Re father's day cards in school?

[malificent7]

I am probsbly being a bit unreasonable here.
Dd has never met her dad.. he ran off when i was pregnant. She has just started to accept my dp who i have been with 18 months but understandably its been a struggle.

She was upset the other day as they were making fathers day cards in lessons ( year 4).
She felt left out although she is sadly not alone in her school.
She will give the card she made to my dp which is a huge step ( she chose to do this) and has touched me.

But what about kids who dont gave a dad or step dad?

If i pointed this out ti the school would it be the same as an atheist parent complaining about the school nativity?

Im atheist and i gavnt ever compkained about the Christian etjos of the school btw! I do think the father's day card thing whilst well meaning is a bit insensitive.

Id rather she concentrated on the curriculum.

My kid's classes have never done father's day cards at school. I don't think it is a real thing is it?
One of ds2 friend's mother died and they stopped doing mother's day cards too.

i am surprised at the school.
my dc never made father's day cards at school. the subject is too much of a minefield.

yanbu

I hear you OP

It's like hammering home the message that a 'proper' family has a dad. My son has a father but he doesn't live with us. He doesn't have a Dad though. Big difference.

Poor bloody year 4, that can't do anything at all unless it's deemed sufficiently hard and 'curriculum related'. Heaven forbid they should ever do anything just for fun, I mean they're 9 and 10 for goodness sake! Friday afternoons should be spent doing algebra presumably, they can give that to their dad's/stepdad's/uncles. And it's not like you could adapt something topic related into a card - no way of creating a picture on the front in the style of a studied artist for example? Couldn't possibly compose a poem to go inside, or use IT skills to create a card, or use a detailed observational drawing, foreign language skills, map skills (here's a map of all the places special to us dad, off the top of my head) etc etc. Or use it as a pshe exercise to look at different families and how we define the family.

I do cards around Father's Day and Mother's Day but I take the dynamics and individual situations of the pupils into account. This year it was a superhero theme with a 'you're my hero' message - could be given to anyone including mum, dad, grandpa etc. We also made biscuits - I'm in Early Years (currently) though, so that's clearly acceptable. What would a 9 year old get out of a cooking activity when they could be doing 'proper, hard learning'

At the school my sister's children go to they don't make Father's Day cards for this reason although they do make Mother's Day cards.

Why one and not the other? What possible good reason could exist for that?

Gah stepdads uncles etc. Bloody iPhone

headinabook ^^ this exactly.

No two families have the same dynamic, and in my experience schools do acknowledge this.

Do all the posters that don't think Father's Day should be a thing still expect for Mother's Day? Of course it should be celebrated, shall we cancel Christmas because some faiths don't believe? Perhaps we should get rid of all celebratory days so no one is offended?

That's nice TheLionQueen, so little concern for the feelings of the children sitting in class realising they're the poor unfortunates odd/unlucky not to have a father at home then.

And for the record, if there was a child in the class with no mother then I'd prefer the teacher didn't do mother's day cards, yes.

YANBU, this activity would have made me feel awkward was a kid. Even if I had the option of making a card for someone else I think I would have felt a bit left out somehow.

My dad left my mum when I was 2. I had no other male relatives at all - we were NC with my dad's parents and his brothers, and my DM is an only child, so no uncles - and her parents died well before I was born, so no granddad on her side.

It wouldn't have traumatised me but I wouldn't really have enjoyed the activity.

And christmas is a red herring because it is families themselves who reject either Christmas, Hannukah, Ramadan or whatever. That is totally different from a day dedicated to a man who has chosen to basically reject his children. So the "comparison" is apples and oranges.

PurpleDaisys, yes they make mkthers day stuff but not fathers day.

School is in a not too great area (not our choice by a long way, but dsds mum has full say over this...) Where there is a massively large amount of single mum families, kids not knowing dads etc.

Agua not at all, my dad isn't around? But it's down to the parents and teachers, as we did, to explain that all families are different and use this as a day of celebration still! We had children doing cards for uncles, friends, their mum's and it was lovely. Just because you are choosing to see the negative!

Fathers Day wasn't mentioned at DD's school. Mothers day got a special assembly where we were all invited and a card. I can only assume that the school know more than me and there are families without dads but no families without mums in her class.

If schools are choosing to make Mother's Day cards, they should also make Father's Day cards. There's no logic in doing one without the other.

^I hear you OP

It's like hammering home the message that a 'proper' family has a dad. My son has a father but he doesn't live with us. He doesn't have a Dad though. Big difference.^

And maybe to those of us who had a mother, but not a mum, because she'd run off with someone else and abandoned her kids, didn't appreciate the message that 'proper' families have a mum.

Can work both ways.

My kids all made a card at school, and they are in years 1, 3 and 5.
I don't know what those kids who's dad isn't about did, but when I was a kid I made a card for my mum (my dad died when I was 6)

Our school (primary) used to make cards for Father's Day with a make one for mum option in single parent family, then last year one of dds classmates dad passed away (also older sibling in the school) and they stopped so it wouldn't make it harder for them

Clearly there are many more children without fathers in their lives than there are without mothers. Absentee fathers are reaching epidemic proportions in certain parts of society where it is almost seen as normal. If men don't want schools to find their own ways of dealing with this situation so as not to upset children eg by not doing father's day cards, maybe they could stop abandoning their kids.

"choosing to see it as negative" - um, yeh, I see a needless activity that highlights who has a father and who doesn't as negative. That is correct. Not everything that happens out of habit/culture/tradition/Hallmark is positive. So acknowledging that some things that happen without much thought are negative does not mean I'm a 'type' to label positive things negative. I recognise negative things as negative.

90% of the children would be on auto pilot doing a Father's Day Card and then the teacher would make a well-meaning but still potentially very exclusionary speech about what you can make if you don't have a father you poor thing and everybody in the class will know who doesn't have a father............ They can do art work any day of the year but if you do it in the run up to Father's day then the children aren't stupid

Your daughter might not have an active biological dad but others will have. There would a lot of ill feeling if schools did mother's day cards but nothing for fathers. That would be wrong. In my class 2 have nothing to do with their father. They both made a card for their grandad. One made for his stepfather as they only see their biological dad once a year. Lots of them come from separated families but still see Dad so they did cards for Dad. I think you're being unreasonable. Father's day is just as important as mother's day. Schools would be slated if they ignored it.

I think that children should make fathers day card in school, after all they always make Mother's Day

No they don't. Our school do neither. What has father's day/mother's day got to do with education?

Yes YABU. Why should the majority not enjoy making cards because the few don't have a "father"?

What an utterly cuntish thing to say, you should be ashamed of yourself. And fyi, 25% of households with children in the UK are single parent households, not 1 in 30.

Presumably all the YABU have never had to console a child dealing with paternal abandonment.

YADNBU OP.

In the school I worked in teachers were intelligent enough to know their own classes. We did Mother's Day because I knew every child lived at home with their Mother. Father's Day was a more free flowing afternoon with a selection of activities because at least a third of my class didn't have a father around. They chose to make one or not.

Unfortunately it is a sad fact of life that some children will have one parent or two, of one sex or the other. It is also a fact that mothers day and fathers day are British traditions that are celebrated. At some point chn who dont have a father around will encounter fathers day and have to be taught to find a way to cope and manage those feelings relating to it. The sane goes for mothers day too. Hiding it from our children doesn't help them, they need to be supported to deal with these occasions in a healthy way x