My son was late for school yesterday. On days when my husband isn't at work until the afternoon, he does the morning drop off. I catch up on a bit of sleep until the baby wakes for his morning feed. Yesterday, my husband developed a migraine during the morning and woke me up, telling me I'd have to do the school run. I hadn't fed the baby, so had to rush everything, feed baby, prepare lunch etc. We were at least twenty minutes late. When we walked into the school reception, a member of staff was there and said 'why are you late, mom?'. I found it strange and paused for a moment before saying 'we overslept', as I really didn't want to go through the whole long winded explanation. I've never been asked this before. They just direct you to the lateness record where you can give a reason. I think it's quite rude to ask this in front of everybody, I have no idea who she is and may not want to discuss things in front of loads of other parents. There have been times when reasons for lateness were very personal. Telling her why I'm late doesn't change the fact that I am, and she doesn't note anything down as I still have to fill in the record. It felt like she was just being nosey. I noticed that a dad came in with his children after me and wasn't asked, though have no way of knowing whether he has an agreement to come in later than usual.
This morning, managed to get there late again. Was, again, unavoidable. Baby managed to throw up over three outfits, got poo up his back... All went wrong. We were less than a minute late. My son stood at the bottom of the playground and didn't run up to go in after the line of children. Their policy is that, once the door is closed, that's it. He's told me that children don't even get marked late when that happens because they hav not taken the register by the time they get in there. So I took him to the office, and this member of staff was there again. As we walked in, she put on an incredulous voice and said to my son 'oh, you're late again!' as though trying to make him feel bad about something over which he has no control. We were so 'late' that I walked back home with all of the other parents. She again turned to me and asked why I was late. It really bloody pissed me off. I think the tone of voice she was using was what really got to me. So I gave her a look and said 'because we are'. I probably looked pretty pissed off. She did a bit of an awkward laugh and I walked off to fill in the late record.
Am I being unreasonable? We've only been late this year once before this week, it has unfortunately happened two days in a row. I think publicly asking me why I'm late, which seemed intentionally done to embarrass me, is out of order. I hadn't showered or eaten breakfast or anything, I was out of breath from bloody running and generally feeling irritable. I really don't know whether I was unreasonable to give her an explanation.