to think a school should be able to look after a child for over an hour?

[pingu2209]

More of a "is my friend being unreasonable" or the school?

A mum friend of mine has a career job but can't afford a nanny. A nanny would cost all of her salary. She uses the before and after school club. She works 1 hour away and her husband works 1 1/2 hours away from school. She was phoned up and asked to come and collect her son as he had a temperature and a rash.

She said, "okay I will be there in about 1 1/4 hours." The school office said, "well we need you here asap, can you get someone to come in the next 10 mins?"

My friend said, "no, I don't have any family living near by and I am uncomfortable asking a friend to pick up my son who is ill and may be contagious."

The school said to her, "you need to have an emergency contact who can get here in under 10 mins."

She replied, "well that would be great in an ideal world, but we are not from here and have no family. A friend would pick up if I was running late, but as all my friends here have children, I can't ask them to pick up my son who is ill. I am just over an hour away but the longer I am on the phone to you the longer I will be. I need to make a couple of calls to cancel meetings etc. I can't just run out, I need about 15 mins just to close up my desk etc."

I understand that a school is there to educate our children, it is not childcare or a 'sick room'. However, surely they need to understand that if both parents are working and they don't have a nanny, one of them will be along as soon as possible.

Who is being unreasonable?

People don't necessarily chose to work so far away. Sometimes it is that or unemployment.

I am very offended at your stance over my friend. She was really worried about her son as the school had made out he was really ill and needed immediate pick up. She did all she could, without risking her job, to get to the school as soon as she could - which was 1 hour 15 mins. The fact he was fine and was playing on the sick room floor and had no rash whatsoever did annoy my friend as they had not told her the truth of the situation. If they had, she may well have phoned me to pick him up.

May I suggest that if you are at all likely to become offended re any adverse opinions regarding your friend, that you don't parade her situation on AIBU?

This rash is confusing me also - we have gone from a rash and a temp, to a few flea bites, to 'no rash whatsoever', with the school now not having 'told the trurth'. It's like AIBU by stealth in reverse. What exactly are you suggesting now, that the school lied just to piss your friend off and make her leave work? Why? It's in their interests to keep him in school, they don;t send home children who are fine, they have enough problems getting kids to attend in the first place, fgs.

So having complained every which way about the actions of school, you now seem to be complaining about misdiagnosis also.
They are not medical professionals. It's an occupational hazard to find ill children dying ducks one minute and seemingly perfectly fine the next. Have you never ummed and ahhed about keeping your child at home ill, only to find them bouncing off the walls at 10a.m., as right as rain? But then clinging to you and whimpering with fever the same afternoon?

A vomitting child is a stuation where the child needs to go home asap mo. Not just for the school's benefit (thinking other children, a member of staff needing to sit with child and not be in class, etc.)- but a vommitting child will be feeling dreadful. Of course it is a situation where an emergency contact should be used! To suggest otherwise is madness imo.

Christ on a bike there are some smug feckers on this thread.

Not everyone can just walk out of a job to fetch a child with 30 secs notice. My DS's school expects to be able to reach me by phone in an 'emergency' AT ANY TIME. I have been told this directly by one of the Deputy Heads. They cannot understand that sometimes I am in meetings, or more seriously in court, and cannot answer my phone, or have it switched off. Or am on a conference call on my work phone, meaning I can't answer my mobile.

That's a perfect example of how unreasonable schools are. And without wishing to make it about class, it totally is. I have friends with DC in private schools, where they have a school nurse, and parents who are paying £20k a year for their children's education would not be expected to be constantly available. At the other end of the scale, I've already mentioned the school my ex-MIL works at, in a very deprived area, where they don't contact parents unless it's the most serious emergency. This issue arises in middle class areas, where most families have one parent at home - or extended family who provide childcare. And people like me, despite having a bloody good job, are inferior because of being a lone parent, working FT, oh and not having any living family. How dare I have the audacity to think I should even have children?!

But Hulababy if an emergency contact picks up the child they won't be at home either - they'll be with emergency contact

Good point SPB. realistically if you say "I can't get there for an hour, I'll contact emergency contact" then it will take emergency contact (say) 15/20 mins to be contacted and pick child up, then 10 mins to get them back to their house. Child has 30 mins at em contact's home then gets picked up and taken back to parental home - it's not necessarily a better solution than staying at school, especially if the journeys are on foot or em contact lives on the other side of school from parental home.

I just wish people would make up their minds as to whether schools are doing essential teaching jobs and can't possibly be disrupted, or wheher they are pretty superfluous and don't do anything that can't be covered in 2 weeks on the beach

Thinking about it I wouldn't call my emergency contact if DD was ill anyway unless DH and I were totally stuck.
She has 4 children at different schools to mine, who don't need a bug that DD's school friends have probably already got or are going to get anyway.

I agree on the class thing. DD2's mainly middle class primary school expect you to jump while DD1's large, and very mixed intake comp. have a matron who is very reasonable about when you can get there. OK the primary is much smaller and the children younger, but it's a very rural area with no public transport. School seems to forget peoples homes and work are very scatted and not everyone has access to a car at all times.

This is where I think schools should be able to give calpol or similar. If they called you, and asked your permission, you said ok, they give the child the medicine - chances are they would perk up after 20 mins - I am not saying that they should stay at school, of course the parent or whoever would be on their way, but at least they would start to feel a bit better.

the school is being unreasonable.
i am a sahm, i couldn't pick up dd in 10 minutes, it would take at least half an hour.

feel for your friend. she didn't do anything wrong, and yet is being made to feel as though she has.

I'm with KittySpencer - this is such a middle class thread! One of my colleagues was called last week to pick her sick dd up from her very expensive school. She was outraged: "On what I'm paying them, I don't expect to have to be disturbed while I'm at work" etc.

