Aibu to be really cross about this breakfast club situation?

[Henni19]

My 3yo started at the school nursery on Thursday, his 5yo brother went into y1.
On Friday I put them into breakfast club as I had work.
School are still operating bubbles and all other restrictions (i am annoyed about this, although from a thread I posted the other day many disagreed with me).
Anyway it turns out my 3yo is the only child in the nursery bubble in breakfast club so they made him sit at a table on his own for the whole hour, while his brother sat the other side of the hall with his friends.
My eldest saw him crying asking for me and asked if he could sit with him but was told he wasn't allowed.
Only 2 staff work there and they both greeted us so no confusion over them being brothers, sounds like just taking the bubble rule to the extreme.
I cant work out if I am more devastated or bloody fuming about it.
Aibu to send an email to school asking them to use some common sense?
2 days in and 3yo already doesn't want to go back ☹

All those saying siblings can’t cross bubbles - you do understand that siblings already cross bubbles by living together, they are just pretending they aren’t crossing bubbles by keeping them separate at school.

Of course, but the problem is that if there are many sibling pairs (or more) in the school - which would be very common - it would be impossible to do anything else but either strictly adhere to bubbles or completely ignore bubbles.

If you have a y1/y4 pair, a y1/y5 pair, a y2/y4 pair, a y3/y5 pair, etc, etc, and in each case the siblings joined each other there would be no year bubbles.

But whatever the guidance or intentions, a 3yo and 5yo separated leaving the 3yo alone and crying for an hour is absolutely unacceptable and cruel. Poor little boy.

For those debating about how bubbles should work in schools - here is the current DfE guidance - bubbles shouldn't exist in schools now.

"Mixing and ‘bubbles’
We no longer recommend that it is necessary to keep children in consistent groups (‘bubbles’). This means that bubbles will not need to be used for any summer provision (for example, summer schools) or in schools from the autumn term.

As well as enabling flexibility in curriculum delivery, this means that assemblies can resume, and you no longer need to make alternative arrangements to avoid mixing at lunch.

You should make sure your contingency plans (sometimes called outbreak management plans) cover the possibility that in some local areas it may become necessary to reintroduce ‘bubbles’ for a temporary period, to reduce mixing between groups.

Any decision to recommend the reintroduction of ‘bubbles’ would not be taken lightly and would need to take account of the detrimental impact they can have on the delivery of education."

Cruel, stupid, unnecessary and pointless.

There is a massive difference between a young child being overwhelmed and upset as they adjust having peers and staff to comfort them, and a young child being left to sob alone, in sight of their sibling and other children, too young to understand why they are being punished (which is what it would feel like)

A 3 year old hasn't lived in a properly socially normal world since they were 1!

Yes bubbles don't exist but some staff are saying it suits them to keep them. It must be easier for them to manage. This is not ok.

@SofiaMichelle

All those saying siblings can’t cross bubbles - you do understand that siblings already cross bubbles by living together, they are just pretending they aren’t crossing bubbles by keeping them separate at school.

Of course, but the problem is that if there are many sibling pairs (or more) in the school - which would be very common - it would be impossible to do anything else but either strictly adhere to bubbles or completely ignore bubbles.

If you have a y1/y4 pair, a y1/y5 pair, a y2/y4 pair, a y3/y5 pair, etc, etc, and in each case the siblings joined each other there would be no year bubbles.

But whatever the guidance or intentions, a 3yo and 5yo separated leaving the 3yo alone and crying for an hour is absolutely unacceptable and cruel. Poor little boy.

Exactly this really - in general it’s impractical when to allow for siblings to cross bubbles at school but acknowledging the reality that siblings are crossing bubbles at home, any decent staff would have an exception for a 3yo In this situation.

It seems as though there is absolutely no point in school bubbles, other than making the staff feel like they're doing something about covid / make the staffs lives easier. Bubbles are being crossed all the time (in homes) so a complete fallacy.

This happened to my Y1 child last term. He was the only one in his year group staying for the second hour of afterschool club and had to sit on his own. He hated going and was sad when we picked him up, it was awful. If I were you I would question the policy though since schools don't have to have bubbles this term.

@SofiaMichelle

All those saying siblings can’t cross bubbles - you do understand that siblings already cross bubbles by living together, they are just pretending they aren’t crossing bubbles by keeping them separate at school.

Of course, but the problem is that if there are many sibling pairs (or more) in the school - which would be very common - it would be impossible to do anything else but either strictly adhere to bubbles or completely ignore bubbles.

