To ‘EDUCATE’ this teacher?

[Misinformation]

DS has Type 1 diabetes. He has to put up with stupid comments like ‘did you eat too much sugar’ regularly.

At school today, a boy asked him this. Teacher nearby started telling him what Type 1 is and he asked if anyone could get it and could you get it randomly.

Teacher said No which DS was quite pissed of about as it seems to imply he’s done something to get it or it’s in his genes (it’s not). He’s not the type to correct a teacher so I think I should?

Quite annoyed as if you’re going to educate someone, do it correctly!

Dh is type 1 diabetic.
His fathers uncle was diagnosed as having type 1 diabetes. But after that
no one in his family was diagnosed with diabetes

I read somewhere that everyone carries a gene that is either Gene A or Gene B or Gene C
2 Gene A parents or 2 Gene B parents and their children will not get diabetes However children of a Gene A parent and a Gene B parent have a 50% higher chance of having Gene C which is the diabetic gene but even then it takes a trigger to actually become diabetic.

For dh it was a paper cut that got infected and took 2 courses of antibiotics to clear up that we think triggered his diabetes

irrespective of anything he could have done to prevent it

there is nothing at all that can be done to prevent type 1 or other autoimmune condition.

I've counted up to 60 medical conditions on my time table in the past....

I think the best thing you can do on this issue is encourage your son to clarify/correct comments others make (if/when necessary) regarding his condition. That will be a lot more beneficial than going in guns blazing on a well-intentioned reply made to a vaguely worded question made by some Maths/Geography etc teacher.

I've counted up to 60 medical conditions on my time table in the past

how many of those could result in the death of a child if mismanaged at a crucial moment?

But their current DNA will still not be identical

For all those foaming at the mouth about teachers not knowing about the life threatening conditions of their pupils...

1. Teachers are not required to know the causes of or have in depth knowledge about medical conditions such as diabetes. Teachers in a secondary school may teach hundreds of students.
2. Teachers are usually given brief bullet points on what to look out for and how to respond if a child is unwell or needs specific treatment. Many of these plans will tell the teacher to send for help or to contact 999 or to call a parent.
3. In the case of a T1 diabetic, most older students manage their diabetes themselves but the schools know how to respond if there is an issue or the student needs help or medical attention. With younger students, there is sometimes a named person who has had more specific training.

However, the OP would likely not be satisfied regardless as she has some kind of axe to grind here.

This boy started the discussion by deliberately trying to wind up DS for his medical condition.

This sort of behaviour should be swiftly dealt with by any teacher and this would be what I would contact the school about primarily.

My DH is T1, his dad and his dad's brother were both T1. Both our sons are also T1.
That is a 3 generation direct line of 5 type 1 males - none of the females got it.
As a family we took part in genetic testing to see if they could identify anything unusual. No obvious results. One son now has 2 male children. We are watching them carefully.
In our case it is definitely inherited.
Oh and son was told during the genetic testing that any children he had would have a 50/50 chance of getting it too.

Baconisdelicious
Teachers work in buildings with telephones. There are people on the staff with first aid training and they have access to care plans for students with life threatening conditions. There are also other staff in the building to assist. They can contact the emergency services and can also contact a child's parent. An individual teacher does not and in fact cannot be an expert in any one condition.

But surely you can differentiate between a callous or purposely unkind remark, and a well-meaning but inaccurate one?

It is obvious the teacher was telling the pupil that they couldn't catch it. Maybe they should have gone into a more thorough explanation but were trying to teach a lesson, get to a meeting or manage a safeguarding issue.

Sometimes good people say the wrong thing. You might even have done it yourself at sim point in your life. Why not help your ds to see that he wasn't being insulted or othered, and that there is no need to take offence where none was intended.

I've counted up to 60 medical conditions on my time table in the past

how many of those could result in the death of a child if mismanaged at a crucial moment?

Would not knowing the details of how people get Type 1 diabetes result in the death of a child? No, it wouldn't.

