I’ve made the biggest mistake today with School and my DD will pay for it

[Year5For3days]

DD is 9, Year 5.

Going on residential trip for 3 days at the end of November with School.

Had a meeting about it today to discuss some minor adjustments we’re talking small things like sleeping arrangements and giving of medication we’re not talking huge issues or things that can’t be overcome which makes me feel even worse. I’ve had a bad feeling about it since it was announced. I don’t know why; DD goes away with her dad (my ex-husband) and Scouts (Cubs) all the time and I never feel weird or strange about it. Scouts have never had a meeting with me about it I think that was why, but I know they’re different to school.

I told the Deputy Head running the trip how I felt and it descended into an argument between me and her. I didn’t mean for it to happen and I know she feels strongly about it, she’s run the trip every year since she started working at the school in 2013 (which is the year before DD was born ironically) and nothing has ever gone wrong, ever apparently. They’ve had 1 minor injury in all those years - a bumped head on the last day and the child still got on the bus and came back to school with them, and 1 bout of sickness where 2 kids were sent home, otherwise it’s always ran without a hitch.

But I have a really bad feeling about it, and I can’t describe it. It’s not about the money, I’d happily pay for DD to stay at school or keep her home for the 3 days. I couldn’t describe it and that’s why it turned into an argument I think, I’m keeping my stance that DD is not going, and the DHT wants her to go. Things got a bit heated; no-one swore or threw insults around but I did end up crying. And the DHT did say several times “I don’t get what the issue, I can’t see any reason (DDs name) can’t join us” and another teacher heard the discussion and came in to try to mediate unsuccessfully. Meeting ended with no resolution as it was end of the day and I had to join the queue to get DD and DHT had to be with her class.

I’m now worried that DD is going to be seen as strange or odd. DHT is DDs Maths teacher (but not class teacher) so I didn’t want to make things worse.

I don’t think anything can reassure me that it will be ok. I don’t know why I feel like this. DD went away with Cubs in the summer and that was wild camping for a week 3 hours’ drive away, not anything like the school trip which is staying in a hostel less than an hour’s drive from home still within the same county we live in and I had absolutely no qualms sending her with Cubs in fact I cheered after I’d dropped her. She was fine, worst thing that happened was she got stung by a nettle but she coped. And I don’t think that’s what I’m worried about.

How bad are things going to be for DD next week? Or will they be trying to get her to persuade me to send her? As I said I’m not concerned about the money.

Your poor daughter gets to miss out because you have a feeling. Maybe you will be proved right and there will be a Final Destination type scenario -but I doubt it. In the meantime your daughter will always remember you as the one who refused to let her go away with her school friends and will always remember feeling left out when her friends get excited ahead of the trip, whilst they are away and when they chat about it whe they get back. Nice.

Meanwhile the staff will be professional and won't treat her differently. You however will always be "that" parent from now.

You said you had this same gut instinct before and you were proved right. Were the consequences dreadful? Or did things turn out ok.

Im a very rationale person. But once I had very strong gut feeling that something bad would happen. I dismissed it as stupid and forgot about it, until the the bad thing happened. It was motherhood/pregnancy related. I’d never had that feeling before and haven’t since. BUT it would have happened anyway. There was nothing I could have done differently.

I guess, what I’m saying is, don’t dismiss the feeling. But don’t get organised by it. It sounds like it feels very different to anxiety. Feel into that and see what feels different. Notice your thoughts but don’t pay attention to them whilst you feel into it. Just really feel into it and then decide. I think motherhood changes us and our perception in really interesting and as yet unexplored and unexplained ways. Female wisdom has been persecuted, belittled and ignored throughout time.

Fear of abuse? By abuse you mean standard kids being mean to each other which everyone deals with at one time or other.

The OP could and would move her schools if she thought she was at risk of abuse from teachers and kids. How Bizarre a thought

No disrespect buy you're bonkers

you cant say trust your gut to someone with anxiety-we'd never go anywhere or do anything-our gut says no to most thngs

Exactly.

I still remember the year 8 trip to France that I wasn’t allowed to go on.

Can you say a bit more about the last time you had a sense of foreboding and what the outcome was @Year5For3days ?

I think you've probably picked up on something subconsciously that you haven't identified yet. Is it another adult on the trip? Something in the original letter about the trip? Something about the hostel or the destination?

I don't think you should ignore the feeling. Just try to work through every piece of information you've had about the trip since you were first aware of it.

