to not send my Dd back to school until they address my concerns

[Allisgood1]

I am fuming.

Dd is 7. She is VERY shy and sensitive (and yes, probably very annoying for teachers).

In June she fell off a fence after school and hurt her wrist. The next morning she was fine but she was holding her wrist close to her. DH took her to school and specifically asked that she not do PE as she had a sprained wrist. She did PE. When I picked her up they said "oh she was fine to do it". Dd was still holding her wrist in one position and very tearful. I took her to ooh and she had a broken wrist. Our fault for not realizing but we also hadn't been with her all day.

About two weeks ago she had a filling at the dentist. The next morning she was complaining of pain so we gave her calpol and ibuprofen and sent her to school (with the meds) and told the office to call us if she got any worse. That afternoon when DH picked up her teacher said she shouldn't have been sent in. That evening an ooh dentist diagnosed her with an abcsess. When I emailed the teacher to explain she would likely be late in Monday as we were taking her to the dentist she said that Dd was "unable to concentrate and very tearful on Friday". Wtf wasn't I called then!????

Yesterday was final straw. She was fine going in but had missed two doses of antibiotics because school didn't give them to her at lunch and didn't give them to her at going home time (by the time we realized it was evening). I had a call from the office saying Dd had been for her flu vaccine and the nurse had taken her temp and it was "very high" and the nurse had advised she go home. Dd got home and looked awful. How in the hell did she go all day without anyone noticing "Dd looks unwell".

The school is new and they obviously care about their Ofsted but the neglect in care to protect attendance records has resulted in a loss of trust. I emailed the head and said she won't be coming back until I am able to come in and review their sickness at school policy. Am I overreacting?

There is a pressure to minimise absence nowadays. As parents we need to strongly resist any bullying on the part of schools to send ill children in.

I would send a letter explaining what has happened and say in future you will decide if your child is well enough for school and expect the school to respect any such judgement since they nave not contacted you to collect an ill child.

I can see in the present climate why you feel let down. Schools need to start trusting parents again.

And I never sent children in when on antibiotics.

I have one child who was regularly ill in the first couple of years but is now at 100 percent attendance. It often does get better and I hope it does for your DD.

At DC's primary, the parents had to come in and administer all medicines, however many times per day. Did you check the policy? Sorry, but though I totally sympathise with your concerns, I think it's up to you, the parent to err on the side of caution when your child is unwell. Don't leave it to staff who have 30 other children to care for and teach, to do a minute by minute medical appraisal of a child you know is unwell.

The school should have said at drop off if they couldn't administer the antibiotics. If they only realised later it was a prob they should have called.
Wrt the rest of it, the fact she is generally quiet and shy may make it less obvious for them to notice when she's feeling unwell. I would encourage her to speak to her teacher and tell them when she feels poorly so they can call you, and mention to the school you have spoken to her about it and that you would like to be called if she does.

Yabu and completely at fault. Your poor dd, going to school with a broken wrist. She should have been taken to hospital!

Not giving medication as agreed is wrong, although I am surprised that they agreed to give two doses anyway (lunchtime OK but surely the afternoon dose would be given by the parents?).

The broken wrist is very unfortunate - you don't keep a child off school with a sprained wrist but at the same time if you didn't realise it was broken, it's hard to expect the school to diagnose it. She should not have been expected to do PE and you should probably ly have been called earlier, but you should have sent in a written note. Fault on both sides here.

Ditto with the painful tooth. You weren't wrong to send her in, the school should have called you earlier, but at the same time it can be difficult to distinguish between a child who's making a fuss unnecessarily and one who doesn't make a fuss even if in pain (I have one drama llama and if I kept him off school every time he claimed to be in pain he'd never be there!).

Unfortunately this sort of situation is a perverse consequence of the drive to have perfect attendance records, it means that both teachers and parents are less likely to rely on instinct and common sense.

You shouldnt have sent her in. Schools hardly ever send kids home unless theyve been sick. I think youre the unreasonable one

Yes, I fully accept that perhaps I shouldn't have sent her in (in hindsight) but parents are called in for a telling off regularly (we have managed to avoid it so far) if attendance dips below 90% I think. And it doesn't matter if they are excused or unexcused. So I am trying to avoid that.

Maybe that's where you're going wrong.