At the other end of the scale, many schools serving deprived populations bend over backwards to accommodate the reality of the parents' lives: breakfast clubs etc.

And then there's schools like my dd's very middle-class state school, where most families either have a SAHM or a nanny, and there are sky-high expectations of what mothers should do, not just in terms of being available for their children, but in supporting the school. Which does, on a daily basis, feel like quite a grind to those of us who have to work in order to put food on the table.

feenie, don't be so bloody ridiculous.

The OP's friend didn't demonstrate any sort of lack of concern for her child - n the contrary, she responded as promptly as she could.

hester, having kids at the sort of school you describe was the tipping point in persuading a friend of mine to stop working. She just couldn't keep up with the endless, short-notice demands being placed on parents at the school and her anxiety that her kids would feel left out or or let down.

Bloody nightmare for everyone involved, especially those who can't/don't want to play keep up with the Parker-Posh-Jones or whatever.

rosebud, I can only judge by the comments the OP makes regarding sick children, and suspect her 'friend' thinks the same.

So do you hold all the same opinions as your friends, Feenie? What a ridiculous assumption to make.

KittySpencer has hit the nail on the head. We are living in a very expensive area and the primary school is full of children from middle to upper middle class homes. The school are used to the majority of parents, certainly in the infant years, having one parent (mum) at home. Because mum is at home, she meets and mixes with other SAHMs so has a strong network if she needs someone to pick up her child quickly if she is unable to do so.

However, the minority of children have two working parents. The fact the parents are not in the playground means they don't meet so many other parents and so don't have such a strong network. In addition, because they work they rarely have playdates after school, which again means they don't feel they can ask another mum they hardly know to pick up their sick child.

Working parents really struggle to meet the demands of my school, which completely expects a child to be picked up practically immediately if they are ill. The school says it is not fair on the child to be sat in the sick room on a chair if they are ill. They say they are not able to look after sick children. Both points they are correct on; however, they have no understanding for working parents.

Most mums I know who work feel guilty enough that they think they are not spending as much time with their child or they think their child is missing out on play dates etc. However, if they didn't work, the family would lose the roof over its head! To have the school treat them as though they are really wrong because they can't get to the school very quickly - even though they are busting a gut to get there, it will still take over an hour.

With regards my friend and her son. The school phoned her and said he had a temperature and a rash and she needed to come and get him. When she said she would be 1 1/4 hrs the school office said that she needed to get there quicker because he really wasn't well and could another mum come and get him. My friend is a nurse - MacMillan nurse to be precise, so she said that she wouldn't call out a friend to pick her son up who had a temperature and a rash as it could be meningitis. She said the school office quickly backed down and said, oh he isn't that unwell and the temperature isn't that high - so basically the office was saying anything just to get someone to come and get the boy.

My friend didn't call me. She came to school as quickly as she could. In the office she lifted his shirt and found 5 flee bites. She was really upset that she couldn't get there quickly, not just for her son's sake, but because the school office had made her feel inadequate for not being able to get there quicker. When she quized the office staff regarding the flee bites and how could they think it was a rash because it quite clearly wasn't. They didn't offer an apology or anything. They were still pissed off that they had had to look after her son for over an hour.

The school office staff's attitude stinks. Their behaviour throughout was purely to get rid of the boy as quickly as possible, not for the boy, but because they didn't want the responsibility of looking after him.

Is lunacy in schools the norm? I ask as DD1 will be starting next Sept and I'm dreading it now! I don't get the school's problem: the mother said she was coming to get her son! It wasn't as if she said she couldn't - she was coming right away!!

I once had to pick DD1 up from nursery when she had chickenpox. I work 20 minutes away from nursery and fortunately I drive. But by the time I had informed my manager, departmental secretary etc., closed e-mails, rearranged stuff I needed to do that day (the rest I sorted when I'd got DD) and got out of the building and got to nursery, an hour had lapsed.

Seriously, are schools always like this????

OP - your friend's school is the unreasonable one here.

manchestermummy - sadly many schools are like this. Private schools, I believe, are more reasonable - perhaps because they have more staff.

Also schools that are located in a poorer area or where it is normal for mums to work, are more reasonable.

It is when your dc are at a school in an area where most mums are at home, the school just isn't used to not having a parent on tap.

Not all schools are bad. As I said previously, it took us an hour to pick up DS2 recently when he was ill - it was unavoidable - but they didn't fuss over it. And that was an asthma flare up - they knew I was getting there as quickly as possible. They were giving him his inhaler and agreed that at any point prior to my arrival if it was needed they should call 999, without verifying any further with me first. It's just basic common sense, really.

If you are not prepared to collect a sick child in an emergency you should not be someone's emergency contact. That's what you are agreeing to when you say yes to a friend.

So do you hold all the same opinions as your friends, Feenie? What a ridiculous assumption to make.

She's posting on behalf on her 'friend', and backing her friend up with her own opinions. It's an entirely reasonable assumption to make, and it's very clear in these circumstances that her stance and her 'friend's' are clearly one and the same in this AIBU situation.

If they weren't, the OP would make that clear, i.e. my friend thinks this is fine, but I think differently. Jeez.

No not all schools are this bad. The school once phoned me while I was in the swimming baths with my younger one. I was uncontactable for over an hour. It wasn't till we had got home that the school phoned and said my older one had a temperature and could I pick her up? I was vvv apologetic but they were fine about it. Maybe the OP's "friend"' rubbed the school secretary up the wrong way? Who knows, it's hard to say when the OP is asking on behalf of a "friend", it's second hand information.

So how long IS it reasonable to leave a poorly 5 year old waiting to be picked up ?