To think a teacher of all people should have had more sense???

[Mands0603]

Will try and give you the short version of this:
Basically my DD has been playing out over the past week or so with her friend from up the road - our back garden leads out onto a field so they have been playing making dens etc. She sometime plays at the front of the house but always comes to tell me where she is and I am constantly checking on her. They are both aware of where they are allowed to go.

Anyway yesterday she fell over and scraped her face (just a graze nothing serious) she came home i wiped it clean then said she could do with letting me put some cream on - said no she wanted to go back out to play so would come in and have some on when she came in for tea (she was allowed out until 6pm this was about 5.15ish)all ok off they went on the field.

About 5-10 mins later friends mum came knocking asking if they were at our house explained no they were on the field she says they werent - hence mad frantic search which lasted only about 10 minutes but felt like hours.

Basically a woman saw then on the field my DD must have been saying her graze hurt so this woman took them to her house which was past ours and over the road and took them both inside and then put some cream on my DD.

The woman i later found out is a teacher and said that if we report her we could get her into a lot of trouble.
I must admit that i had a very stern conversation with my DD (as did her friends mum) but I was more shocked that this teacher did took them to her house.

I thought about it and if i was in that position i would either take the child back to her home and explain that they were hurt or go home alone and get the cream and take it back to the child.

What made it worse was that once she had put the cream on she let them out of her house alone to cross over the road by themselves - we were searching for them so found them before they attempted to cross over.

Hubby saw woman and he was quite abrupt saying she shouldn't have done that as she is a stranger and she has taken our child away from where she was allowed.

AIBU?

I haven't read the whole thread but I really don't think it matters whether your dd agreed to go or what age your dd is (unless she's 16 which I doubt). The fact is she's the kid and the teacher the adult. Kids do daft things , that's why they're kids.

The teacher on the other hand should know better. Not only would I not take someone else child into my house, i also would not put cream on them or offer it.

My dd has allergies to all sorts of things and I'd be pretty ticked off if someone gave her a medicated cream without checking with me first.

Just read the thread properly and I agree with everyone who says it's very strange for her to have taken your dd to her house once she'd been told she's not allowed.
She is either someone who does what she wants regardless and thinks these sort of rules are silly or she is up to something. I think this because your dd's response to her would have highlighted that what she was doing was wrong, she just chose to ignore it.

Also, would people think this was different if it was a man who had helped the two girls?

Hmm.

I've done a fair amount of Child Protection training and, no, I haven't been told never to take a child into my house or to tend to their cuts/grazes etc and apart from ensuring that we don't take kids to the loo, I've never been told not to be alone with a child or to leave a door open when with a child etc.

I have been told that if I see a child alone and unsupervised, or ring a house and a young child answers and says there is no adult present, to call the police.

If the stranger (who could be a teaching assistant, a piano teacher, an adult literacy teacher etc but have called herself a "teacher") had called the police, no doubt MN would also be up in arms.

Now she is a potentially unstable predator grooming a little girl with lies.

I think the most likely scenario is that she acted out of instinct (as not in professional role at the time) and then thought, "oooh shit". I think that's a sad indictment of our society, truly I do.

I work in the NHS

I think the most likely scenario is that she acted out of instinct (as not in professional role at the time) and then thought, "oooh shit". I think that's a sad indictment of our society, truly I do.

instinct ? really? I really can't believe the instinct would be to take a child home and tend to there wound then just let them go. The instinct would be to identify who is responsible for the child ie take them home. Again this was not a serious injury.

I appreciate there can be many reasons why this women acted this way. I think it would be importat to clairfy why. I know the OP is looking out for her walking the dog to have a chat about things.

Please up date us if you do get to see her.

Once again, I say that a woman in her 30s would not usually have the instinct to take 2 children to her home rather than popping them home as you passed

An older lady who is likely to say "oh well in our day dear, we all pulled together and if I see a little mite with a scratch on her face, of course I'm going to take her back and clean it up and give her a biscuit before sending her off home"

Very scary :( but thankfully no harm done.

I think stopping her from playing out for a while (just to reinforce the message!) & going over & over 'not going anywhere, with anyone, at anytime, ever, without asking you herself first' is all you need to do with DD.

I think 6 is an OK age to be playing out as you describe.

I can't understand the woman though? It was a graze... I could understand it if your DD was really sobbing and had had an accident that she may have just scooped her up, taken her into her house to calm her down, clean her up etc... and then thought, 'Oh Shit, this probably isn't a good idea'... but to take her from a field, past your house while DD is saying I'm not allowed to go with strangers/away from my house... is all very odd - then to let them walk home alone, crossing roads.... nah.... I would have to look into it further. Something isn't right and I would need to find out what...

she has strict boundries on where she can and can't go

Sorry OP, as this incident shows, she obviously has no idea what the boundaries are!

Hello. I think that when we teach children not to go with strangers we give them examples eg if someone comes up to you and says to go with them and they'll give you sweets what would you do? Your child then says they wouldn't go with a stranger and you think job done.

It is obvious to us all that your child- like most children of that age- is far too young to be able to resist the power of an adult.

I am a teacher and most children will comply with what you want of them so I am not surprised by your daughter's behaviour.

If I was you I would take this as a very cheap lesson and I would change my behaviour accordingly. You sound like a very caring mum and in some ways it's good that this happened and that there was a good outcome. You were lucky this time.

Regarding the teacher- this is beyond odd. If I saw a child in distress in a playground or being picked on, etc, I would definitely help them. But I would never take them away from the area in which I'd found them. This is very unusual behaviour I would think for any adult let alone a teacher.

The instinct was to help out, clearly.

Deciding what to do with that instinct relies on experience and knowledge relevant to your culture and society - there is nothing instinctively odd about wanting to put a plaster on a small child's graze and if the thing that sprung to mind was to do that in your own home as you happened to be passing, then that's what someone might do without having thought through long-term consequences in terms of their professional role or the "lesson" the child was learning about strangers).

The only reason people think it's odd to take someone into your home to get a plaster is because of an intrinsic belief in society over the last 50 years that the only motivation for doing so would be to harm a child.

I come from a rural community in Ireland and I can tell you that no one (even now) would think it that odd if a child grazed their knee and a local lady popped them into their house to get a plaster and put a bit of Savlon on them. I doubt that I am the only person on MN from a community where this would be considered the norm.

The reason people think it "goes against instinct" has nothing to do with instinct at all: it's to do with fear of predatory strangers which is much more present in people's minds in the last generation or so and a whole lot of resultant legislation/policies etc. Some of you, clearly, would say that being in a room with a child alone goes "against instinct" but it's common in my role so not at all "against instinct".

Did we have information about the geography, here? Did she pass the little girl's home knowingly to take her to her own house? How far was the "teacher's" home from the girl's house?

The reason this is scary is because the little girl didn't spot a potential danger, not because the teacher did something intrinsically wrong. Probably lots of us thought of Holly and Jessica. She was just a do-gooder who misjudged her actions because she wanted to be kind, as far as I can see. I see no evidence of anything else.

Shouldn't this AIBU be titled to think a parent of all people .........?

I personally think that 7 is too young to be playing out without an older child - and think that you now have ample evidence of this now.

IMHO the teacher episode is a red herring and is a direct result of your DD not adhering to the boundaries you have set.

I so agree with you working9while5 .

Sometimes I despair at the society that we now live in that assumes the worst of every individual we come across :(

It is interesting that on the Bad Things You have done to your children there are numerous instances of kind strangers looking after "abandoned" or "lost" children