What's the strangest call you've ever had from your child's school

[listsandbudgets]

Pancake day always makes me remember this one.

You know that cold feeling when the phone goes and its school? Is my child ill, hurt, in trouble etc. etc.

A few years ago mine went on pancake day. The school receptionist said "we're sorry about this Lists but Lists-junior has been hit over the head with a frying pan"

(turned out thankfully it was only a very light, one and they'd been having a pancake race when he tripped, the boy behind him tripped and somehow in the tangle the frying pan whacked him on the head!)

Has anyone had a stranger call than that?

@WaxOnFeckOff

Mine was from nursery. DS2 had got his willy stuck in the spout of a teapot.

We have a winner

@AnaisNun

Got a call from nursery when DS was maybe just 3, to say “Nunette is walking around the garden saying very extreme swear words repeatedly. He’s said it to a number of members of staff, can we speak to you about it at pick up please”.

Could not get out of them what it was over the phone.

At pick up, I go to collect DS and staff gravely tell me he’s said “fuck it” many times and they don’t understand as he’s never said anything like it, has he heard it at home? or on public transport? etc etc. I can’t think what’s happened- he’s NEVER heard that language at home- it’s only us there!

As I get him from the garden, DS says hello, and when I ask what he’s been up to, gestures through the chain link fence to the field beyond, and says very clearly “foot kick!”

On my way out, I enquired whether in fact the football team had been training on the playing field earlier today.
“Oh yes” they said cheerily “and Nunette loved watching them! Let us know whether you get to the bottom of the bad language over the weekend!”

This reminds me of when my dad went to pick my dd up from nursery to be told she'd said fuck when she dropped something. Turns out she'd dropped her spoon and was saying fork (because she didnt know the word spoon yet)

are you in Edinburgh by any chance?

On a Wednesday I Had a call from school asking when ds would be returning to school ( he had been off Thursday and Friday due to tummy bug) I pointed out that he had been in since Monday and even had a certificate in assembly on Tuesday 😆

@WaxOnFeckOff

Mine was from nursery. DS2 had got his willy stuck in the spout of a teapot.

Sometimes, I am so fucking glad that I work with teenagers.

Not a call but I was pulled aside by DS’s sweet (think Miss Honey-esque) reception teacher with this corker:
“I had to send jnr and his friend to the Head today, as his friend said a v bad word and because we were doing phonics jnr then told him how to spell the bad word - fuh-uh-ke-ke!” She added, that she was impressed with his phonics but obviously couldn’t let it slide 🤦🏼‍♀️😂

Head teacher called me to say that I needed to collect child after lunch because parent helper who was bullying my family would be in for a special school anniversary event. Her need to volunteer was more important than my child’s right to be in his school. Nasty business.

This:

An hour and a half before the end of school.

"Hi is that Megansmumsie? We just wanted to let you know that Megan has had a little bump on the head, nothing to worry about but we wanted you to know in advance. No need to pick her up early, she's fine."

Got to the school to find my daughter with a bandage around her head, completely unable to SEE anymore! Apparently she had been like this since before they called and that she had 'spaced out' a few times.

I (who can not drive but with sheer perseverance) got her to a & e which is several miles away to find out that she had concussion and needed her head stitching up but you know, the school said 'it was just a little bump'.

Turns out a boy had been running and ran straight into her, knocking her flying into the wooden play house in Reception where she had landed against the corner of the structure.

Picture included. (Taken at my Mum's house a few yards away from the school before i got her to the hospital)

Poor Megan, she looks terrible. You must have been so worried. Hope she is ok now,

Another call I had was asking me to collect my Y9 DS from school- apparently he had a cut to his head and he needed to be taken to hospital immediately.

I rushed the 45min drive from work to collect him. On the journey to hospital he explained he had tried to slam a gate in DDs face (she was new to Y7) but the gate hadn't hit her and instead bounced back and hit DS. By the time we got to the hospital his head had stopped bleeding, and I'd lost all sympathy for him. He's actually a really nice lad and this was so out of character for him.

My son went swimming with the school and lost a shoe! The school phoned me and asked me to bring him another pair of shoes in. Luckily they were quite old shoes and I saw the funny side.

"Please could you come and remove a tick from you son's neck".

Off I head with tick removal tool.

