aibu to want this teacher to apologise to my son.

[wfrances]

ds age 12 takes a packed lunch to school,during 2nd lesson he notices drink has leaked in his bag {all of it}his lunch is ruined,and now has no drink.
he tells his teacher who says "i dont care, its not my problem, sit down."
im fuming, he didnt eat all day,no drink and what a wicked way to respond to a child.
phoned head of year straight away ,who totally agreed with my reaction.
but i think she should apologise to him-what do you think?

I can't understand how the entire lunch was ruined. DSs sandwiches are in a ziploc bag, the crisps are in a packet and the fruit can't be ruined by a drink.

But that is kind of irrelevant.

I am a teacher. I hope I wouldn't have responded in the way the teacher did to the original problem. But I can picture a situation where, trying to get 25-30 kids to settle down, get their books out, get themselves organised, then to have one leap up in a state about a spilt drink - I can picture a situation where I could respond impatiently.

The problem is that parents only - as is natural - see the situation from the perspective of themselves and their child. And some have no real interest in trying to empathise with what the teacher has to manage on a daily basis. In my last GCSE class, I had six students with statements for varying reasons. Differentiating to encompass all their requirements as well as the other requirements of the remaining students (3 EAL, one with behavioural issues, one with a problematic home life, 2 who should have had learning support but whose parents turned it down) could be a minefield at times. All I could do was my best and sometimes I fell short - I didn't always remember that X's handouts had to be on blue or green paper, not white, for example. And you try working out a seating plan for a class where ideally you need to have about half of them sitting right next to you for the individual support they require.

But I must have been blessed in that their parents almost universally acknowledged that I tried my best to give each student individual attention while managing the class as a whole. And appreciated it at parents' evening. I'll tell you what - that appreciation made me try all the harder for that group.

Guess how inclined I was to try hard for the student whose mother spent ten minutes haranguing my colleague and I at parents' evening because we didn't treat her PFB as the most important, precious thing on the planet but actually - gasp - tried to make him work independently and make progress at solving problems for himself rather than spoon-feeding him the solutions?

@joruc I didnt think you complained, I thank you for giving me fair warning!

@ omigawd :)

I can understand that your son is very sensitive, OP, because of his various disorders.

But how is he going to learn how to cope with social interactions if not from observing your behaviour? Blame-casting and retribution-seeking are surely not traits you wish him to copy?

Perhaps you should consider apologising to the teacher for your own overreaction?

Maybe the teacher DID respond sympathetically the first, second, third time, who knows? but then with op's son's responses (whatever they were) she finally had had enough. And how can we 'judge' the teacher anyway on third hand knowledge?

Omigawd
@bella erm - apparently i wandered into a minefield by wondering how "real" so much of the demi-SN (ie non-statemented) stuff is.

Nice post, cba reading through all the posts again, please reassure me that you aren't a teacher.

perfectstorm, i think i love you.

this thread brings it all flooding back for me and my boy, god when i think of what we went through at school i just want to curl up and die. My son is 19 now. the day he left school, after his last GCSE was the last day he ever set foot back in there. He didnt even go to collect his certificates, he hated every single second of it.

He was not statemented. He had a dx at age 7 of aspergers, and dyspraxia. He was later dx at 16 with dyslexia also.

school, im afraid, for these kids, and their knackered parents, it just one long drawn out nightmare. And thats because people respond precisely as they have on this thread. by saying " he's 12 ffs! get a grip" and you know, as the parent, that their level of need is different, but when you try and communicate that....you feel inadequate and stupid and like your mollycoddling them, because, to everyone else, they look perfectly normal, and you know that they arent and you cant quite explain it all to everyone who asks....but you just know.

My son went to a tiny (400 kids) school, and, it was the best that could be done for him because he is exceptionally bright, no special school was geared up for him, no mainstream school was geared up for him, because he didnt and still doesnt "fit" into either mainstream or special needs.

OP - do go onto the special needs boards - please do - i dont post much now in there now he isnt in school but i swear, reading this thread has made my stomach feel like lead, i remember it so so well, everyone on there understands, and they can help so much, from practical things to just knowing what youre saying when you have a rant. AIBU is not the place to do it love, really.

i also have 14 year old NT DD, at the same school - *now" they can see i am not neurotic and mad....she does just brilliantly on her own. I never have to get involved in anything, its such a relief because for years i thought they would just think i was mad....with her son attached to the apron strings.

i wish.

i always joke that me and my DS will be like Mrs Merton and Malcolm.....it would be funny it it werent true...but actually he is now 19, he works part time as a computer programmer, he has just registered his own business and he is doing a degree - it does get better op i swear! hang on in there - secondary school is the worse experience of their lives - and so it is yours aswell, but it does gradually get better - with each year, as their peers mature, as the teachers (hopefully) get to know him.

