to want the school to admit some responsibility

[Justforlaughs]

Phonecall from school last night. 14yo DD "stormed" away from PE lesson after minor altercation with teacher, didn't return to lesson, an hour later a pupil asks DD something and DD hits her. School want to put DD in isolation for a day. All sounds reasonable, penalty for bad behaviour - and I am not condoning it at all. HOWEVER, DD is by nature the kindest, gentlest, quietest 14 yr old you could ever imagine (won't even put up her hand to answer a question in class because she is too shy) and the ONLY time I can remember her lashing out in the last 4 years or so is when her blood sugars have dropped suddenly - you see she is a Diabetic. To me, the whole incident is typically symptomatic of a moderate/ severe hypo, and I feel strongly that the teacher should have flagged that her "storming" away from the lesson was not "normal" behaviour for DD, she should have followed her/ got first aider to find her and check that she was ok. She sat alone for an hour in corridor, where no-one knew she was before the incident with the other pupil. Not being dramatic, she could have fallen into a coma. The school now want a meeting to discuss her behaviour, so AIBU to raise my concerns. I am honestly, not trying to belittle the fact that she hit another girl, but I don't want either my DD or anyone else getting hurt because of another incident like this. I am worried that it sounds like I am excusing her behaviour, and I suppose I am in a way. WWYD?

My son is diabetic and can get very bad tempered when he is having a hypo. He usually recognises the signs and deals with it. However, he doesn't always see it coming, this is when he gets to the arsey stage. PE lessons are a classic time for this to happen (and exam time).
His school have been very good, however there are so many different teachers, and not all of them are good on diabetes management. I have found that I have to keep on going into the school to remind people of the situation and what to do.
If this were my child I would be cross that she had been left alone for so long and would be speaking to the school about it. I also would be speaking to my son about managing his blood sugars better during a PE lesson ( my son used to have a small kit Kat before PE).

Sounds like the school need more education. I think some in this thread don't realise how difficult it is to control sugar levels or how common hypos are.

Also is it worth trying again to stress the importance to your dd of asking for help when she needs it. I am always very nervous looking after dh's nephew (& we only ever do it for very short 10-20 min periods) because he simply will not tell us when he has a hypo. He is younger & I think the issue may be saying it in front of my kids (who would be fine with it) but it did make me realise how difficult it must be for his mother. She once came in, took one look at him & straight away said to him 'are you having a hypo?' And he said 'yes'. We had no idea & he hadn't told us.

I'm a type 1 and a teacher (secondary).

I still wouldn't have automatically assumed 'hypo' if I had been the teacher involved. What were her readings like when she got home? If she had a 'missed hypo' the likelyhood is that this would show with a massive rise in blood sugar as it is the body's way of treating it.

I really disagree with the way schools manage diabetes. I hate this 'go to the first aid/nurse for injections etc'. What a way to stand out and also take the responsibility away from the child!
I have raised it several times at my own school but its not helped.
Personally, I'd be encouraging your dd and dr to go down the pump route. It is honestly the best thing I have done innterms of diabetes management and it will mean your dd won't 'stand out' as much and will have sole control.

Sorry. Got side tracked.
What is most shocking about this, is thevfactvyoir dd was on her own all lesson. Every school I've worked at has a plan innplace for pupils leaving lessons. Most would send a pupil to the office to report the incident and another member of staff would go and pick the child up. This is regardless of medical needs. The fact this appears not to have happened is shocking.

Good luck to you both with this. It does get easier. I was diagnosed about the same age. 20+ years and 2 kids later it is still all good.

I agree that a lot of posters don't seem to understand how a hypo can work, you very often don't get any warning signs or by the time you get them you cant recognise them yourself iykwim. Its not like a light goes on or anything.

tricky situation OP. You are right to raise the issue of your Dds condition with the staff, after accepting the consequence for her storming offended hitting. As a teacher myself, I am am aware of the students I teach who are diabetic. Often they or one if their friends will tell me they 'don't feel well' and we go from there. I also know that behaviour Changes can be a sign. BUT when I am covering for another member of staff, I might not know the students and might not think about diabetes if one were to 'misbehave'.

I also think it is unrealistic to think that children can be found immediately when they storm off. I have had several occasions where, once it is safe to leave my class and contact the on call member of staff to go and look for. A child who has disappeared, the child has taken some time to be tracked down. Our school is a big and there are plenty of places to hide.

I would definitely however,let the school know that this incident has made you realise that it might be time to review Dds care plan etc.

Good luck.

But it IS her daughter's fault if at 14 she is not regularly testing her blood sugar levels. Maybe the day in isolation might be the jolt she needs to realise how important it is to do so? Having said all that, it must be very tough to have developed diabetes in your teenage years, is there no support group she could join?

