AIBU regarding PE teacher, DD and her period?

[Tink2007]

My DD is nearly 13. She’s been having periods for 8/9 months. She came on yesterday. She said it was quite heavy and she didn’t feel comfortable doing PE today as she was worried about leaks and it being so heavy just left her feeling uncomfortable.

She’s never missed a PE lesson, she has done PE whilst on her period but it has always coincided with the end so has always been lighter. I said it was fine and I would jot a note in her student diary (as required) especially seeing as it was the first time she has come to me and said “‘Mum, I don’t feel comfortable with this today.”

So imagine my surprise when she came home from school and told me how PE went today. Her actual PE teacher was fine with her not doing PE but said the final decision was with the head of PE.

Now given she didn’t have her PE kit, she had a note and expressed her discomfort with doing PE I wa surprised that the head of PE tried all manner of ways to make her do PE, telling her a period couldn’t be “that bad”, she wouldn’t accept it as a reason again. Then said if she had a spare PE kit she would have made her do it, asked the other PE teacher to make her do it in her school uniform (which the other teacher refused to do) and pulled her by the arm to a standing position to bat a shuttlecock back and forth towards the end of the lesson. She simply couldn’t accept she wasn’t doing it this lesson.

AIBU reasonable for being annoyed? In an age where we are supposed to be empowering young women to have their voices heard, be confident in what they feel comfortable and uncomfortable with and voicing that but yet this teacher seems happy to ignore it and physically pull my DD to her feet.

I should add I do know the teacher in question - she was my PE teacher 22 years ago and it does sound just like her to be honest.

loliconsunite

Troll in the dungeon 🙄🙄

I don't know if its been suggested but try thinx period panties for pe, they do work!

That's really rubbish. You're right about people knowing who shirks regularly and makes up excuses vs those who don't. Sort of boy who cried wolf really.

I do hope you aren't including yourself in this maisypops, as nothing you've said in this thread suggests you'd be capable of that.

loliconsunite You’ve worked all your life to free women from harmful gender stereotypes and yet you sit there and call a 12 year old girl a “pussy” and to “man up” - bit of a confusion in your role there.

Surely telling a girl to “man up” is gender stereotyping, is it not?

I am a bit mmm about the amount of comments about drips. I have very heavy periods and play sports. You can avoid any dripping.

So, basically you are calling people liars just because their experience differs from yours. 🙄

My goodness, so many nasty messages on here.

YANBU, absolutely YANBU. I'm 37 and still struggle with my (office-based) work on those days. Judgemental people never been in this situation should shut the f* off.

Girls should be given the choice, those school rules are a disgrace. Nobody should feel entitled to quantify the discomfort.

I am perimenopausal, am 53, so have been dealing with periods for 40 years plus. Yesterday, every time I moved, it got heavier, and I was changing my pad every couple of hours. I ended up going to bed for a couple of hours.

If I find it variable and difficult to cope with at times after 4 decades of having the damn things, then the PE teacher should cut a youngster some slack. I can still remember thinking first stage labour was less painful than some of my periods. I did my History A level exams clutching a hot water bottle to my abdomen.

(Women against women, as always. So so sad).

Having heavy periods makes you feel exhausted. I remember being made to do pe once when I had agonising period pains. All colour drained from face and nearly passed out. It was awful. school should have adhered to your note. I would write a letter of complaint

Why is it that anyone who disagrees with op is ridiculous, misogynistic or a troll?

Toastedstrudel

Or is accused of not knowing what it's like to have heavy or painful periods?

I've been accused of calling people liars and not believing that their symptoms cause them to have to sit out yet it appears fine to suggest that I just carry on with my life, despite having very heavy periods (hb 90 at last count and 2 fibroids). The fact that lots of people do just carry on seems to be taken as a personal insult by people on here.

Probably because they've all either been thick as pigshit or made posts claiming to have devoted their lives to female empowerment whilst also calling a child a pussy and telling her to man up.

There are a lot of posts here about heavy, painful, debilitating periods which too many women suffer from and which are awful.
The OP did not say anything to imply that this applies to her daughter. Just that she was uncomfortable and it was the first day.
I think if your dd was in extreme discomfort you’d be having investigations at the doctors wouldn’t you, and putting that on a note would certainly carry clout.
Would you like to be a teacher explaining to Mrs X why her daughter was made to do PE despite a note (as teacher knows her to be a chancer) when Mrs X has heard that Miss Y had been allowed to sit it out?
Girls who hate PE could also have bad periods. I think the teachers are being put in an impossible situation. Basically just give them a free for all and let them decide whether to do PE or not - and then watch while the school is slammed in an inspection and the parents all complain that the rating goes down.

The message I'm getting from many of these posts is that girls lie and/or girls need to suffer to toughen them up.

The fact that lots of people do just carry on seems to be taken as a personal insult by people on here.

It not the fact that you carry on that's taken as an insult, it's the fact that you think just because you can, then that automatically means others can and should. You are an adult, OPs daughter is a child. That makes a huge difference. Just because you 'carry on with your life' doesn't me others can or have to. Everyone is different as has been said already on this thread. So, it's great if you can carry on, but that doesn't give you right to say that others should. The persons illness, symptoms, life, age and pain threshold will all play a part in whether they can just carry on and all those factors will be different for everyone.

