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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

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

631 replies

pingu2209 · 24/05/2011 22:47

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?

OP posts:
clam · 27/05/2011 23:11

And I would imagine that school secretaries are only likely to get prickly when it sounds as if the parent is being stroppy about being asked to collect their child. I'm sure that if you were to say "Oh gosh, right, OK, I'll be as quick as I can, but am the other side of town at the moment" they'd understand.
Our secretary, mentioned above, was the same lady who in aother instance, contacted both parents when their child was seriously injured, took the keys of the mum's hastily-parked car to shift it away from traffic wardens whilst she went in the ambulance, and collected the dad from the station once he arrived hotfoot from London, took him to the hospital, brought him back to school later to pick up his wife's car....
Schools can and are accommodating too, you know!

KittySpencer · 27/05/2011 23:11

clam - I was referring to the manner in which my sons former HT spoke to me when it took me over an hour to get to school when my son was ill. Whilst given my profession I am well able to argue my own corner, I didn't enjoy having to do so with my son crying and ill in the same room.

Feenie · 27/05/2011 23:13

Your posts certainly haven't read like it. You have made me feel like shit.

I am genuinely sorry if they have, xstitch - afaics I haven't said anything at all that was directly aimed at you, and you seemed to take one or two comments weirdly personally. Which posts did you perceive as aimed at you?

xstitch · 27/05/2011 23:17

Not directly aimed at me but when you kept going on about not getting there quickly. Do you not think I felt guilty when the incident above happened. I am at home 99% of the time.

I think you would feel very jumpy if you had to live your lie in constant fear of having your daughter taken away for ever. If you knew that a minor imperfection could be the trigger for another SS complaint against you. If you knew that your misdemeanor didn't even have to be that bad for you to be humiliated for it. I am talking about RL here so perhaps I am still jumpy. So would you if you lived in fear 24/7.

KittySpencer · 27/05/2011 23:17

re school secretaries, that may be true of some. In my experience, when I've been honest and said 'I'm leaving now, but I am at work in X, and it will take me an hour or so to get to you BUT I WILL GET THERE ASAP' the response was generally either 'well he should be picked up before that, he can't stay here that long' 'I'll have to tell the HT as she said he needed to be collected immediately' etc etc.

I have certainly never felt either the office staff or teachers showed any real understanding of being a FT working parent, particularly not a LP.

clam · 27/05/2011 23:17

Kitty, if your son was ill to the point of crying, that kind of underlines the HT's anxiety at caring for him and hoping you'd arrive as soon as possible.
But I wasn't there to hear the exchange between you, so can't really comment on that.

clam · 27/05/2011 23:19

I would imagine that the majority of school office staff and teachers are working parents themselves. It's a problem for all of us.

Feenie · 27/05/2011 23:22

Xstitch, with the greatest of respect, I think you are being over sensitive and mistakenly thinking I have ever referred to your situation specifically.

I have said repeatedly that I think 10 minutes is OTT, and the only time I have mentioned a time frame which I think is reasonable/unreasonable was a few minutes ago. I have reacted to the OP's attitude, mostly when she stated that schools think ill children are an inconvenience and that vomiting children are 'hardly' an emergency.

xstitch · 27/05/2011 23:24

Would you not be sensitive if you had been reported to SS several times a year?

clam · 27/05/2011 23:25

Well, yes, xstitch, but that's a bit outside of the parameters of this thread.