@sadpapercourtesan

Oh god so many

DS1 aged 6, just before he was diagnosed with ASD: phone call from school, ultra-serious, I was hauled in and confronted by three members of staff about an incident of "inappropriate sexualised behaviour" in the boys' toilets. After speaking to DS1 about it (they hadn't allowed him to explain himself, so had no idea) it turned out he'd copied the Horrid Henry scene where he pulls his pants down and runs around with his arse hanging out. To DS1, if it was funny in the book, it's funny in reality.

DS1 aged 3 at nursery: hauled in by very irate teacher to collect him after he turned all the taps on in the toilets "to see what would happen". I was greeted icily and handed a mop

DS1 aged 4 at nursery: hauled in after the Easter Celebration (which I couldn't make because I had to work) because he'd kicked all the heads off the daffodils in the garden, because they were "too wobbly and yellow and made him feel horrible".

DS1 aged 5 in Reception: he was carried out of the dining room screaming "You should be fired" at the dinner lady who took away his Cornish pasty because he refused to eat it with a knife and fork. He'd tried to explain to her the history of the Cornish pasty and that the purpose of the pastry was to give you something to hold, and "Nobody wants to see the inside of a pasty, that's the whole point". She already hated him because on his first day he asked whether the pasta was al dente.

DS1 aged 14, he and his friends staged a protest against "being treated like animals" in the school canteen by bringing in a tablecloth, placemats and proper cutlery/glasses.

DS1 aged 15: he'd written his own version of the school's "Preparedness for Learning" code (which was very rigid and petty, admittedly) featuring points including "Students must leave their brains at Reception before proceeding to the classrooms" and "If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding".

He's 18 now and I'm so relieved we don't have to deal with schools any more.

Your son is AMAZING!!!! I wish I knew him 😂

My DD is 6, in Y1 and has ASD. She's also an 'outgoing' one (just as typed this, she jumped off the drawers and landed face first on the bed in a star shape, narrowly missing me 😳) I'm exhausted!

A phone call to tell me my 5year old had been in the bathroom for an hour and a half and kept saying he was still using the toilet. Could I come and talk to him in case he was upset??

Got there, his teacher informed me he was done now, and that the poo had been the size of her forearm. She looked traumatised. He was fine 🤣

I got a call from the school secretary to ask if I would look in my son's bag to see if there was a letter from school in it. I said I wasn't able to check until later. She says they really need to know and it would be very helpful if I could do it straight away as there's been some confusion. I said, well, he's in school at the moment so surely if you need to know right now then you can go to the classroom and look in his bag? I don't collect him til 4 so I can't help you before then. There was a pause while the penny dropped and then a rushed 'very sorry to have bothered you, we'll sort this out ourselves.'

I assume she was having a bad day!

Whenever they call they always start by saying ; It is not an emergency'.

Ours does too. Except that very occasionally they forget to so that call about that thing they needed to discuss with you sends shivers does your spine because they haven’t said there’s not a problem.

I had a call from DD’s ASNA that her legs were sore and she’d been complaining about it so could I come pick her up. It was about 2.30 so it seemed strange but then I remembered there was something happening last thing that DD might be trying to avoid. I went there ready to call her out on it, but as I picked her up she was close to tears. She hadn’t wanted to come home, told them she didn’t want to come home and said not to call me. For some reason the ASNA decided DD needed to come home. This was the same ASNA who refused to call us when DD complained of feeling really unwell, kept saying she’d be fine after break, after lunch, after PE. Turns out she had tonsillitis.

I've not been phoned about anything particularly weird. However, I did get a phone call, whilst I was in the middle of having lowlights put in my hair, to say that my son had been sick and that I needed to pick him up immediately!

A call when I was 38 weeks pregnant with DS2 to ask me why DS1 (age 8 at the time) wasn't in school.

I had dropped him of 3 hours earlier.

Suggested they went and checked the class. He was there.

They called me back and I suggested they checked properly before scaring the crap out of a heavily pregnant woman.

I was once asked to collect my DD because she apparently looked ‘green’ . I went to pick her up and she honestly looked fine but the receptionist was still trying to plug how green she looked. She was fine, nothing wrong with her whatsoever.