OP does your DD ever stay with her friends or family for sleepovers? Is this the first time she has been away from home aside from Scouts where there is someone with her? What does your DD want, does she want to go on the school trip? If so I think you need to start letting her do things and put your anxiety aside, these are all important things to give her experience and foster her independence and self confidence.

It's stupid to keep a child away from a school trip without any concrete reason. No wonder the HT couldn't fathom your rationing. Schools always want all the children on trips because they know the trip will be good for them and those that miss it miss out on the social aspects of building relationships with their peers. They also have to be inclusive.

Going against the grain but if DD isn’t 100% sure about sleeping over and you have a bad feeling then don’t let her go.

Your anxiety is nothing to do with this tbh. You and your DD aren’t 100%. It’s not the end of the world if she doesn’t go.

TBH I’d be f* livid if a teacher tried to manipulate/force my hand - that is the bigger issues here. You saying no should have been the end of it.

I haven’t RTFT, I’ve just read your responses so apologies if this has already been asked.

This bad feeling you have which you can’t put your finger on: can you remember what was going on for you when you were 9 years old/in Year 5? Does anything come up for you when you remember that stage of your life?

This. I think you’re being really unfair and unreasonable. Your poor daughter misses out on a perfectly reasonable exciting opportunity because of your anxiety.

I'd be very uneasy after the DHT got into an argument over it! To the point that another teacher felt they should mediate. That's ridiculous. The trips are not compulsory. If a parent says no, you can ask them why but not get to the point of argument over it. That would really damage trust in the DHT.

It is very unprofessional. The school should accept a parents yes or no, and that's final.

In this case, the child regularly gets to experience trips away and residential via scouts, so they aren't being held back in any way.

*Year5For3days · Yesterday 22:26

watcherintherye · Yesterday 22:26

Do you often get a strong sense of foreboding about certain events, or is this the first time it’s happened?*

@watcherintherye Second time i can remember, and the first time I was proved right

I am going against the grain here but given this type of feeling has only happened once before I would go with your gut. I would be annoyed with the HT trying to force you and trying to change your mind. You are the parent and this trip isn’t something that is compulsory

Given your update that even dd is not keen on the sleepover part as well I don’t see anything wrong with not going

I’ll go against the majority of opinions here. You have reservations about the trip, your dd isn’t keen on the sleepover aspect of it, it’s causing stress . Just keep her home and in school. Don’t make a big deal of it to her or the school. Just write a note to the school you have withdrawn your consent to the residential. Play it down to dd, there’ll be next year and leave it. I don’t think anyone’s life will be irrevocably damaged by missing one school residential.

If you had a solid reason to not want her to go then fair enough …. But you don’t.

It’s literally a bad feeling and that’s it.

It would be unfair on your DD to stop her from something she wants to do because of a bad feeling.

None of us are promised a day.
It could be our last day today, for any of us.
Why spend whatever time we do have, not living life to the full and worrying about things unnecessarily.

If you want to spend your days inside and not trying new things then fine.
But do not inflict this on your DD.
Let her go and enjoy herself and make lifelong memories with her friends.

All the vibes, OP. She's your child and it's your decision.

Do you have a friend or family member you can talk it through with to help you think through whether this level of anxiety is based on a response to the risks (and your DD's feelings) or whether it might be an overreaction driven by your base levels of anxiety so your immediate instinct is to soothe the anxiety by asserting control over the situation? Posters here don't know you well enough to say.

I can see why are worried about letting your DD go. Can you get some counselling for your anxiety? Very occasionally things do go wrong on school trips. A school trip to Drayton Manor close to me ended in a DC drowning a couple of years ago. She was on a school trip. Most of the schools in my area take kids there at the end of term. There had been no previous problems. After the incident a couple of parents I know said they would refuse to allow their DC to go there if school asked again because it was hard for teachers to watch every DC all of the time. Could you do something else nice with your DD on the trip days?

OP, I haven't read the full thread because it's early. But I'm a year 5 teacher. I'm guessing the trip is an activity trip?

I'm going to be as honest and kind as I can here and say we can tell the children whose parents have anxiety a mile off because of the way the child presents at school. The school will want your daughter to go because these trips are good for so many reasons. They build confidence, strengthen friendships, encourage children to take safe, calculated and well managed risks. And they just bloody love it. They are filled with tales of sneaking sweets in for a midnight feast without their teachers' knowledge (we all know 😉) and a feeling of adventure. Their relationships with their teachers strengthen - we get to know them as people. It's a laugh.

