School making DC wrote a letter of condolence for the Queen

[wheredidIleavemystyle]

The school are creating a book of condolence for the DC to write in.

On the surface of it, this is a nice idea, and I can see

We’ll i can imagine the collective horror of MN because DCs school they had to write a prayer for the queen. Went down like a sack of sh!t with my self professed ‘skeptical agnostic’ DC in year 6. The younger one didn’t really care one way or the other…

Exactly. I always think the "What I did at the weekend" or the holidays or whatever must be horrible for some kids who never get to do anything nice or maybe the big event of the weekend was dad beating mum up or mum getting drunk or having nothing to eat on Saturday. That would worry me, writing a letter of condolence is a life skill.

Just make it truthful and respectful.
"Dear queen, your family must be very sad about you dying, love xxxxx"

On writing a letter of condolence as a life skill. I'm not so sure. People have different ideas of what is appropriate.
I find the use of euphamisms for someone I loved who died, quite hard to read. "I'm sorry for your loss"...awful....
"Thinking of you at this sad time".... Better... Perhaps, but so easy and glib to write while doing actually nothing to comfort the bereaved person.
Sharing a few memories of things I might not know about....so much better. If people were close enough to be able to do that.

It’s interesting that a few posters have steered their DC away from this sort of thing because, what was the phrase, only dumb people follow (or something to that effect).

If parents have strong views on it one way or the other, why not have a conversation about it with your child else all you’re doing is imposing your own belief and potentially missing them being able to participate in a debating opportunity at school. It’s a topic without a clear wrong/right, which is often a lot of life. Parents have to parent but in this scenario, having blanket views of I don’t let my child do X as I personally don’t agree isn’t in any way enlightened or encouraging freedom of thought - quite the opposite.

Just make sure your child writes something really positive about the life, rather than focusing on the death. Write it yourself and get her to copy it out. Write about the parachute stunt in the 2012 London Olympic games or the loads of corgis she had. There's no way she'd have wanted kids grieving.

Look on it as simply letter writing practice.
Do it at home rather than perhaps having wording imposed at school.
You don’t have to be a royalist to simply write maybe thank you for your years of service or something like that.

Not everything written has to be the exact truth. People write about magic and spaceships and imaginary friends. It’s fiction, and this letter can also be a polite fiction.
I would explain to my child what a polite fiction is, like saying every baby is beautiful, for example.

It doesn't matter if you're royalists or not. It's a good opportunity to practice writing these letters in a real life situation, and you can tell your DC to do it from the perspective of being sorry for the loss of Charles' mother, rather than the Queen, if that would help. Or write a letter to Prince George saying they're sorry. Doesn't have to be from a royal perspective.

Oh for goodness sake! Do you police everything your child is asked to do at school? No wonders teachers are leaving the profession. Such drama over nothing.

As an ex teacher, this is not why teachers are leaving.

Teachers are leaving primarily because overall stress is up, funding for education is down, and wages are not great.

Of course it would be remiss of school not to mark it in some way. It is a huge event, very important nationally and to individuals.

But as with prayers, the school can lead them but allow thosebwho choose to stay silent. They should not enforce an expression of anything on something like this.

I would be livid OP. It's so wrong on so many levels.

I don't think something about such a sensitive topic as death should be forced on the DC. How many of them will have had recent deaths in the family or a terminally ill family member, perhaps a grandparent? Probably a fair few. It's time we had a more honest conversation about death in this country.

I remember my daughter having to write similar letters on the deaths of Diana and Mother Theresa. She just saw it as another English lesson.

Well it’s not as if the Queen was exactly a controversial person to write about. Even convinced Republicans are writing tribute to her worth so I don’t see why a child shouldn’t write a few nice lines about her unless the parents are particularly wanting to be stubborn.

For God's sake cut these teachers a break! It's a real life task. Pupils need practice. Get a life. Or be that parent that everyone talks about.

Oh fffs just write the fucking letter, it can be just a few lines, you don't have to write pages, get your child to copy it and then just fucking move on.

It's not a big deal.

Children who have lost a family member will probably have some empathy and be quite keen to write a simple letter.

In what way is it 'wrong'?

YABU.
The thing with schools, is that it's not pick n mix, it's not a service where you opt in and out of features, it's not personalised. You get the whole package, the things that suit you 100% and those that you have to grin and bare.

It's an important life skill to be able t go with the flow and pick your battles, otherwise you will make it very difficult for your child to get along with others and thrive in school, workplace, social life.

If you do indeed feel very strongly about this, you should let school know that you are opting out. What's the worst that can happen? They can penalise you?

Jeremy Corbyn managed to write a nice, meaningful tribute to the Queen about enjoying their conversations about gardening, and he's very staunchly Republican.

It's a bit of writing practice and there's a large range of things a child can write about.

We had to write to the local big football team. Despite my antipathy towards football, no harm was done.

My DCs have lost an elderly grandparent very recently and there's no point in flip flopping around this high profile death. They've managed to get through the "what did you do over the summer" type conversations despite a few serious complications. Children can't be completely sheltered from life and they do need to know how it works in a simple, honest way without over hamming it to either extreme.

Hasn’t Liz Truss previously given a speech as a younger person calling for the abolition of the monarchy. Yet she has been the one to lead condolences on behalf of the government.

Shpaniel - People's views can change throughout their lives or do you think we should have the same views in our 40s/50s as we did in our teens/20s.

Oh did you not realise - you're clearly a raging Republican if you don't want to weep and wail about someone you don't know and have never met. It's complete nonsense and I'd be encouraging my daughter to write about how she really feels.

I don't know why the OP is getting involved at all. Her DC should be doing their own homework. And the teacher will cope with whatever is produced.