It does sound like she was having a hypo they have a duty of care to her to check her blood sugars and then punish her for bad behaviour once they rule out physical cause.

I don't know how hypos work, but feel a LOT of sympathy for the child who was hit!

Hypo or not, if it happened outside school there is a very real chance the police would be involved - so a day of isolation seems a reasonable punishment.

Have you discussed her diabetes with her tutor at least? If she has been managing it well up to now, then some may be unaware that she is diabetic? The school needs to make sure there are procedures in place and that all staff are aware of those with life threatening conditions...

When I joined a school as a dinner lady there was nothing in place - I was told that so-and-so was allergic to whatever - but nothing about the little boy with the weak skull... until the head ran up saying for god's sake get off him - the kids had made a human pyramid to show me - with him on the middle row.... new staff procedures changed....

But if any of the staff don't know, they can't make allowances, ensure her blood sugar is right and probably thought she was a stroppy teenager - there are a few of them about....

I'm saying that as a nurse who has been punched many a time by patients who are having a hypo

I think the school have neglected your dd they have a duty of care for their pupils she had symptoms of herillness she went missing for an hour then hit another person I think throwing her in isolation is terrible the school needs bloody educating i would be furious , although I do think the child she hit should be made aware of why she hit them if that makes sense,

my dad punched a nurse once when he was having a blood sugar issue, and he is non-violent normally, he felt terrible about it afterwards.
She was only diagnosed a year ago, and 14 is not an adult by any means!
IMO the school failed in their 'duty of care' -

a family member bit me when she was having a hypo I still have the mark she was only little

It's a very difficult situation. I'm a secondary teacher and I do understand that your Dd's teacher might not have been in a position to follow her, due to her responsibility for the other students. However, in that circumstance I would have asked a pupil to go to the office to insure our first aider and on call member of staff were aware and could catch up with her.

How involved are the school when it comes to helping your daughter manage her diabetes? It might be worth asking if her form teacher (or other member of staff she gets on well with) helps her get used to managing her blood sugars at school. I have a lovely girl in my form (yr 11, so a bit older), who is diabetic. I have a spare test kit, snacks and drinks in my store cupboard. I see her twice a day in registration but she also has a pass to come to me if she feels out of sorts. It has worked well for her and now she's older she's very confident managing her condition.

As an aside, thank you for being supportive about the isolation, countless parents wouldn't be, but you are certainly not being unreasonable to bring up your concerns about the school's management of your Dd's diabetes.

I think you're right OP. You acknowledge that your DD has to accept the consequences of hitting another child and this has to be right. That's very serious behaviour even if her medical condition caused her to act out of character. However, you are also right that the school should had made sure she tested her blood immediately after the storming out incident and then treated appropriately including not leaving her alone. I'd definitely say they need to share responsibility with your DD.

Most diabetic teams have a dedicated nurse for teenagers/adolescents who will be very, very aware of the issues of being different etc, has your DD. met someone like this?

Also sounds like she could really benefit from a continuous pump, though if fairly newly diagnosed I can see why they may not have gone down that route yet.

But it IS her daughter's fault if at 14 she is not regularly testing her blood sugar levels.

Testing doesn't prevent hypos. You can test your BM and it can appear to be fine or, if it's soon after food you can assume it is climbing. However you may find it was actually on it's way down, it drops quite quickly and you have an unexpected hypo.
There are so many variables involved that it is every easy to go hypo despite doing all the right things.

nofork not all diabetics have a spike in BM in response to a hypo.

I don't know how hypos work

Clearly not. What is the point of punishing her if she had no idea what she was doing? Is that to make the other child feel better?

People can act very out of character when having a hypo and, if told about it later, can be consumed by guilt and embarrassment. Punishment doesn't help.

If the school had acted responsibly, this girl's BM would have been checked and, if it was fine, a punishment may have been appropriate. However, they should always look carefully into why a child would behave so out of character.

Being diagnosed with diabetes can really mess with the heads of teens. Even if she didn't have a hypo she still needs support and understanding.

Either way, the school failed in their duty of care. One was just a lot less immediately dangerous than the other.

My sister was diagnosed at around this age and it was a massive shock and very difficult for her to get used to injecting and being different. Her diabetes was poorly controlled at this age and I saw her having hypos where she seemed to have super strength and would fight with our mother.

The school need to take on board their failings here, she should not be put in isolation, that is hugely dangerous, risking her falling into a coma. She would likely be unaware of what happened, my sister found herself wandering around town one day with no idea what she was doing and was only ok because someone recognised her and helped her. Diabetes is very very serious, particularly in teenage years with the effect of hormones.

Totally agree Goldmandra.

