Question/suggestion for primary school teachers

[Lovelybitofsquirrel3]

I’m not a teacher and I’m not interested in becoming one.
behavioural issues can be partly caused by diet, sleep, or stress. If children filled in a diary daily to record bits of information about their week each day, it could reveal a lot about that child. I’m not sure why it isn’t routinely done in schools, or if there’s some kind of rule that doesn’t allow it?

Children are very unreliable in their memory and understanding. My 8 year old regularly claims he was awake past midnight and woke up 3 times and only had 2 hours sleep. This is nonsense.

He wouldn't have a clue what to record about his actual sleep.

Even if you could collect reliable information from every child, who would collect and process all of this data?

They'd just end up lying though if they knew that 'Jack' recorded he regularly doesn't sleep until after 11pm, and 'Chloe' says she had chocolate biscuits for breakfast, which meant staff got involved.

They'll end up writing what they think the staff want to hear I imagine (or what their parents tell them to write).

When in the packed school day would this happen?
Who would monitor it?
And if they write that they are eating something that you disagree with then what do you think can be done about it.
Also, children are unreliable. You can imagine some poor parent getting pulled in because their child claimed to eat nothing but pot noodles and the parent having to explain that they do nothing of the sort.

Yeah I was partly wondering about that but I was thinking about more obvious lies. There should be a way to work out if it’s true or not or ways to record parts about their life in general. It could be private so they don’t feel the need to show off as much.

Plus schools run the risk of alienating parents if they're seen as overstepping.

And that's even if the staff did have time to monitor these things.

I would call this a complete intrusion into private family life.

My DCs school give regular assembly sessions about the importance of good diet and sleep and rest. I imagine most schools do.

Schools do not exist to spy on the private lives of children.

I expect most parents would be a bundle of nerves if they thought the school were going to rely on the word of their kids, and start involving themselves.

Can you imagine? Someone makes a quick beige freezer tea because they have to fit it in between pick up from swimming and drop off for scouts.
‘Now Olivia, this is turkey dinosaurs, happy faces and beans but you must write in your book that we had quinoa with roasted vegetables or they will take you away.’

I imagined it could be done first thing in the morning, and looked over then. I have no authority to implement any of this, it was a question as to why it isn’t done. those 3 things massively impact capacity to learn or cope and can partly cause behavioural issues. The explanations make sense, but it’s a shame it probably can’t reasonably be done because it’s so important

The biggest problem is parents. I don't need a diary. I can see it and I know it. There's fuck all I can do about it.

Because Megan has a perfect life in her perfect warm house with lots of food and has lots of nice things to tell the teacher about and then theirs poor Johnny who relies on a food bank, living in a cold house with nothing to do and never goes anywhere. Not fair to share what the kids do!

Yes it is important but let's just say for a minute it was possible.

What happens when they read a diary from a kid who says they've eaten nothing but supermarket pizza and chips for dinner, for the last few days.

Then they read another diary from a kid who says they don't eat fruit or veg.

What do you think would happen then?

At my primary school the children who have one to one Learning Support Assistants tend to be the ones with the most challenging behavioural issues. They have Home School Link books which the LSA, teacher and parent all fill it in, with important pieces of information which might have an impact on behaviour either in school or at home.

Other children with emotional or mental health issues may also be given a similar diary, sometimes just for a short period of time while they are having sessions with eg a mental health practitioner etc.

But there is just no time for staff to read and monitor such a diary from every single child regularly enough for it to be helpful. If a parent wrote in it they could be writing a pack of lies for any number of reasons. Many parents would simply either forget or not bother to write in it. Younger children wouldn't have the writing skills to write anything that really could give a true picture of their lives without further question and many older children could also be writing things that are completely made up (again, for various reasons).

I don't mean this to sound patronising, but if you had ever worked in a school for any length of time you would realise why your idea just wouldn't be feasible.

