s because the class (or a student) has got on their last nerve. They effectively told him to shut up, and he spoke. If I’m already pissed off, I’d probably shout too. The nonsense about his friends comforting and him apologising was adding to the irritation, they just needed the class to STFU and he still wasn’t doing it. I’d have put him out of the class to calm down.

A 6 year old complaining they have to sit in silence is also very contextual. If he is naturally chatty, being told from time to time to be quiet will be sitting in silence. What’s probably happening is, he talks too much when he shouldn’t. No teacher of 6 year olds expects silence all the time.

Still crying at bedtime is an extreme reaction. I say this as a the parent of a highly strung kid, who when she was shouted at by a teacher in P4 (the first time ever, and it was for chatting when she shouldn’t) she cried about it when she told me for about 10 minutes. I told her she was doing well if this was the first time a teacher shouted at her and next time when she is told not to talk, don’t talk. There is rarely something that absolutely needs to be said in that moment. Just remind him he needs to not talk to his friends when they are supposed to be quiet, and if he does, he may get in trouble.

I wouldn’t bother the teacher about this. There isn’t going to be any outcome which will change anything. If the teacher is prone to shouting at the kids, they aren’t going to change. You could take it up the chain but on the strength of one report, nothing will happen. You don’t need them to tell you if he was being cheeky, you simply point out to him that even if it was genuine, it would always sound cheeky. He did not need to know that answer, but if he wanted to know, he could have waited and asked later, or asked you when he got home. He needs to learn to read the room.

Strict and scary teachers also varies from child to child. Mine loved the ones who were said to be strict and scary. They kept control, they didn’t allow kids to be disruptive, and according to her, if they chewed a kid out, the kid deserved it. Well behaved kids have nothing to fear from strict and scary teachers. If he is becoming anxious, what is he afraid of? Keep your powder dry, remind your child of the rules, but if it becomes a regular occurrence, bring it to them at that point.

I was also very upset and still hate that teacher 30 years later

Thats mental

At least you didn't point out that "facetious" is one of the only words in English which has all five vowels, in order. (The other is "abstemious".) I remember seeing that in a book of trivia for children; I think by then, I'd learned not to give a reply like that.

No just pedantic

Being at school isn’t the same as being in a one to one conversation

imagine a class of 30 6 year olds. You spent 20 minutes in input questioning and scaffolding and now it’s time for them to do some independent work /listen to some more instruction/ reading in silence. The class are quiet and it may have taken a while or they may be lively. You give the instruction. Then some clever clogs completely ignores the instruction and questions “pain and injury are the same thing”. Whole class are now off task either shocked at the audacity, or finding it funny and now there is the whole pantomime of this telling off by another member of staff who observed the insolence.

Now imagine they are 16 year old boys who you have to get a grade 5 at GCSE. Welcome to the world of teaching.

If he wanted to know the answer to this specific question he can wait until break time to ask it. I’m sure he would not be that interested and would rather just go to play.

it is rude and disrespectful to question an instruction that was given and not follow instruction.

He needs to be told by you to follow the instruction as not doing so is rude and disruptive. If he has any questions they can wait until an appropriate time and you will have to tell him what this is.

This. Your kid was being a smartarse. I really understand why teachers are leaving.

He was trying to show off. But his motivation is irrelevant. He had been told to be quiet.

I remember I used to say things like that, aged six. When a teacher said to the class "if you can't behave here, you can find one of those do-as-you-like-schools". I said "I've found a school where you can do as you like", which was kind of true: at a summer camp, we had an activity called "school", where we could mostly do as we like. The teacher knew me well enough, and simply glared at me; but a different teacher would probably have told me off for being rude, which might indeed have upset me. I often got told I was being "rude" when I made childish observations. I once got severely told off at home for saying "ugh" when a visitor was smoking on our doorstep. (My parents were very divided about smoking: one of them was on my side, the other was not.) I learned to choose my moments carefully when pointing things out.

I think children need to learn that there is a time and a place for remarks like that; and to be fair to them, they hear adults doing it with each other, and are copying them. Furiously telling children off is not good, although an adult might do it in the heat of the moment, especially if they are angry already. Literal-minded children might easily say things like that, and perhaps need to be told that you should not contradict teachers (or as a compromise, not when the teacher is addressing the whole class).

If he's old enough to understand this explanation, it might work to explain how when a teacher is speaking to the whole class, they need to do it without being interrupted, and that it's OK to quietly think thinks like "pain or being injured are the same thing", and maybe say it later.

My son would do that...to be a smart ass now at age 11 but he would absolutely have done it at age 6 without thinking anything of it. Some teachers are not equipped to deal with younger kids. The teacher should just have said something like " yes thank you. Now shush" and carried on. Shouting was a bit OTT regardless of how long it went on for.