It's not nice to be called in and 'told off' but it's not the end of the world either, and your DD is more important than worrying about having to explain her absences to the school.

The OP though to be fair is feeling under pressure from a school attendance culture of bossy distrust.

Thanks mistigri for the sensible post.

I did not know that Dd had a broken wrist. I wasn't there when it happened and I wasn't home until after she had gone to bed that evening. I do not blame the school for not knowing it was broken. I do blame them for making her do PE regardless.

I did not know she had an abcsess. Pain meds seemed to make her better and this being my first child, I thought pain after a filling was normal and would get better not worse. The abcsess was not there when she was sent in, it came up later and when she got home it was discovered. I did expect my request that I be called to followed. I did not expect that the teacher would keep her regardless of the fact that she was in pain. She was not in pain when she was sent in.

Yesterday she was absolutely fine on going in. How was I supposed to know she would develop a fever? And I am 100% convinced that this would have been ignored had the nurse not noticed and taken her temp.

I am not a bad mother and I do not appreciate the posts alluding to such.

The school agreed to give the medicine and then didn't. That's worth complaining about.

You really need to stop worrying about attendance percentages. They shouldn't even be a factor in your decision to send her in or keep her off.

I'm still unsure why school were giving her antibiotics at lunch and after school, unless she's on them 6x a day or something. Do you pick her up after school? Did the school agree to this?

I think it's difficult with kids to know how sick they are really are. It's difficult for parents, let alone a teacher with 30 in a class, and a child who is shy and sensitive so probably not going to be moaning on and on about not feeling well. I really don't think it's the school's fault tbh.

My policy is always to speak to the class TA who generally has a bit less on her plate, and say my child isn't feeling great, please call if he/ she gets worse. I also tell my child to tell speak to the TA specifically. They can then be responsible for letting me know if I need to come and pick up. If there were problems I would ask the TA if she spoke to the teacher and if she did and was not allowed to contact me, then I would go a bit ballistic. But if my kid didn't say anything, then it wouldn't really be their fault. I think Y1/Y2 is fine for children to be able to tell a TA they are not feeling well.

Broken wrist aside, you sent her in with a dental abscess? Even without knowing that was what she had, the poor girl would've been in absolute agony - I had a dental abscess over 10 years ago and I've never, ever forgotten the pain.

Don't even get me started on a 7yo needing fillings.

My eldest DS is 4 and he frequently complains of fictional ailments so he can stay home, but I know when he's genuinely ill or in pain and wouldn't send him in regardless of absence quotas. He's taken straight to the GP, and the school can bloody lump it.

You're not going to come out of this one looking good, OP.

OP you have my sympathy, my DC were sent home when ill (maybe slightly too readily) in Infants; at Primary they would get a "sit quietly and drink some water" even if running a high temperature, and on a couple of occasions a huge bump or blood running down their legs wasn't noticed; at seniors it was sensible again, and when ill they were sent home.

I don't know why primary schools can be so reluctant to send ill children home.

If you complain make sure you do it in writing, otherwise they will just "forget" it.

It's not really though is it ena ? 90% attendance is really very low and it's not unreasonable for schools to investigate the reasons behind that.

I think the school obviously messed up re the antibiotics yesterday (although I am unclear why you were expecting them to give a dose at home time? That would be highly unusual.) The other stuff is much less cut and dried and I am wondering why you expect school to notice she wasn't well enough when you didn't realise yourself.

Thanks mistigri for the sensible post.

Ah yes, here we go. OP asks for opinions, doesn't like the answers she gets, so we are all daft and only people who agree with her are sensible. I'm out now, it's turning into one of those threads.

I think you need to be more confident allisgood.

Don't worry so much about what school will think if you keep dd off. So what if she falls below 90% attendance? That attendance figure matters to school,not to you and your family. If you suspect that your dd is not fit for school keep her off. Trust your judgement and err on the side of caution a bit more. Schools can be bossy and caught up in their own importance sometimes. Ignore them and focus more on the needs of your daughter.

I think you have over-reacted a bit. You can tackle them about forgetting to give the medication at lunchtime (collecting the meds after school I would say is down to you), but the rest of it you have to take some responsibility for.

Does she normally cry in class? If she does tend to be tearful, it may be hard for a teacher (who does have others in the class) to see that the cause is a bit different than usual. Especially if she hasn't been there long (you said it was a new school?) and while I appreciate your concerns about her attendance, I don't think you not wanting to get a telling off is worth sending her in when she's clearly in pain!

