AIBU to think that 'but it's mother's day' is a crap excuse.

[manicinsomniac]

We had the dress rehearsal of our very large scale school play all day today .

The children were not forced to be in it. They auditioned. They have known since mid October that this rehearsal was unmissable in almost all circumstances and that if they couldn't commit to it then they couldn't be in the show.

on Friday night as he left for home one boy (with a large-ish part) told us he can't come as it's mother's day. I rang home explaining the importance of the rehearsal and pointing out how long it has been scheduled for but the response was no, he can't be away from his family on mother's day.

And now they are cross because we've kicked the kid out. They were warned.

The other 70 odd children were all there.

So, AIBU?

Bastard teachers and their friends, giving up their free time to make a school play as good as it can be.

How DARE they?

Look, jel/bloody/whoever-you-are. If you don't want your children to get involved in activities that might take place on mothers day/fathers day/pancake day/insert-fairly-minor-annual-day-of-choice then feel free to stop them.

Check the dates of any rehearsals/fixtures/performances and if you don't like them, stop your children from signing up. They probably won't thank you for it, but hey ho. Those children with parents who do give a stuff will be grateful for the freed up place and for not having to be let down at the last minute by fairweather team mates.

fwiw ds goes to a comprehensive and they do this kind of thing all the time. They're fortunate to have a pretty supportive community of parents, which I fully appreciate isn't the case everywhere.

this kind of thing = teachers going beyond the call of duty by giving up their weekends. Big productions, sports fixtures and so on.

The annual ski trip is at February half term - would that be unacceptable to you too bloody/cjel? A voluntary activity outside of school hours? Run on a voluntary basis by teachers? Who volunteer? Voluntarily? Or would this be another case of bloody teachers taking decisions about how your children spend all their time ?

agree, jenai.

Sorry Fillyjonk75, but whilst I agree that you'll be better parent if you are in good mental and physical health, depriving your child of something this awesome just because it's MD really isn't going to achieve either - it's just plain selfish.

I wasn't specifically talking about Mother's Day, but your previous post sounded suspiciously like I SACRIFICE EVERYTHING FOR MY CHILD and I'm always kind of about parents who say things like that.

^"Fair enough if they missed a few early on and showed a general lack of committment."

From the OP's posts he did. ^

Ok but why repeat my post when I had already agreed with the OP?

And I have much more sympathy with teachers doing extra hours than people running a business and making extra money out of shows etc. I run a lot of events in my own voluntary time for the school though and we take great care not to have clashes so that fewer people could go to something. That's what I meant by event organisers taking responsibility. It's not rocket science.

My comment wasn't about whether the teacher and volunteers are angels or not - if you want to compete in who volunteers the most I can hold my head up high and not just to do with school. My comment was about the fact that this was seen as part of the'higher standardsthat parents pay for' WTF, does that mean if you pay for something it is better and are you paying for these volunteers or not?

your previous post sounded suspiciously like I SACRIFICE EVERYTHING FOR MY CHILD

I can assure you I don't and that's certainly not what I meant Fillyjonk75. I really just meant that depriving a child of something they've committed to and were (presumably) looking forward to for the sake of a family lunch is a shame for the poor kid. Yes it's nice to have a day where we can all show our DMs how much we appreciate them. But sacrificing this poor boy's place in show isn't going to be very conducive to him appreciating his DM now is it?

I don't sacrifice everything for my kids, but equally I wouldn't expect them to sacrifice something like this for me either. Cup of tea in bed and early dinner after the dress rehearsal would have done the job without the heartache.

On the other hand, maybe he just couldn't be arsed and used the MD lunch as an excuse to get out of it.

FWIW, it's not my intention to 'sacrifice everything' for my DS, and if this were my situation, I would have wanted something resembling 'Make a Fuss of Marina Day', say, the Saturday or the previous weekend.

But that's not the point: keeping your word is paramount.