AIBU to expect school to be sensitive to my child who has just lost her father

[itsallabouttheponies]

I am fuming, my beautiful sweet 8 year old lost her dad last week to suicide which has left the whole fallibly devastated. She has been back at school since Monday and is being so brave about it, yesterday she came out and told me they had made fathers days cards in class. Her teacher told her to choose somebody else to write the card to while all of the other children wrote to their dads. AIBU is suggesting the teacher was fucking insensitive to my daughters lose and it should of been discussed with me, I could have picked her up from school or even taken her to read a book but at barely a week after losing her dad who in their right mind would do this???

Morondela you are being absolutely ridiculous

Par for the course. She’ll be telling us all to chill out in a bit.

So sorry for your loss. We cancelled Father’s Day cards at our school as a colleague’s father had died and it was deemed too raw. I can’t believe how insensitive they are. Please get your child registered with Winston’s Wish-you are probably feeling far too shocked or ready to start thinking about help (but the waiting list is long) and they send support info and guidance to teachers about how to help a grieving child which your school clearly needs.

In some school, it's planned for weeks and it involves the whole school - each in their class. You don't just cancel something like that Bollocks to that! I taught A levels and degree modules. If something happened and I was made aware I always scanned the next few weeks and made minor modifications where necessary - as did every other lecturer!

It's included in safeguarding, looking after the mental and emotional health of your students! It is also known as being a decent human being!

Agree that there was no reason to cancel the activity, but your DD should have been sent somewhere else this year, then dealt with sensitivity (quiet word with her at the start of the class) next year.

I’m so sorry, and angry on your dds behalf.
20 years ago I was teamtachimg with a much much older teacher planning the weeks events. When I mooted that fd cards might be problematic she was genuinely confused, however we talked it through and created a less intense session. And that was from another generation and culture teacher 20 years ago, I really would raise it with the school, because it speaks to an uncaring culture. In other schools I’ve worked in such a loss as your dds would have been mentioned to all staff with ‘a let’s reign in fd this year’.

Apalling and mean

It's a stock answer I'm afraid. Most teachers say that to children who don't have one parent for whatever reasons.

I don't expect it was deliberate. It was probably forgotten about. I understand that to you it's unthatamable that it could be forgotten, but you've a class with 30 child all with needs and things. It slipped through the cracks. I'm sorry for your loss

How awful OP. I'm so sorry for your loss and for your daughter's experience.

The only thing I'm wondering is whether there is any possibility the teacher doesn't know? Sometimes Heads and Sencos treat information told to them as sensitive or private and don't pass it on. Either way you need to speak to the teacher- either she didn't know or she's incredibly ignorant.

MorondelaFrontera - a craft activity can go ahead. It just doesn't have to be pinned to Father's Day. I'm sure that any parent in that class would put this child's needs ahead of their own.

A primary age class teacher should have the sort of relationship with the girl to be able to find time to talk to her before this lesson, explain what was planned, and empathetically ask the girl what she would like to do, giving her a couple of options in addition to a choice to remain with the class. She might want to be somewhere else, or she might want to stay. But she should have had the choice.

So awful it’s hard to believe. Poor little girl.

This makes me so sad for your daughter. So insensitive.

That's disgusting, but schools in my area are filled with teachers that really haven't got the life skills to be in that position. No disrespect to the teachers on MN, but I do question why many of these teachers even bother entering the profession when their hearts are clearly not in it and their experience of the real world is so minimal. Anyone with an ounce of savvy would have contacted you and said this is what the kids are doing, how do you want us to work this?

@MorondelaFrontera, the session definitely should have been cancelled for the well-being of all the class. If op’s dd had had a full blown snotty screaming fit it would have been entirely predictable and understandable. And how upsetting would that have been for the rest of the class and teacher to witness?

Wow. I am so shocked at this. I've taught for years (primary and secondary) and there is no way this should have happened. Especially not in primary where the teacher has 30 pupils and should know them well.
I had pupils in similar positions who were one of 300 I taught in secondary and we changed the syllabus round to avoid insensitivity. Speak to the Head, this needs to not happen again. I'm so sorry for your loss x

It happened when my dh died , my son was asked did he want to join in (he didn’t have to) and make a card for his grandpa

I'm so very sorry for your loss op and for your little dd's.
My dd is 8 too. I can't begin to imagine how she must be feeling.

This isn't one of those situations where you don't want to be "that parent"- quite the opposite in fact. Go and be "that parent" as unfortunately it's too late for your dd but will hopefully spare another child from the trauma.
Absolutely disgusting and thoughtless.

Love and hugs

Antigon

you're ok hun?

I don't even know you and the thought of this has nearly brought me to tears

Your daughter is so brave, and the teacher is clearly wrong. Please complain.

YANBU! Disgusting, insensitive, but sadly not surprising. All it would've taken is as pp suggested, a classroom assistant to take her to the library for a book/different activity.

@MorondelaFrontera

Sorry, I dissagree with you.

Thinking about work and not school, grown adults have taken couple of months off work for a bereavement and when returning their colleagues have be sensitive towards them and have listened to them when they have broken down.

Can you imagine asking a woman who just lost a baby to contibrute to a gift for another colleagues baby?

Consideration for others need to be learnt at a young age.

I think this is really tough, there may well be other children in the class who can't afford to buy a card and don't have the opportunity to make them at home so i don't think cancelling the activity is neccrssarily the right thing. Your child should definitely have been considered though. I think speaking to you first would have been best. When I helped at a school for a while a teacher did this and the parent just asked that it be deemed a chance to make a card for 'someone you love', which worked for everyone. The cards premade to show what they could do included Fathers day, but also mum and sister as examples. I thought it was a good idea, as everyone was included.

Lastly, I can't begin to understand what you're going through right now, but I am sorry for your loss.

So sorry for your loss

Very insensitive, speak to the head.

Etino

my point is that you don't cancel everything just because something has been handled badly.

I never said that the teacher was remotely acceptable, and I did say that there were very easy solution so it's not remotely ok and there's no excuse.

There's just no need to cancel a whole school or class event. Unfortunately, anything can be a trigger for someone in a difficult situation. You can't ban every subject, ban every event, it's not remotely workable.

What you should do is have a policy to take care of the ones who need it! I never said it should be brushed off.

Of course the teacher could have changed the lesson. She could still have done the craft stuff, just not tied it in to Father's Day. And she certainly should have taken into account your DD's bereavement. She would have known about that. I am so sorry this happened.

DGD's nursery managed to deal with the Father's Day stuff very tactfully with her, getting her to make a card for Grandad and taking her slightly aside from the other children, but not enough for her to notice she was being separated, just enough that she wasn't hearing all that was said. Her 'father' is a waste of space, but periodically she becomes upset that she doesn't see or hear from him and we didn't want that. Nursery handled it very well.

And another example, when my DM died suddenly, DD1's class teacher contacted me to say that they were changing the book that they had been going to read to the class to Charlotte's Web, to give the children a little bit of insight and was that all right with me? It meant changing some of the activities that they had been going to do around the other book, but it wasn't a big deal to them. I really appreciated the thoughtfulness.

OP, I am so sorry for your loss. Your DD sounds an amazingly brave little girl and I know that you are very proud of the way she has coped. Do not give the school an easy ride over this. It was massively insensitive and utterly thoughtless and it needs to be highlighted so no other child has to go through this.

Very insensitive of the teacher. Our school do cards for Mother’s and Father’s Day however the whole class are told they are making a special persons card and the child can address it to whoever they like.