My daughter (aged 6) had been at a new school for three days after having managed to get expelled from her previous school because she didn't want to be in the banana group -- no, I didn't really understand it, but she didn't and whenever they tried to get her to sit with the group she Argued, using Long Words and being polite, until in the end she took to going and hiding behind a bookcase reading a book, and there was something about the headmaster carrying her upstairs to his study from the playground so when he put her down she said it was fun and could they do it again, and ran away downstairs again before he could catch her, so he rang me up in front of her to tell me about it...

Clearly she and that school were incompossible.

Anyway, we'd got her into the new school ok ("what do you like to read, Small Asking?" "I quite like Wind in the Willows, but Narnia is the best") so getting a slightly anxious phone call so quickly was a blow. Could I come in to have a chat about her some time before the end of the school day? I went in, expecting the worst. Apparently she was refusing to write anything down, and since she had been fine with writing the previous two days, and they knew she'd had a bit of a hard time in her previous school, they thought it would be a good idea to consult me about it. So I said, Have you asked her why she won't write things down? and they said, No, they hadn't liked to.

We got her out of a maths class to ask her, and it turned out that they were trying out the brand-new SATs on that school and they'd asked the questions verbally first, just to see, and then wanted her to write down the answers. "But I'd already told them, Asking, and it would have been wasting paper!"

Yes, well, the evening before she'd had away with about a ream of my typing paper and drawn pictures over most of it, and I'd been a bit less than pleased with her about wasting paper.

Ooops. You try explaining that to a concerned headmistress! Luckily the woman had a sense of humour, unlike her previous head who'd had none whatever.

My DD had complained that her form tutor was 'a bit of a weirdo'. We obviously told her to be kind and show respect to her teachers.

In lockdown 1 I got a well-being phone call from the form tutor asking how DD was getting on with homeschooling. I said she was fine, working hard and taking it in her stride.

At this point the form tutor broke down in tears and told be how WONDERFUL that was. That DD was the ONLY child she had heard of who was doing okay. How every other child was SUFFERING and their education was RUINED. That hearing DDs AMAZING story had given her HOPE.

When I came off the call I apologised to DD and agreed that her form tutor was indeed a bit strange. It is not normal to have to comfort a sobbing teacher who calls you to check on your family's welfare.

@steppemum this happened to a colleague of mine when we were all doing our teacher training! It was an early years classroom so the scissors could barely cut paper, first placement so she was only teaching for about 20% of the timetable and she swore she only left that particular group for milliseconds to grab a pencil! Thankfully the mum was just as good humoured as you were and yes, she also had to present the entire chopped off PLAIT in a small envelope for Mum to deal with as she wished (frame it maybe?!)

Nipples the cuddly mouse reminds me of when my son was in nursery, in the oldest room (think he was just about to turn 4) and staff had a quick chat with me about his rather specific knowledge about boobs, nipples, milk etc. They weren't concerned per se, just a bit...intrigued I suppose and also slightly fatigued from having to field questions from all the other kids. I explained that he was still breastfeeding and, frankly, boob obsessed and steeled myself for gossip but they were lovely and thought it was great, and even the manager came out of the office to reminisce about how much she had enjoyed breastfeeding her son It was so so nice from a load of mostly young (18-20ish), child free women and definitely made me feel hopeful for future breastfeeding rates (I work in health visiting, professional interest!) Although I did later realise they probably all now knew what my nipples looked like thanks to my son's incredibly vivid descriptions....

My daughter is a menace. So far I've had "little maddening has flooded the bathroom floor with soap because she wanted a slip and slide"
"little maddening has 'opened a salon' in the supplies cupboard and has another child's hair"
"little maddening has been stood next to a puddle all day and refused to move just to wait until class bully walks past to jump and splash them"
"we have found extensive plans in maddening pigeon hole about how to escape the school playground to go to the park"
She is actually a lovely child I promise

We had a message from nursery saying that the fire alarm had a fault and so the children had to evacuate the building while it was sorted and had ended up going to the pub across from nursery while they waiting for the alarm to be fixed. They wanted to inform us of the event before our children told us they had spent the day in the pub

Called to see headteacher because DS had told another child to go play on the motorway if he was bored.
This is all his grandads fault because one of his favourite sayings to us when we were little if we ever dare say we’d got nothing to do was “well go and play hopscotch on the M6”.I did try telling him not to say it in front of DS as he’s so sharp he’d just pick it up.