"last night I woke up three times because our house was cold and my little sister had wet the bed and it made me wet too"

"Mummy was upset because I didn't like the dinner she made because I don't like noodles and we can only make dinner in the kettle now"

How do you think a child living in poverty who is very loved but is sharing a bed with a sibling or living in emergency accommodation is going to feel writing that down every single day. It's incredibly intrusive, like East Germany or China under Mao. What would be the purpose? Little Emily's living in a single room with her mum and two siblings and they have one double bed and a travel cot between them, they're in emergency accommodation because their landlord sold up and there is nowhere in the same town they can afford rent. . The school already knows this as she's on a child in need plan and now she has to write down her crap home conditions. Every day. What would be the point?

I don't mean this to sound patronising, but if you had ever worked in a school for any length of time you would realise why your idea just wouldn't be feasible.

It should be obvious even if someone's never worked in a school.

It would take ages to do.

The information wouldn't be very reliable.

What would the teacher actually do with the information? Are you imagining the teacher calling parents to tell them to improve their child's sleep/diet?
If a child behaves badly, is the teacher supposed to read back through their diary and identify stress?

No but if it’s recorded in a diary over time you could use it as evidence to do something with to help the child?

Ok, so in their morning prep time, instead of practising spellings they fill in their daily diary:
Last night I went to bed at:
I woke up at:
I slept (tick one) well, ok, badly
For breakfast I ate:
My mood this morning is:
Today I am worried about:
Today I am excited about:

Teacher collects the diaries in and the... TA?? spends however long reading them. She puts aside those where there's no worries, at least 19 hours of sleep and breakfast was eaten.
Does she pull five kids out and feed them? Does she call the parents of seven kids to discuss their sleep? Does she talk to ten kids about their worries? Is it just kept aside in case they play up that day?
When Jack and Mary are talking and not doing their work, is Jack given a lesser consequence than Mary because he went to bed at midnight and didn't get breakfast?

Like what happens once you have this important info?

A teacher knows their children and will know how to help; the child who I know has a poor diet at home is given fruit and larger meals, the child who has a stressful home life has daily check ins with the school counsellor. A lot of children would find writing it all down quite upsetting and then see comparisons with the children who have the secure, happy lives. It’s a very idealistic idea, practicalities aside.

Like what?

Go to Sainsburys, stock up the parent's fridge with fresh, healthy food and sit there at meal times, forcing the kid to eat it?

Should they pop round at bedtime, read them a story and tell them they need to be asleep by 8pm no matter what?

Parents tend to inform teachers/school office if something has happened since the previous school day which may have an impact on behaviour. I work in a school office and I get lots of messages every day to pass on to the teacher explaining that such and such may be tired because they'd been in A&E the night before and only got home at midnight, or that the baby sibling wasn't well and kept them awake a lot of the night, or that their chesty cough kept them awake, or that they were going through a stage of having nightmares, or that they're sad because their cat is missing, or they're unsettled because they've got ASBO neighbours who shout at the family when they arrive home, or their dad was in a small car accident last night but it unsettled the kids etc

All information is passed on verbally or emailed to teachers (if they haven't already been told directly by the parent), and anything which needs to be formally recorded goes on a system called CPOMS.

There is just no need for a diary system.

OP, you sound like have experienced or witnessed something specific for you to be asking questions like this? Is it something that happened to you as a child which went unnoticed by staff?

this was a suggestion to a big problem. I don’t have an answer for every possibility. I imagine it might be worth it in the long run, good for safe guarding, but yes could at times be difficult to know what’s true and what’s not, and I appreciate it’s hard to find the time to do it. In this theoretical situation, whether what’s written is taken seriously or not might just have to be at discretion, and kept to look at patterns over time. The questions don’t have to look like that either. I was definitely not talking about hours of sleep, but if they had any nightmares or sleep difficulties, or if they felt hungry. Parents don’t have to know what’s written?They could just be encouraged to write about anything good or bad they want to speak about and told they will be supported.

What can be done to help a child when their own parents aren’t doing their best for them? Heck we can’t even prevent those who get children removed at birth from having countless children.