AbigailS · 27/05/2011 23:26

bibbitybobbityhat
We call parents and cope as best we can until they can get there. As I posted earlier it means my classroom door open and the child sitting on a chair in the corridor with a sick bucket and blanket if necessary. But I can't leave my class unattended or the ill child. You can't have a vomiting child in the classroom. So I have to hover in the doorway while my class do something that needs little or no input from me, so I can mop brows, hold hair, calm distressed child, etc. Hence no reading books changed, no reading time, no teaching for the other 29. If it's an serious accident or illness in my opinion I speak to the parent (using my own mobile phone if the office staff have gone home as I can't leave the room to make the call) and ask what they want me to do. If I'm concerned I will tell the parent I will need to get their child to casualty and to meet us there asap. If that is the case I have to send my class to join another class and go with the child in the ambulance (and pray someone can come and get me after the event as my car will be in school). Once I have driven a child to casualty, but I had to send my class to join another and we had to close the school office so the secretary could accompany me as we are not permitted to drive a child alone. Yes we cope, but the impact it has on the education of the rest of the class and the complaints I have had "It's not good enough, you haven't changed Xs book" and when I explain I get the "you should be doing your job properly so it's your problem" response. We have very limited TA support, so there's not a spare adult to come and help like many people believe. I think some people's expectations of what schools should do is due to the fact that they don't really know how some primary schools function.

Feenie · 27/05/2011 23:27

Perhaps, but I'm not sure that I would imagine slights from a poster who doesn't know your situation, has never once addressed you personally, and take offence at a time frame that said poster has never referred to?

Not sure what else I can say to you - I have apologised sincerely for any offence I may have caused and assured you that I wasn't referring to you at at all. And you don't seem to be able to show me a post which upset you directly, since there weren't any which refferred to you or a reasonable timescale, which is what seems to have upset you most. Confused

xstitch · 27/05/2011 23:30

I am sorry I am a fuck up who doesn't deserve to live. I am stressed out becasue I upset XH yesterday so I am waiting for my punishment which could easily be another SS complaint.

Feenie · 27/05/2011 23:34

You do sound stressed out - what you are going through sounds horrible. Sad

clam · 27/05/2011 23:34
Hmm Feenie has apologised for any percieved offence.
clam · 27/05/2011 23:35

Gah! PercEived!!

xstitch · 27/05/2011 23:35

and I have apologised for being a fucked up bitch.

KittySpencer · 27/05/2011 23:38

clam, he was crying because he wanted to go home, rather than hear the HT shouting at his mummy, delaying our departure. He was simply ill, rather than ill and upset until that point.

And I don't need you to comment on how rude and unpleasant she was to me. I was there and have a very accurate recollection of it. She was very clear that in cases where both parents work it's not acceptable for both to be more than an hour from school, and that I was therefore wrong and a bad parent, and so on.

AFAIK there are no teachers at the school with school age children. Several have gone on mat leave in the last few years, but never returned, or if they have, for no more than a term. I've no idea about the secretaries/office staff but given the tone they take, I'd be surprised if they had children. Or if they do, must be in the enviable position of having family nearby. Not a luxury I have sadly.

clam · 27/05/2011 23:38

OK, I'm off, I think. Seems like it's all been covered on this thread now.

clam · 27/05/2011 23:40

The school secretary told you you were "wrong and a bad parent?"

space2010 · 27/05/2011 23:42

Has anyone mentioned what's in the best interest of the child?

KittySpencer · 27/05/2011 23:43

no the HT did. I think what she actually said was that I wasn't doing my best for DS by working so far from home.

Feenie · 27/05/2011 23:47

AFAIK there are no teachers at the school with school age children

Gosh, that's very unusual!

I don't have family nearby either. I do, thankfully, have a superb childminder who is fabulous. Not for want of trying either - my first cm asked us to leave when ds was 9 months Shock. She would only put him to sleep in a pushchair, and refused to rock him in it. He was overtired, cried all day, and she would turn up in the middle of the day and just hand him over to me claiming he was poorly. I used to have to go to the Head's office, with this baby who was by now beaming from ear to ear, and say 'ermm, I'm sorry, he's poorly, I have to leave.' Hmm

Feenie · 27/05/2011 23:48

Yes, space2010 - me, seeker and clam, and perhaps others who I haven't mentioned.

Feenie · 27/05/2011 23:50

Kittyspencer, I think an hour is reasonable. HT was out of order.

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