to report DS' friend to the school (without his permission)

[jaccyjo]

In a bit of a nightmare scenario with DS. He finished his GCSEs on Friday and went to a party with his mates.
Next day he comes home and I could tell he was really panicky and not himself. It turns out when they were out they had looked up some teachers on instagram and DS' friend had messaged some teachers off my son's account ...... !!!! DS has been panicking and saying he's probably going to get banned from his prom and leavers assembly etc.

I have just had an email from his head of year asking me to come in tomorrow for a meeting. I can only imagine it's about this as DS has now effectively left. None of the teachers replied but I imagine they have reported it. DS is willing to take the flack but I feel I should report who it was that sent the messages. I know it's true that it wasn't my son as I've spoken to the lad who did it. However DS is saying he doesn't care about prom anyway and he will just go to afterparty . His friends Mum is not helping as she says she has already spent £200 on her son's suit and if he gets banned from prom it will be a waste of her money!

My DS really doesn't want me to report his friend. He says they were all drunk and he allowed it to happen. What should I do?

Oh PookieDo don't go being sensible.

It's a very convenient tactic in male socialisation to pretend that certain actions are equally common between men and women.

It is so depressing

You must be a very virtuous person AmeriAnn; I know many wives who have gone on nights out and got drunk, leaving husbands to pick up the pieces next day. I think your ‘raise the boy to be a good husband’ attitude is a bit, well - sexist - as well as presumptuous and unfair.

Under His Eye

@PookieDo You forgot my favourite
A bit of freedom and drinking and silliness is normal and to be honest, good
It really does blow my mind. Is it equally 'good' for girls? Are we saying that it is GOOD for teenage girls to be drinking and silly and free to do what they like?

We really need to set the bar higher for our sons than this "boys will be boys" bollocks and the expectation/acceptance of misogynistic behaviour as some kind of inevitable high jinks (and they're always "easily led" by worse behaved friends of course)
Why is this so fucking hard to understand?

LolaSmiles and BoneyBackJefferson.

You are both missing the point. Placing faith in the wider group of the general public, and saying that the onus is on them not to be a fuckwit - therefore I can do anything I like on social media because people shouldn't do this kind of thing is silly. Obviously , they shouldn't - fact is they DO.

The onus should be in everyone who uses social media to take care, be safe and ensure their accounts are secure. Where necessary limit information publicly available and obscure names. Simple.

Aside from this situation, there are more than teenage fuckwits about who are happy to stalk the crap out of teachers online who have upset their petals at school, and while in an ideal world obscuring your identity should not have to happen- it is necessary. No just for you, but for the security of your friends and family.

Police can't legally post pictures from work on accounts and have very strict guidelines about how they use social media, as do teachers and select other professions. It's not comparable this example. What I am talking about is about locating a person via social media not posting illegal content from work.

PookieDo look you are right we should be giving boys the right message about behaviour, but I don’t appreciate being pulled out as being an example of someone belittling the act. I was just saying calm down until we know what’s happened. And I do think there’s an element of getting carried away/ peer pressure/ attention seeking that can come with being a teenager, that’s influenced this action. It doesn’t necessarily translate to a complete cad once the dust has settled and he’s grown up a bit. At my all girls’ school one pupil definitely crossed a line contacting a male teacher she had a thing for, so I do think it can cut both ways.

For sure this needs to be followed up with some firm words about what’s appropriate, but I expect the ‘agitation’ the OP said her DS was in, was partly because he knew he’d done wrong.

Sons used to have parties which girls were invited to. We even had a sleepover the girls had a room to get ready in. I went in found a bottle of vodka, poured it down the drain and filled it back up with water. They never said a word. The next time they thought they would be clever came in no booze at all. I waited a bit went out and searched the hedges yep there was the vodka again, poured that away too and never heard a word about it.

It could easily have been a girl. I have teenagers and the girls are no better than the boys. In fact many of my friends have commented that when they host parties/gatherings that's it's the girls who get really drunk.

Peopleshouldread
Nobody is saying anyone should do what they like on social media.

I think it's right that people don't post offensive content or anything too controversial. It's right people don't post about work. It's right people don't post anything on social media they wouldn t be happy being seen by work. It's right that people are aware of what their profile pictures are. It's reasonable to have your settings set to limit who can tag and make it so you have to approve photo tags. It's right that in some jobs an account is set to private because, as you correctly point out, there are some fuckwits out there.

All of those things are a reasonable and sensible set of guidelines for social media.

Where we disagree is that you feel it is reasonable to insist that teachers and school staff hide their identity, use false names etc. I don't think that is reasonable.

If a parent or student threatened me in the street I would report to work and the police. If a student tries to add me on social media then I decline and block and pass on to the safeguarding lead and we will have a polite chat about professional boundaries. If a student sends an inoccuous message then the same would apply. Sometimes students who've grown up with social media forget there is a difference between messaging staff on an educational platform or school email and private things.

If a student sends me inappropriate messages, sexual or suggestive messages etc then that's on them and they know exactly what they are doing. There is no excuse for that and I would expect them to be sanctioned accordingly.

For what it's worth, situations like the OP's son are not common. If reasonable steps have been followed then it's on the perpetrators, not the recipients.

Rereading the original post and trying to see if it says anywhere that the group of people privy to the sending of the messages were all boys. Not sure it does.
To me, the point to take away is not so much how they behaved while drunk, but how they behaved in the cold light of day. Being judgemental about them being drunk in the first place derails the thread.
Posters whose kids have a grown up attitude to alcohol and know how to enjoy themselves without it - great. Lucky you. But I would be careful about taking too much credit for that. It's more likely your kids just aren't that interested in it/it's not their bag. My DS is 17 and doesn't drink. But I am not naive enough to think it's down to superior parenting on my part. Yes, I have had some influence, but also, he is a committed athlete and that comes first for him. Plus his close friends aren't all that into it either so there isn't huge peer pressure.
I have a friend whose daughter went off the rails with drink, drugs and sex around aged 15. She is now is a straight A student off to university to do a career enhancing subject. Should we judge her or be proud that she turned it around?
The sexism issue is a little bit more complicated to unpick.

I've read all the OP's posts, and whilst I agree that it would have been wrong for your DS take all the blame, it's right that both he and his friend are sanctioned. The legal term is 'joint enterprise', this is how members of a criminal gang are treated if one of them commits a murder during a robbery. The other gang members don't get away with it because they say, 'It wasn't me who fired the gun.'

It's good that his friend fessed up, but it's a shame the others got away with it. It's clearly a case of peer pressure, they were egging each other on.