I have a friend who has heavy periods but she says although she feels tired she doesn't get any other symptoms. My aunt had very light periods but suffered with awful cramps, migraines and vomiting with almost every period she had. Again, everyone is different.

The message I'm getting from many of these posts is that girls lie and/or girls need to suffer to toughen them up.

Some girls (and some boys) do lie in order to get out of doing something that they don't want to do. I imagine teachers spend a lot of time persuading pupils to do lessons that given a choice they wouldn't volunteer to do, but it is compulsory at school. I guess if people think that school children should be able to exercise free will over what they do in school then that's a different argument entirely.

I certainly don't think that anyone should be made to suffer. If periods are so heavy or debilitating that they cause you to have to miss several days of school a month (as a PP described) then treatment needs to be sought. That is no way to live and is going to have a huge negative impact on your life.

My own point if view? Yes, some people do need to toughen up a bit, but then as someone else pointed out, maybe my own health problems have made me a bit callous.

I don't really agree with the OP writing a note to excuse her daughter from PE but that was her call. I think it's better to suggest that she tries and sees how she feels but again, her call.

I do think the teacher was wrong to have forced the student to do PE, ignoring the mother's note. As I said earlier, if the teacher had an issue with the note then she should have spoken to the mother, not forced the girl to do PE.

Toastedstrudel I’m happy to have people disagree. My troll comment was based on the user calling my daughter “a pussy” hence why the comment was removed.

reading threads like this makes me wonder what the world would look like if it had been set up by women, for women, rather than shoehorning women into a world set up by men, for men and grooming us all into thinking that equality means we're all the same.

Because that's really the bottom line, isn't it? We have to make ourselves as close to men as possible because to do otherwise is a) unfair on men because they don't get time off for x, y or z that's exclusive to women and b) women are letting themselves down if they allow their biology to 'take over'.

This thread has gone exactly as would be predicted with a depressing number of women buying into this kind of thinking.

You are an adult, OPs daughter is a child.

But I wasn't always an adult. I started aged 9.

If you have to skip something, occasionally, then it's no big deal is it?

If you gave to take 2 or 3 days a month off of school or work then that is going to cause big problems in life.

I do think letting kids grow up thinking it's ok to not at least try to push through things is not a great lesson.

When I first started work there weren't really any problems with taking sick time. It was monitored but each case was dealt with individually. Over time they brought in stricter and stricter rules, ending up with over 3% sickness or 3 or more occasions of sickness over 6 months, resulting in a warning and an attendance target being set. Fail that target and you get a final warning and another target (often no sickness within a set period). Failing that leads to dismissal. Why did they bring that in? Because a lot of people were taking advantage of the more lenient rules and taking a day off sick whenever they felt slightly unwell. Now everyone is punished.

So yes, sometimes I think you do just have to suck it up and get in with it.

RiverTam

What would be the right way then? I am interested to hear. Do you think women and girls should be able to take time off every month?

Absolutely @RiverTam

When will women wake up to this fact? The huge proportion of the population that is not an able bodied (?white) man needs to stick together, not attack each other for not fitting.

Impractical school uniform for periods, bra wearing etc: “no that doesn’t work for us”
Impractical rules around participation: “no that doesn’t work for us”

My own high school insisted on unforgiving PE knickers (like thick leotard material in pants). Boys got long shorts of course. It meant that girls were waxing/shaving public hair from 11/12 years old, while the boys taunted anyone who had “spiders legs” poking out...and trying to wear them with sanitary pads was ridiculous. The schools response was “wear tampons”. I couldn’t believe that personal choice over an intimate matter could be dictated in that way. But girls get broken early, and learn early to accept this stuff. It goes on and on...then one day you are in labour with seemingly little say over what is happening to your body.

Sorry, ive obviously missed a bit

Have we skipped on from the OP and now discussing girls taking days off school every month?

I honestly don't know the answer - but expecting women to suck up what can be excruciating pain that, if it were for any other reason, there's no question about you taking the day off, isn't right. Expecting women to medicate themselves to deal with this - I know that a lot of women and girls are put on the pill to 'deal' with their period pain - why should they have to be on artificial hormones for a lifetime when a more reasonable society would find a way to deal with it?

My periods got a lot worse after DD was born - pain that felt like an iron claw was slowly wrenching my innards around, painkillers did nothing, I bled much more heavily, had worse PMT. I was lucky, I was working freelance from home (or a SAHP) but the idea of having to travel in on the tube and sit in a office - it would have been hideous.

Hopefully, as a by-product of flexible working and people working from home more this can be dealt with better.

Of course (and there will be plenty of women on MN who would say this, if the employment threads I've read are anything to go by) some will say that women will take the piss and exploit this. Unfortunately there's not much to be done about idiots like that.

We skipped on quite a while ago Rufus when posters started comparing their own extremely bad periods with the OP’s dd’s uncomfortable one.