AIBU to feel uneasy about a teacher commenting on my daughter's eyes?

Wow, people on this thread are weird. Report the teacher for what?! If it was a female teacher would you also report?

My daughter had a female tutor who kept telling her how pretty she is. She took it as a compliment as was intended 🤷‍♀️ why report any tiny throw-away (nice) comment?

However, you will have had guidelines on Safeguarding and Child Protection, sessions on all aspects of this, regular updates and you will be using cpoms.
In my experience, we have been explicitly instructed not to comment on the students' appearance, either positive or negative. We are warned about outcomes.
So I'm just going on experience.

Teachers often phone parents to say how well children are doing. Be glad.

It's the human side of a teacher coming out. And no, not every micro behaviour and approach is explicitly taught or instructed.

If it's inappropriate, I would stop.

Why are you asking us? You've had hours of training.

I am a primary school teacher. I often tell the children that their hair is lovely. Is this inappropriate?

Luckily dd isn’t going to start making false allegations, which I know some girls have done before on the basis of a seemingly innocent comment.
What is wrong with you, OP? Have a word with yourself.

The comment is still completely inappropriate and should be reported to the school. I'm glad it didn't come from the same man, but the context didn't make it any better and it is still concerning.

I'm going to be direct because people seem to misunderstand; following this update, please report this incident to the school.

Postcards from schools are very common. They're usually sent for each subject to a select number of top pupils to recognise their achievement and parents put them on the fridge.

It's not like a postcard from the teacher on his holidays to the pupil - that would be inappropriate!

No. The eye comment from her update. The teacher should not have done that.

Not sure whether the poster means the eye comment or the nice phone call but don't report it. That would be a completely over the top response and basically implying these teachers have been inappropriate when at the moment it just looks like they've tried to be nice.

The eye comment is slightly misjudged but unless it's part of a wider more concerning pattern of comments and behaviour I wouldn't think it's sinister.

You really ought to report this.

Yes, but the pattern could be that he's doing this with multiple children. It could (probably is) be nothing to worry about, but should be logged so that any pattern forming will show up.

Not appropriate and he should know this

Like I said, it's much more important to understand whether there is a pattern here. I'm not worried about the phone call on its own but phone call to the mum + physical compliments that are kept more or less 'secret' - that warrants paying attention to. The reason I'm saying this is because apparently only the grandmother was told. If the comment was not innocent, asking upfront may not help as much as you think because of the way grooming works. Don't ask me how I know these things but I really do. Grooming is a destructive devious behaviour which is much more widespread than you'd think. Kids who are being groomed will very often deny it. Hence why it's much more relevant to establish exactly how OP's DD interacts with her teachers and whether one of them is singling her out (by making her feel 'special' and by spending increasing amounts of time one to one)

The teacher was extremely inappropriate in mentioning her daughter's eyes. That is not acceptable behaviour and should be called out. The OP should trust her gut on this one.

She could be being groomed. Always better to err on the side of caution. Especially as teachers sometimes work as tutors as well on a one to one basis.

Before making such comments about grooming, wouldn't it be better to know exactly what comment was made to the DD about her eyes and whether, if it was indeed inappropriate, it was made by the same teacher who rang to praise the DD, which is apparently now a usual thing for secondary school teachers to do?

Yes they do. In our school, we are timetabled 15 minutes each week to make at least one positive phonecall home.

Former secondary teacher here. Teachers do often call parents to inform them of positive things that their children have done.

Taken in isolation, the two points can be explained away however with grooming, what you need to look out for is a pattern of behaviour. Rather than asking your DD directly about the eye comment, it might be better for you to understand first whether he has sought and/or gained access to her one-to-one for any reason, and whether (as a PP mentioned) he's starting to single her out in any way. If she is (God forbid) in the early stages of being groomed, she may not be totally upfront with you, hence not mentioning the comment to you and only to her nan. Sometimes a charming young teacher is just that, and sometimes it's a wolf in sheep's clothing. When it's the latter, it's really hard for a parent to spot the actual red flags and those people (because it's not just male teachers) know what they're doing.

Yes, that's right

Who, to whom and why, on the basis of the information we all have in front of us at this moment?

You don't need evidence to report a concern. It's just that, a concern. It's someone else's job to investigate, if it's deemed necessary, which it wouldn't be if this is a one off, but might be if there are others.

Report