There are often quite a few students in school with conditions which can be very dangerous, including anaphylaxis, severe asthma, epilepsy and heart conditions.

But knowing the root cause of the illness won’t make the slightest difference in the case of an emergency.

ds has two potentially life threatening diagnosis. One pretty common the other less so. School have action plans on what to do in an emergency, they have emergency medication in school. As far as I know they don’t know the history of the cause of the illness - certainly neither me or the specialist nurses have told them.

you don’t need to know the ins and outs to manage it daily.

It is unreasonable to expect others to know about things they have no experience of, how much did you know about type 1 diabetes before your son was diagnosed?

Even scientists are still unclear on how many autoimmune diseases are caused. Teachers are not medics and don't need to know the ins and outs of every condition the hundreds of pupils they teach every year might have, they can only speak from their own experience/knowledge. They are also not responsible for educating other children on medical conditions.

I think your time and energies would be better spent developing your ds's resilience and confidence.

Teach your son he is the subject matter expert in this topic. Teach him to have the confidence to state the facts about his diabetes and while it is also not his responsibility to educate others, it is in his gift to do so if he chooses. He can also choose how he reacts and perhaps forgive those who are not familiar with it and might make factually incorrect, but well intentioned statements.

Don't go after the teacher. What’s she supposed to say to children worried they might get poorly? (after just living through a pandemic, contagious diseases are going to be an anxiety for this generation of kids).

“Yes Jonny, anyone can get diabetes, could be you next!” 🥴

This was my first thought too !

https://jdrf.org.uk/knowledge-support/about-type-1-diabetes/causes-of-type-1-diabetes/
another nice clear explanation
Note that 90 per cent of people who develop type 1 diabetes have no family connection with the condition. I think it is important that that is the fact that people remember, because otherwise people ignore symptoms, convinced they can't have it because no one else in the family does.

The truth is that no one actually knows what causes Type 1 diabetes (certainly not the GCSE exam boards). The scientists have some hypotheses but that's still all they are.

The answer to "can anyone get it?" Is very much "yes".

It sounds like the student asking meant it like 'can you catch it like a cold', to which the answer is no.

You're massively over thinking this OP.

(pondering why teacher training numbers are down.....)

How about "Yes Jonny, anyone can get Type 1 diabetes, but most people don't"?

tbh, given the huge increase in new diagnoses of Type 1 diabetes since covid, this generation of kids could do with more awareness of the symptoms (bearing in mind that the kids in question were 14).

In the case of a T1 diabetic, most older students manage their diabetes themselves but the schools know how to respond if there is an issue or the student needs help or medical attention

and the lawsuit that will follow when a child who is hypo is killed because a teacher puts insulin in? Honestly, in my house we have a fridge note of shame where we keep a tally of the number of times a teacher has tried to get my son to take insulin when hypo. It’s shocking. Type 1 is a named condition in equality legislation. You can’t just shrug your shoulders and say ‘not my problem’.

I teach. I see an appalling lack of fucks given about most health conditions by many of my colleagues. It is very disturbing.

OP you’re slagging off this teacher for not knowing enough about diabetes but yet you obviously don’t know a lot either.

The teacher was actually right and if she made your son feel uncomfortable by stating facts then perhaps you need to help him cope with his emotions better.

It is not hard to see how he felt upset if you are this quick to be offended.
I feel quite sorry for your son tbh.

Exactly how I took it too.

you don’t need to know the ins and outs to manage it daily

whilst I don’t disagree that an in-depth understanding of the condition is necessary for teaching staff, you do need to understand the ins and outs of type 1 to effectively support a child who is in crisis in a given moment. Otherwise, you’re just another one shouting ‘give yourself more insulin!’.

I haven’t read the full thread yet. But OP, is this a recent diagnosis? I can’t imagine the worry I’d feel if this was my daughter 🍷

Or OP could teach her kid how to deal calmly with snarky comments about his condition.