Isolation doesn't mean she's isolated - there will be a member of staff there, she will just not be with her friends in regular lessons. OP wrote that she hadn't tested & that is why I said this might be the jolt she needs!

I don't agree Goldmandra. The way the school managed it was dreadful and they did take a massive risk with the daughter's life, the OP needs to speak to them about how they manage this and make them improve their procedures.

But it can't be confirmed that this was actually a hypo. If this had been confirmed or if she'd become ill and gone to hospital then obviously she shouldn't be punished. But there is no confirmation this is what happened. Given that what happened was serious and involved violence I think that she does need to take the punishment.

I would be furious if I was the other girls mother and nothing was done because of the possibility that it might have been because of an illness. Violence in school is terrifying for the person on the receiving end. I don't think they can just let it go. If nothing else if the daughter's reluctance to manage her diabetes properly is resulting in someone else getting a punch in the face she needs to consider then impact not managing it is having on other people.

From a teacher's point of view regarding the diabetes, I have taught many many children with varying types and degrees of severity and they all have managed it differently. I am suprised that her doctor/ nurse has not given her a plan to follow for when she is at school (unless they have but you haven't mentioned it) Generally, the NHS advises that children need to be in control of their health come secondary school if they are managing a medical condition and have procedures in place that they follow and they recognise, if only for their own safety and continuity. Currently, I have a Year 7 with type 1 diabetes and they monitor their own blood sugar and food intake during the school day. For example, if she feels she is going into a hypo, she will immediately inject herself and then have juice/buscuit that she carries with her, generally because it would be even more dangerous for her to go off to the school nurse/student services in waste time. In addition, I have had other type 2 diabetes affected children where I have never seen them have a hypo or need further intervention and they only need to check their levels at home. What I am trying to say, is that has your daughter been given a regimen by her doctors to follow during the day, I mean, what if she had a hypo on the way home from school? If she has her own regimen to follow then she may feel more in control and start to manage her condition more quickly, especially as she has only been diagnosed for a year. Therefore, I would start by bringing this up in your meeting as to where to go from here during the school day but I would also visit your doctor again as to what they advise to do in terms of managing her condition at school.

I'm amazed by the number of people on this thread who have posted despite not understanding your DD's condition.

If, as you say, your DD has only previously behaved in a similar way when hypoglycaemic and the only "unusual" thing about yesterday was that she participated in an activity which affects blood sugar levels immediately before acting out, then it logically follows that her behaviour was (once again) caused by hypoglycaemia. Why is "teenage hormones" a more plausible explanation for such uncharacteristic behaviour than a pre-existing medical condition which is known to have this effect on her?

While an adult with diabetes might (but not necessarily) have recognised the potential for hypo in these circumstances and taken preventative measures, she isn't yet in a position to notice the "red flags" reliably, and unfortunately the person responsible for her didn't notice them either. Should she be punished for that? No - she's new to managing the condition and is having to learn to cope with this at possibly the worst age imaginable for it, so it's hardly surprising that she didn't take the preventative measures or damage limitation approaches that an adult would consider obvious. The only fair way to respond to this is to treat it as a learning experience for all involved, and for the DD to apologise to the girl she hit and explain that she wasn't in control of her behaviour for medical reasons.

At about the same age, I had a friend who became epileptic and really struggled with how much it changed her life (in terms of being treated differently, feeling more vulnerable, disliking the side-effects of her medication and feeling embarrassed following seizures). Every now and then, she would stare at a flickering light on the OHP despite the fact that we were all warning her not to, and denied that it was an issue when we told the teacher, resulting in another (predictable and avoidable from our perspective) seizure. Should she have been punished for not managing her condition correctly and, consequently, disrupting lessons, damaging classroom displays etc, and occasionally clunking one of us during a grand mal seizure? Of course not - she was struggling to adapt to her new condition with inappropriate support (as the teacher should obviously have recognised the flickery light issue when we raised it), and had no control over what she did once she started seizing.

I'm back, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to post. As I said, I am not arguing against the punishment as I feel very strongly that if it was the other way round and it had been one of MY children who had been hit I would want some action taken. I also believe that it may in my DDs best interest anyway, as it will highlight the fact that she does need to be more aware of hypo symptoms and act on them, also testing regularly. However, I do want to highlight my concerns to the school that she should have been checked up on, in these circumstances. My concern about doing this is that I don't want them to think that I am trying to excuse her behaviour in order to avoid the punishment, just to avoid a repetition. I think I might email the head, as I think I can be clearer than I would be face to face. I tend to get emotional and not think straight at times .

Sounds like a good plan!

Try contacting Diabetes UK to get info on signs of hypogylcaemia. You will need official info to back you up.

Also does the school have a counsellor? It sounds like your daughter is rebelling against her diagnosis which is very common in teenagers.