Aibu to think headmistress is living in la la land?

[Maxandrubyrubyandmax]

Get out of a 30 min meeting at work 5missed calls on mobile and my secretary comes rushing over at same time land line calls. Headmistress from ds school. DS has run into post and banged his nose. Can I get there immediately. Apparently DS is fine but we have to pick him up. Explain I will be about 45 min as need to pack up and get train and walk to school. DH about an hour away. Quizzed about couldn't a grandparent pick up
DS (no the nearest is 2 hours away). Didn't we have friends? Yes but it's not 1955 so they all work? Other relatives? No they live miles away and yes they work. Set off to school. Head mistress rings DH goes through same questions. As no one has moved house in last 5min gets same answer. Get to school. DS sat chatting to school secretary happy as you like. Head mistress goes through same questions nope still no one hAs moved or given up job in last 45 min. But there must be someone says the head. Well no actually there isn't. But she wants someone who can be at school in 5 min. Start to get pissed off. No one I tell her. She then shakes her head and says I guess that's how it is these days then. Aibu to be pissed off and felt judged about the fact I have moved away from the family home, got a job and don't just drop off child and sit at home all day? If it had been urgent I would have jumped in a taxi

I wonder if Watery is a secondary school teacher. I don't know any primary school teacher with such a hard hearted point of view but I have noticed some secondary school teachers feel like this. My ds once walked out of a class when a teacher repeatedly ignored his requests for help when he felt a migraine coming on. She said 'don't interrupt me, I'm teaching.' He decided to go to the medical room himself but the deputy principal found him walking around disoriented. My dh arrived at school to find the deputy principal waiting for him armed with an apology as he could see how ill ds1 was and was shocked at the teacher's attitude. I wonder if that teacher had told herself 'I'm hear to teach, not to be a nurse.'

MOST parents try to be pragmatic and not send ill DCs to school. Or at least, if they think a DC is a little ill but well enough for school, make arrangements to be available to collect or for someone else to be able to collect DC if they are too ill to stay at school.

If only this were true, before we broke up we had a vomiting bug going round, it was spreading so much because of the sheer number of parents sending children that had already vomited in, of the children i sent home over half of them told me they had already been sick at home or had been feeling rough and had been sent in anyway.

ItWentDownMyHeartHole Literally this entire thread has not been able to explain to you in sufficient detail why "If you can't get to school in under an hour then you need to find and then nominate someone who can" is useless advice for quite a wide range of people?

And no. I am not "making friends" with randoms so they can collect my child from school in the event of an accident or injury. Unless you'd like to find a list of such people close to me (since I certainly don't have time to fanny about "making friends" wherever this is supposed to take place - church? book club?). Whilst you're at it, make sure they're willing to do this free of charge, have no jobs or commitments themselves that might equally get in their way of collecting my child quickly, facilitate their many getting-to-know-my-child meetings, pay for their CRB/DBR checks, and send them on a first-aid course, since you're proposing that they will be taking my child away from a place that has at least the most pitiful training to a place where this "friend" will presumably have none.

Alternatively, I could of course ask another parent that I trust, except... oh wait. They're almost entirely in the same position that I am. Working or carrying out their daily lives. Miles away.

Ooooor... the school can just wait the time it takes till I get there.

ItWentDownMyHeartHole: I'm SAHP and have occasionally had to pick up other people's sick kids.

No. You've agreed to. Imagine if 25 of the kids in your DCs class all suddenly decided that you were their nominated sick-child-collector. Would you start to feel like they were taking the piss a bit?

I've occasionally picked up a friend's child and they mine. But I work part- time and my friend's likewise. And I help out w elderly parents, and go into town and do stuff away from the home and can't be relied upon to be available for their kids, or they for mine. I will prioritise picking up my children if I need to (or their dad will) but unless I'm at home they may have to wait between half an hour and an hour and a quarter.

Why is this so hard for people to understand?

forthe I'm not a random. I'm mostly free and am happy to help if the kid is full of cold or vomiting. I wouldn't be asked to look after a head injury I don't think. I know a number of mums and dads from school because I do drop off and pick up. Not book clubs or church. Social anxiety and Atheism.