Every year, a couple of parents with anxiety will tell us their children can't go. They worry about safety, the child being homesick, they will miss their child for a few days and turn it into a fear on the child's part or claim to be a concerned parent doing what is right for their child. Often the child wants to go. The parents are saying these things in order to manage/control their own feelings by reassuring themselves they are being a good parent with their child's best interests at heart. They would rather their childishly put than they sat with their feelings of discomfort for a few days.

The school will be concerned about the impact in your child of missing out on something beneficial that she would enjoy due to parental anxiety.

Sometimes, some parents will change their minds sometimes they won't. When they do go, parental fears are never realised. Their children have a great time and they are the children we often notice the biggest positive impact on. Sometimes the parents stick to their guns and the child doesn't go. They really feel it. They lose further confidence in themselves because their parents didn't think they could do the things that every other parent believed their child could. In 20 years of teaching (and 25 years of being a parent), I've never known a single child who was reluctantly allowed to go who regretted it. Nor a parent who regretted acting against their instincts to allow a child to go.

Where they don't go, children listen to the stories on return and they feel they missed out. It reinforces their anxious parents world view to them, and they become increasingly anxious too. You hear them in school, 'I'm not going because my mum says I won't cope/have anxiety/will get homesick." In all cases they want to go. Some will believe that their parent is right and something bad will happen and so accept it. Some are visibly frustrated and saddened by it. Some just shrug it off because they've already accepted that they're not as capable as the other children whose parents are happy about them going. Can you imagine how that will manifest in their future lives?

We have a visiting play therapist at my school. We also run nurture groups. Without exception, the children with anxious parents are the only ones who aren't allowed to go on these residential trips for spurious 'something bad might happen' reasons. They are also amongst the children who are in the nurture groups and see the play therapist.

The DHT wants your daughter to go because she can see the impact of your anxiety on your child and is trying to counter that. Which is part of her job.

If you don't allow her to go, your child won't be 'targeted' at school for anything other than maybe additional support to minimise the negative impact your anxiety is having kn her to try and avoid her developing the same crippling anxiety.

No one will think she is odd or strange but they will be concerned for her current and future MH and wellbeing.

You've not taken into account that dd could be saying no as she knows her mum doesn't want her to go.

It's what I did. I knew mum didn't want me to go places so I said I didn't too to make her happy.

Just ask DD if she wants to go!!!

If I read correctly, the OP has said her daughter does want to go.

You occasionally see anecdotes in the media about people who have a really bad feeling about something...like maybe getting on a plane,...they don't get on the plane and then they hear that the plane has crashed.

These stories will be massively, massively outweighed by all the stories you DON'T hear about. The stories of people who decide not to "get on the plane" and the plane doesn't crash at all. Those people are hugely inconvenienced,, the people they're travelling with think they're flaky, and they have to mess around sorting out a later plane. No-one hears about those stories because nothing happened and they aren't news.

If you don't send your daughter, you'll still have the thought, "Ah, but if I DID send her then something may have happened."

Whereas if you do send her, almost certainly nothing awful will happen in those three days. And the next time you get a baseless premonition you'll start recognising it for what it is, and be able to over-rule it.

I can totally empathise, because keeping our children safe is such a deep primal need. And I'm not saying to never trust your intuition, sometimes your gut feeling is telling you something, and you've subconsciously picked up tells not to trust someone or something like that.

However, if this is just a wafty general feeling that something "bad is going to happen" then it really is just anxiety talking and you need to ignore it for your daughter's sake or it will just get worse.

Fear of abuse? By abuse you mean standard kids being mean to each other which everyone deals with at one time or other.

No, by abuse I mean abuse. If I meant normal mean stuff I'd say so. Why is that a bizarre thought? Don't you believe that teachers are ever sexually abusive or bullying to children, or that trips away overnight offer far greater opportunities for such abuse than daily school life? Of course it's highly unlikely..... almost everything bad that happens to anyone is highly unlikely. But perfectly feasible.

Women very often sense something is wrong in these scenarios, without being able to put their finger on it, and therefore don't feel justified to act. That may have nothing whatsoever to do with OP's instinct, but I think too many people are assuming that the only thing this could be is ridiculous catastrophizing.

All those saying to ignore your gut instinct. Have you never had that gut instinct telling you what you need to do or what to avoid (even if your head says it’s completely irrational) ?

I don’t have them very often (last one 19 years ago) and I ignored it and went with rational thinking and I am still feeling the effects of that “what could possibly go wrong” rational thinking and it has just made my life so hard