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?

From pre school:

Staff: ‘Little frost has been hurt. With a knife. There’s blood.’
Me: ‘oh no, does he need to go to hospital?’
Staff: ‘no’
Me: ‘he doesn’t need stitches?’
Staff: ‘no we gave him a knife and he cut his finger’
Me: ‘but he’s okay?’
Staff: ‘he’s crying’
Me: ‘why did you give him a knife?’
Staff: ‘it was only an Opinel’
Me: ‘what?! Why?!’
Staff: ‘we were going to chop apples but handed the knives out to the children beforehand’
Me: ‘I don’t think that was a good idea. call me if he hasn’t stopped crying in ten minutes’
Staff: ‘okay’

They never called, he was still crying at pick up, the knife had chopped all through his finger nail into the flesh below and took weeks to heal. No apologies. Little frost scared of school for ages afterwards.

"Little Miss Waffle was doing a dance of victory at spelling 'dog' correctly, twirled on the spot, fell over and cracked her head on the corner of the table. We can stop her head wound bleeding so suggest you come and get her to go to A&E for some stitches."

That was a day. She'll still incredibly clumsy in quite an epic way.

DS1 had vomited on the PE teachers shoes can you please collect him.

DS1 is really high and feels funny. (He's diabetic and they were referring to his sugar levels)

@littlefireseverywhere

This is brilliant, I'm so glad it's not just my children. Teen DD, had cut her lip totally swollen & matron asked for me to collect her and assess if she needed to go to hospital. (She didn't, but I took her home).

Asked how she'd done it, they'd been using their facemasks as catapults on the school field to see how far they could 'throw' some glue sticks. One had gone the wrong way and hit DD in the mouth. She didn't tell Matron how she'd done it...so funny!

One of the best things about working in A&E is the story that kids have told their teachers/parents vs the real story

@Neighneigh

(this was a voicemail and fuck off daily mail btw) Hello Mrs Neighneigh, it's Mrs Admin from school. Yes I've got junior Neighneigh in my office, everything's fine, well he's just brought me a can of tomatoes and a landline handset in his school bag, he's very worried that you'll be missing them so I said I'd ring you [muffled laughter]"....turns out his 18mo brother had put them in there

Why would the daily mail care about this

My sons nursery called and grilled me on broken blood vessels on his stomach, blood bruising.

I said. Have you cleaned it to check it's not raspberries from breakfast? He ate naked.

Few minutes on hold

Fake laughter oh yes ha ha fruit. I was really insulted

Not phone calls but I used to love the accident reports. I think the best one was something like
Hopping junior fell off the trim trail after poking himself in the eye. He says his bottom is bruised - we have not checked.
We had them very regularly and he even managed to get one from his Secondary school taster day
The best phone call was when they asked me to come because he had a “splinter” in his arm and they weren’t allowed to remove it. I turned up complaining to find an ambulance and a paramedic car waiting for me so they could take him to hospital to remove the large piece of wood the size of my thumb from his arm. Didn’t want to panic me apparently (I’m not a panicker)

When the headteacher phoned to inform me that ds had been attacked by the parent helper 🙄

Once at work, I answered my boss' phone. It was her DS. 'Can you get Mum, I've set my sister on fire'.

“Can you come urgently to school and pick up DS please... he has a splinter”

“We need an urgent meeting about DD12... no, we can’t talk over the phone, we need you to leave your job and drive the 90 minutes here immediately as a parent has complained”... DD had been talking about ouija boards at school and a conservative Christian parent thought she was corrupting her child suffice it to say I explained if they wanted a meeting they could travel to my workplace, otherwise I wouldn’t be leaving work for that!

'Hello mathanxiety - this is Mrs X. You know how someone always throws up on the bus on the annual bowling trip?'

It was my youngest. I had hoped my family would get away with a clean record.

Called to pick up my 5 year old immediately as she had suspected hand foot and mouth rash on her cheek. Got there and it turned out to be baked bean juice from lunchtime!

I get to make these calls. The oddest was 'your son ate a tulip for a bet. I have rung his gp who rang the poisons helpline and it should be fine as he mainly ate the flower and spat out the bulb'

No need to panic Magnum but your D’s has managed to get his fleece zip stuck on his eyelid - can we have permission to cut the fleece? (Ended with me taking him to Minor Injuries with the whole zip without the rest of the fleece attached to his eyelid?!

I had to phone home for a child aged 5 at a summer play scheme. The child had hit her head off her own knee. I couldn't work out how she'd done it, and didn't want to ask her to show me in case she did it again.

No harm done, but policy was that parents were informed ASAP of any head/face injury.

I know someone who was called in because she accidentally sent her kid in with vodka orange in her lunch bag. The kid had taken the wrong drink out the fridge and then had told the lunch supervisor that her orange juice tasted funny. They had a visit from social services and everything

I got a call saying DS had collided with another child and had to have a tooth removed from his head by the school nurse.
I then had to take him to A and E to get the wound seen to but they wouldn't close it because it was a bite wound!
The other kid came off worse poor lad.

Mine was a call from when they were in London for the day in year 6.
She had been walking along when the head asked her a question. She turned to answer her and walked straight into a BT control box thing 😂😂
They rang to ask if they could give her pain killers.
She had a cracking black eye the next day.

I've had a few . Most memorable was "hello Mrs Lollipop, we've lost your 5yo daughter. We know she was here because she is marked as present at breakfast club, but after that point, we no idea and we've called the police". Now bare in mind it was now 10:10 and I dropped her at 7:30. Mad and emotional dash out of the office, en route had another call to say they had found her fast asleep in the play kitchen cupboards, and that I didn't need to attend school collect her as she was none the wiser?! Safe to say, a few words with school was exchanged!

I love the implication that, if you hadn't given permission, they would have just stuck him in a corner as he was, like a parrot with a blanket over its cage

I was met my a very concerned teacher telling me that DS(4) had knocked his head... falling off a table. I, very unsympathetically, asked what he’d been doing on the table. DS’s defence? “Nobody told me I can’t dance on tables.”

Several years later I found out there was more to the story. I was just starting my NQT year at another local school, when the deputy head said, “I remember your son well... he was the one who climbed on to the water play table, and every time an adult came near him he kicked water in their face. Then he fell off.”

From the other side, I once took a call from a parent who wanted me to find out where her DC had put the TV remote control.

Mother bagging area got a call back when I was in nursery:

"Hello bagging area sr, we just wanted to let you know that bagging area was holding the class hamster far too tightly today."

How much does that make me sound like a serial killer in the making?? I was three, for context.

Had to collect my friend's kid (she was at an appointment when school rang) recently as they'd been having a dance battle in the playground, the hair flicking had got over enthusiastic and she'd twanged her neck!

I just used to get accident forms - DD2 is dyspraxic as fuck - "tripped and fell over, in the middle of an empty floor - no we've no idea how she managed that one either" (they knew us well by then) But then DD2 managed to fracture her wrist falling UP the stairs.

Probably the one in which the Y1 teacher revealed that she had X-Ray vision: 'He tripped on a mat and hit his head on the corner of the stage, but I've had a look and he hasn't fractured his skull.'

I also had a call from a long-suffering TA, again in Y1: 'I'm ringing to let you know that there's no science club after school today because of Parents' Evening and [DS] has absolutely insisted that I phone to remind you because otherwise you'll forget and be late picking him up' (I wouldn't have!)