If I'm away then I know of about 8 people who might be able to help me. They all work, but some locally, others part time and some from home. I would be able to find someone.

You can get school to look after your sick DC but it'll piss them off if you've not nominated someone local. How you find that local person might include asking around other parents. I don't know, try networking. You're the professional.

ItWentDownMyHeartHole: forthe I'm not a random

Would you think me nuts if I authorised you to collect my DC from school today? Of course you would. So yes, to the vast majority of the country's population, you are a random stranger.

If I'm away then I know of about 8 people who might be able to help me. They all work, but some locally, others part time and some from home. I would be able to find someone.

Again, good for you, but read the thread about why this is simply not possible for lots of people. Their reasons are irrefutable. It is not for lack of will. It is that they have simply no options and no amount of hand-wringing is going to change this.

You can get school to look after your sick DC but it'll piss them off if you've not nominated someone local.

We have nominated local people. Unbelievably, due to that awesome, magical phenomenon known as "the catchment area", every single one of those people all miraculously live within a very few miles of the school. However - and this is the bit that I realise is somehow incredibly difficult to grasp - they also all WORK. Some work miles away, and some work in jobs that you just can't leave suddenly, and some, for extra brownie points, do both. The only possible option we have who is local and doesn't work is about 85, she doesn't have a mobile or a car, and spends most of her days with her terminally ill DH in hospital. Beyond occasional, brief garden-gate chit-chat I barely know a thing about her. Do you think I should impose on her with my sick or injured DC?

How you find that local person might include asking around other parents. I don't know, try networking.

Which takes us neatly back to every objection I had about just picking some random to collect my child from school. So thank you, but instead of entrusting my child to someone I hardly know, who could even be a danger, and who probably doesn't have even basic first-aid training, I will make the judgement call that my sick/injured DC is safer waiting at school in an appropriate environment and reasonably close to a first-aider for the time it takes for me to get there.

BarbarianMum: Why is this so hard for people to understand?

Beats the shit out of me. This thread so far:

"You should be available to collect your DC within five minutes of a phonecall."
"I live/work/have commitments miles from the school."
"Then you should live closer."
"The proximity of my house is irrelevant. I work miles away."
"Then you should work closer."
"I can't, and even if I could, the proximity of my work is irrelevant. I work in a job I can't easily leave."
"Then you should live closer and be unemployed."
"How do you propose I pay my bills? And even if I did this, I would also need to leave the actual house to do things like shopping now and again."
"Then you should nominate someone closer."
"They all have exactly the same problems I've just described above."
"None of these answers are good enough."

We have no family.Mine is in a different country and OH is no contact with his (it wouldn't help anyways as they are in London and we are not) . His friends are in London so no good. My friends are local but work. OH works about an hour or two away depending on traffic.
I am lucky that I work quite close,but it took ages to find this job. I had the luxury to wait.
Where the fuck am I supposed to find these local friends and relatives that also don't work,are within 5 mins to the school,have no other commitments AND are happy to drop everything and look after a sick child?

Rebel: Where the fuck am I supposed to find these local friends and relatives that also don't work,are within 5 mins to the school,have no other commitments AND are happy to drop everything and look after a sick child?

Apparently they're everywhere and we're just being obtuse and awkward in not nominating them. We'd obviously much rather our poorly/injured children suffer away from us for as long as possible, whilst also inconveniencing the school as much as we can. You know, us modern entitled parents and our special snowflakes and all that.

Even local people have to leave the house occasionally.

Don't forget though, Rebel. Even if you live and work locally and can drop stuff at whim to go fetch your DC, you're not allowed to go off piste during that time and, say, have an hour's swim with your phone in your locker, or lose mobile signal in the supermarket, or get stuck in traffic. And god forbid you even think about leaving the local area to meet a client/attend a wedding/collect a parcel/visit a friend/go to the doctor's/whatever. This is simply Not Allowed. Don't even think of going to another city. Since you have none of these local people to help you out, you must sit at home. By your phone. Every day.