PM me if you want anything - ever. a rant? some advice? to talk to someone out the other side? anything.

and Goblinchild....she is one of those very rare creatures....take her advice!
she is a teacher who understands....

If ignorance is bliss, half the posters on this topic must be as happy as a pig in shit.

Glad your ds survived high school and is now doing well vicarinatutu :)

"If ignorance is bliss, half the posters on this topic must be as happy as a pig in shit."

Actually, I think the YABU/YANBU is running at about 4:1 at least, so its more like 80% - assuming, of course that you believe they are non-believers and thus ignorant.

vicar I am sure Goblin is a wonderful teacher

however to say she is rare in the world of teachers is highly judgemental of teachers who do an incredibly difficult job under extremely difficult circumstances with incredibly difficult people (yep little ones to the teen horrors)

I have no hidden agenda to applaud teachers but just believe they do an incredibly thankless job for hardly any reward(and difinitely not financial ).

I agree though that if OP wanted a "there there" approach and a mass agreement that the teacher should at least be hung drawn and quartered and her head served on a plate at dinner time in the playground then maybe she should not have brought her complaint to AIBU.

I'm not sure I understand why the op is getting such a hard time.

From what I can gather, her ds noticed at the beginning of a lesson that his drink had spilt all over his bag, he happened to be standing up next to the teacher (assuming all the other kids were settling down getting pencil cases and books out etc?) so told him/her what had happened. He/she was rude and dismissive when a simple "Ok, take your books out to dry and we'll sort it out later, get yourself settled down" would have sufficed. Teacher knows he has some sn and needs instruction.

Teaching must be a bloody hard job but I dont think it sets a good example to be rude to any student, sn or not, and with respect, lots of people in different professions work very hard and have to put up with all kinds of abuse too. What about your average receptionist on min wage being screamed at and personally insulted by big boy customers through no fault of her own? She can't be rude back to them, she has to button it and smile or face disciplinary action for losing a valuable client no matter how exhausted she is, it's not really that difficult.

My ds would have reacted the same way at 12 as I said, probably would have been scared shitless that his books would be ruined (do they still have text books that have to be returned at the end of term undamaged?). He is very timid, not disruptive at all and would have plucked up the courage to try and do the right thing. He would have been really distressed and not known what to do. He's not useless either but really struggles at times, cant use initiative and just needs a nudge in the right direction ie "go to head of house in room so and so and they'll sort dinner", otherwise he'd have no idea what to do.

People find it hard to get their head around unless they've met him but he takes everything so literally we have to be so careful how we word things. For instance, saying to ds "go to the office" wouldn't be enough, he'd wander around for hours. Even if there is only one office, it would have to be "go to so and so office on such and such floor and see mr whatsit to ask about blah blah".

Do you know what, I would be pissed off if a teacher spoke like that to my children and they don't have SN.

Have been thinking about this and I know that no-ones perfect and we all have bad days, but we make children apologies to each other and us when they've done somethinhg wrong, why is this teacher so special that she shouldn't apologise?

The child in question was distressed due to SN. It could also easily have been a child who is painfully shy and very rarely talks out anyway, this could have been their first attempt at being brave and speaking up and they shouted down! WTF. Yes we need to teach our children independance but how has this helped?

We can all talk about well you should have used this kind of bottle or that kind of lunch box, the fact is the OP didn't, there was an accident, the child asked for help and got that response. A shitty response for whatever reason, but it shouldn't have happened.

Whats going to happen when something bigger happens to this poor boy, it could be something important that the teacher actually might need to know about, he might be too scared to say anything due to whats happened.

I know the teacher isn't there to molly coddle the children and they have to learn how to look out and after themselves but really, all you people having a go at the OP how would you honestly feel if it was your child?

I'd think 'that wasn't very nice', like I do when the football coach bawls at them, or various other examples. I might even think the teacher was a twat (although only if I'd seen it, first hand, with my own eyes). And those things have happened.