Do they have a sickness at school policy? If children are unwell (and tell the teacher) then they are likely to phone home - I've had calls for both d&v - and I would think they'd call if the child becomes ill during the day. But if you send the child in to school ill/in pain, then the school are justified in thinking that you've made a decision there. You didn't realise how bad she was at the time, but if you didnt then the school might not have either.

I'm a teacher, and if a parent told me a child had a sprained wrist and therefore couldn't do PE, I definitely wouldn't make them do PE - the school was in the wrong there. However, I would probably also think the child was being a bit of a drama queen about the pain, as I would have believed the parent when they told me the wrist was only sprained!!!

Regarding the tooth pain - if you know that your child is in pain but you decide, as a parent, that your child is well enough to come to school, then usually, as a teacher, we will try to keep that child in school. Parents get so cross when you send kids home for making a fuss! If it was a new pain that the child had developed, I would personally have rung you during the day - but because you had already known about the pain and had brought your daughter in, I would have kept her till the end of the day as well. School was in the right.

Regarding the antibiotics, if you had given the medicine to school and they had agreed to adminster a lunchtime dose, then the school is definitely in the wrong for not doing so. However, schools are NOT allowed to send medicines home with children. You as a parent should pick them up from the adult you handed them over to at the end of the school day. School was right to not give the medicine to your daughter to take home.

Sounds to me like you just need to go in to school - calmly! - and just clarify what the policies are about medicine in school, and about sending children home when they seem ill in class. Then there won't be any mismatched expectations.

Also, if you tell the school that you would rather you were called every time your daughter complains of pain / illness, then I am sure they will do that for you. It's just that lots of parents wouldn't want that, as lots of kids try it on!!!

Hmm, cross-posted while I was writing mine. No one is saying you are a bad mother or even alluding to that. Just that you can't blame the school for not sending her home when you have sent her in.

I'm out too!

I think if you couldn't tell the seriousness of her illness you can't really blame the school for not being able to either. Kids aren't always obvious about being ill.

I think you might be on dodgy ground having a go at the school because, however unintentionally, you sent her in when she should not have been there.

You are expecting too much of the school and being a bit over sensitive to posts alluding to the same.

I think there is fault on both side but I think you just need to move on and keep your DD at home when you think she is un well

Hmm. This is a tricky one.
The school are in the wrong g for not giving her the medication. I would bring it up, definitely, but if it's a one-off I'd let it go at that.
They aren't in the wrong IMO for not sending the meds home, I'd say that's your responsibility, but depends on the school I suppose.
I find deciding whether my kids are too ill to go to school really tricky. I have tended to err on the side of caution, but thanks to chicken pox and other illnesses this meant one of my Reception children only had 92% attendance last year (the other had 97). As such I'm trying to be a little less soft this year, but not succeeding very well as they've each had a couple of days off already.

I'd be upset if my child was really poorly at school and I wasn't contacted and, in fact, I think my kid's school are good at making the judgement. However, if I find making the call difficult, and I am their parent and only looking after three children, how much harder must it be for the school, who also have to deal with the fact that surely many kids who come in poorly do so because there is no childcare available? I think the schools can't win...though I don't know your school so can only judge by mine and they get it right most of the time.

You mentioned that she is shy. Not certain how this is relevant...do you think she's not managing to communicate how poorly she is?

I would only keep her off if you truly think the school is negligent. Otherwise I'd incline towards keeping her off if she's ill.

Stop sending your child to school when they're ill/in pain then the teacher won't have to decide if they are well enough to be there.
She's not the only one in the class, there's over 20 others who need looking after/ teaching/ attention too!

Harsh but true.
She had toothache? You shouldn't have sent her in.
You knew she had hurt her wrist, but didn't take her to A & E straight away.

Being a parent isn't easy, but that' no excuse to keep passing the buck and blaming the school for everything.

But twice you did not get appropriate care for your own daughter for quite serious injuries/illness. How can you complain to the school, when actually these were your oversights (I could use a stronger word, but I expect you feel bad enough). But you might want think about not projecting your sense of parental failure on the school. Why should teachers do more for children than their own parents are prepared to do? You sound like you want to hand over responsibility to teachers, rather than step up.