Because schools are only for education, not for child care, you should really all be in the classroom with your children during the school day in case they have any needs that are not curriculum related.

Why am I lacking in compassion by wanting a sick or injured child to be properly looked after? Sitting in the office or the corner of a classroom with a sick bowl or in pain while visitors go in and out, or teachers attempt to teach is not the solution.

If parents cannot get there then there should be someone adequately qualified to look after the child until they can. This would be someone with proper medical qualifications not a first aid certificate got after a day's course. I've said it 4 times now.

Well, perhaps all of us are just useless, entitled parents who should never be allowed to have children.

Never mind the fact that we work hard to keep them clothed, a roof over their heads and food on the table. Not good enough if you cannot park your desk just opposite the school.

Perhaps we should have all of our business meetings in the school staffroom so that we can be just minutes away if little one so much as grazes their knee.

I can't get from home to school in five minutes. Not without a Jet pack. Although a jet pack would be jolly handy for the commute.

Let's set up tent cities on the school fields just in case. Perhaps we could also have a field hospital?

ItWentDownMyHeartHole I do have local friends, usually made at the school gate. Over the years the friendships have grown, but even those who were originally SAHMs have gone back to work.

"Networking" solely in order to find a few unemployed people to palm my kids off onto as needed, as you so helpfully suggest, has featured in quite a few other MN threads. Generally the consensus is that it's at best cheeky, at worst pisstaking in an attempt to get free childcare.

Actually - there have been days when neither DH or I were even close to DD and she was pretty much 'abandoned'.

It used to be the case that each Sep he had a conference on the other side of the country (US) and I had a residential school trop for the kids I teach. Every year, for about 3 years, there was an overlap day, when one of us had just headed out, and the other one was heading back home. We just had to hope that there was no delay to our travel plans.

My back up was that the school librarian (also a work colleague of mine) would take DD out to MacDonald's and keep her until a parent showed up. Luckily that never happened.

If parents cannot get there then there should be someone adequately qualified to look after the child until they can. This would be someone with proper medical qualifications not a first aid certificate got after a day's course.

Okay, so you think all schools, of any size, should have a full-time nurse or doctor on staff?

What would this person be doing the rest of the time, when nobody is sick?

Bizarre.

When I was at school (state) in the 90s and early 00s there was a sick room with a bed and medical supplies for poorly children. Are they not allowed to have those any more?

Perhaps there should be a job called 'back up parent' where those of us who work could pay a very small retainer to someone, and then an hourly wage if they have to collect and care for a child?

Seriously - if someone got paid ten pounds a month to be by the phone, plus ten pounds an hour for actual childcare, they could make a small living out of it while still having young kids. They could probably cover for at least 10 kids, and wouldn't need to be OFSTED checked as it isn't regular childcare.

I'd have paid for that when DD was younger.

Strangely enough in all the time I was a SAHM I never had to pick up dad. Since I've started work I still was only called once. Which was fine since I do work very close,and my employer and coworkers were understanding. But it still took a while between the secretary letting me know(no phones allowed), sorting stuff out,clearing it with my employer,getting my things and actually making into school. Oh and I was lucky because dd's school knew I don't have my phone on me and rang to work(number provided ) rather than ringing me a billion times and leaving voice mails as it would've taken an hour and a half for me to see it.

Have only read the OP, how irritating of the headmistress. Talk about passive aggressive

Actually I hate this, I am not working but have disabilities that affect my ability to drop off and collect the kids, I think there is some collective ignorance that seems to pervay the fact that everyone must have someone to back them up in such situations. When I told an out of hours gp that I couldn't drive and due to low income had no money for a cab I would need them to come out I got the same crap! Not everyone has someone!

She sounds v unreasonable to me. I'm pregnant with child number 1 but I work 50 miles away from where I live (1 hour commute by car) so am already aware that if anything happens at nursery/school in future I won't be able to get to them for at least an hour. Husband works much closer but it is a modern reality that people might live and work in different places- surely the school are aware of this?!?