What I would absolutely not do is be heartbroken, call the teacher wicked, or expect an apology.

and I agree with you on this post too needanewname

*fit2drop" i take on board absolutely what you are saying....im a police officer...i get the same sort of judgements so i do know where you are coming from....i was being flip perhaps, our experiences were not great however.

some teachers are wonderful.

others arent.

one PE teacher, where my son was concerned was reprehensible, and if i had been a bobby then, i would have had him for an assault,.he waited until the last week of school, he, without a shadow of a doubt, was just an out and out bastard,i am still trying to let that one go. i wish to god i had been doing this job back then, his feet wouldnt have touched the floor.

You know, I can't help but wonder what would have happened if he'd discovered the leak at break time or lunch time?

Yes, maybe the teacher should have been more sympathetic and not have spoken as she did (although it is possible that: the words were not recalled correctly, she forgot he was SN, she was standing in for an absent colleague and so doesn't normally teach that class, she was intending to help him sort it later in the lesson but forgot, etc) and maybe she should have taken him to the HOY at the end of the lesson. Maybe she thought he had discovered it in a previous break time and had already sorted out what he could.

However, it is still the case that if he was not in class at the time he discovered the leak, he still wouldn't have known who to go to. OP - it seems that you do need to equip him with some method of coping with unforeseen circumstances. He should have known who to go to and when if he experienced a situation that concerned him.

I do feel though that to feel 'heartbroken' and to want an apology because of one terse comment may be a bit of an overreaction. He's going to meet a lot more unkind comments in his life (I'm not saying that's right, just that it will happen) and he needs to learn a way to cope, rather than having his mum stepping in to demand an apology every time.

I'm amazed that one terse comment has prompted you to feel you should phone the Ed Psych or even that you felt the need to talk to 2 different people at the school. If I felt that strongly about something a teacher had said I would have phoned to speak to one person. Only if that person was completely dismissive might I consider talking to another.

And I agree with Malcontentinthemiddle

"for these kids, and their knackered parents, it just one long drawn out nightmare. And thats because people respond precisely as they have on this thread. by saying " he's 12 ffs! get a grip" and you know, as the parent, that their level of need is different, but when you try and communicate that....you feel inadequate and stupid and like your mollycoddling them"

VicarInaTutu

Yes I know - some of the responses have been a bit depressing.

sometimes - as the parent of a SN child, its the straw that breaks the camels back.

i remember, once, in primary school, my son lost his sweatshirt.

the way the TA spoke to him, as i stood and looked on, did it for me that week. My son stood and sobbed in the playground. and i cuddled him and stood and sobbed with him.

and the teachers, the teachers aids, looked at us. and looked. and looked. and fucked off saying nothing.
yes that was me, the mad, unhinged mother, the mother who couldnt let go, the mother who stood and watched her son in pain while others laughed and poured scorn on his inabilities.
the mother who had had enough that week and who broke down in the play ground hugging her lad, while the teachers thought she was some fucking loon.

its great being the parent of a child with SN in a world of nice and normal that doesnt give a shit.

Galena, can I just ask...do you have a child with sn? Honest question. (My apologies if you're well known on mn, I'm new...sort of).

Just that there's no way I could equip my son with the knowledge to cope in unforseen circumstances, I do try but it goes straight over his head and then some. Am wondering if op's son is similiar?

@Omigawd I wasn't commenting that it was ignorant to think the OP was YANBU. I was referring to the ignorance displayed about "invisible" sn.

"On one hand he has SN and your saying he needs help then you are saying he is 12 and not usless"

"by wondering how "real" so much of the demi-SN (ie non-statemented) stuff is"

"Just remembered... A possibility in some low walks of life" If I have misunderstood the meaning of this post I apologise if not that is pretty low :(

To be fair, the whole SN aspect was drip fed by the OP.

TheFrogs, I can answer that question quite simply: Yes.

However, it's not the answer you thought you were asking for. I have a 2-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy.

I was not trying to be blase - I was a teacher before DD was born - but felt that, if a child is expected to cope in a MS school with no extra support, then there should be a way to equip them with knowledge such as what to do in a difficult situation. Would your son be able to have, for example, a laminated card in his bag with 'Go and see Mr XXX at break time if there is a problem' or a friend/buddy/peer mentor he could go to to ask advice? I realise the answer may well be 'No' but I have never taught a child who could not cope with the routines of the classroom to this extent and I'm interested to have a view into your life - if that makes sense and isn't too patronising (Filling in DLA form last night till midnight so brain a bit fried!)?