If you have a y1/y4 pair, a y1/y5 pair, a y2/y4 pair, a y3/y5 pair, etc, etc, and in each case the siblings joined each other there would be no year bubbles.

But whatever the guidance or intentions, a 3yo and 5yo separated leaving the 3yo alone and crying for an hour is absolutely unacceptable and cruel. Poor little boy.

I don't see how that hypothetical would make the year bubbles any less effective than they're already made by the fact that those siblings live together.

It's not impossible to allow siblings to play together. I've done that exact thing at my setting for a year. We're talking about wraparound care, not classes during the school day. Just requires a bit of flexibility and common sense. Siblings playing together at school is never going to increase the risk of transmission - that would happen at home anyway! So at my setting we had sort of roughly divided the areas inside up, with tables and a floor area for each, and we have free flow to the outside space so they had their own bit of the field to play on too. And the kids were really good at knowing to stay in their bubble once they knew the boundaries - they lived the entire year doing this, and primary aged kids generally do want to follow the rules. We'd told them that they can play with their siblings if they want, so they'd come and ask a member of staff who'd say of course, and direct them to an empty table, or part of the field, or not of play equipment. A sibling couldn't join another bubble, but they could play with their brother or sister from the same household.

@Theworldishard

I used to work in bf club and I do an after school club and unfortunately we also would have done the same

Give your head a shake and stop being a robot! You can use your own common sense you know!?

God how awful. Leaving a three year old crying alone

That's a really awful thing to do to a small child. They at least needed to have an adult with them, engaging and playing with them.

As an aside, I'm amazed your 3yo put up with it. They must be very well-behaved. Mine would have been constantly leaving their seat and going to play with the other children if they didn't have a staff member tagging them the whole time .

I can understand them not allowing your 3yo to join the bubble but not why they couldn't have used their brains and allowed your 5yo to sit with 3yo for breakfast just the 2 of them. They'll have literally just left a car, a house etc together and will be going home together so no additional risk to either bubble. Suggest that and complain to governors if they won't allow it as it is absolutely ridiculous and against any common sense or science based justification

Anyone that didn’t have the common sense or gumption to move the 5yo to the same table as the 3yo has no business working with children.

Working with kids requires thinking on your feet constantly. No decent childcare professional would have allowed that to happen for an hour, especially for a child so young and new in the setting.

And it would be more common sense for siblings to form their own bubble rather than leave a child alone.

It's not as simple as that. In our school there are set tables for each class. You can't just let siblings cross bubbles, it defeats the purpose.

That is absolute nonsense, as they are crossing bubbles at home. So allowing the two brothers to sit together at breakfast is literally no different to them sitting together at breakfast at home.

The breakfast club staff don't sound particularly up to the task of monitoring a child, particularly as there's no suggestion they attempted to intervene. I'd remove both of my children and find a child minder who had a more caring and problem solving approach than these staff too cold or rule adhering or plain stupid to understand the point of bubbles. There's no way a parent would leave a child somewhere they were just left to cry alone.

I definitely think YANBU and I would have been so angry too (had DS had a sibling) I guess they’ll just say that if they let your two sit together then the other kids won’t understand why they’re getting ‘special’ treatment. The breakfast club are also in a tough situation unfortunately.

Our breakfast club just let the children mix. Makes a mockery of bubbles - but then bubbles are screwed by fact that there are siblings in different bubbles anyway, so they are popped before you even start. Just glad our breakfast club was humane enough to run with it and let the children mix.

@BananaMilkshakeWithCream

I definitely think YANBU and I would have been so angry too (had DS had a sibling) I guess they’ll just say that if they let your two sit together then the other kids won’t understand why they’re getting ‘special’ treatment. The breakfast club are also in a tough situation unfortunately.

They’re really not in a tough situation at all.

“Nobody else from Bobby’s class comes to club so he’d have to sit by himself, which wouldn’t be very nice so Billy is sitting with his little brother for now until any children from that class join club” is perfectly understandable to even primary school age children.

Email sent to the head, wish me luck!

@Theworldishard What on earth are you on about? Siblings ARE in a bubble as they live together. There is zero common sense in not allowing siblings to "cross" bubbles. They do that every day at home anyway!!

@Fubitch

There should be no bubbles now.

That’s correct, there’s no requirement for bubbles now.

@Theworldishard

Also lots of kids cry for their mum, it's not child abuse.

He's fucking 3 years old, barely put of nappies! This is not OK!