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!

Hmm me too.

I'm a doctor - got a white coat and stethoscope and everything- and I'd have said the same thing as the teacher.

You can't catch it.
It may look like people randomly become T1DM but that's because we don't understand everything about it.
We do know it's an autoimmune disease, but there probably js a degree of genetic susceptibility.
It is true that there was an increase in diabetes diagnoses following a DKA event during the pandemic. But that could be due to un diagnosed diabetes that escalated.
There's a lot we don't know.
But what we do know is that diabetes - all types and there are more than the OP realises - is not an infection and therefore cannot be caught. I'd have thought, in this post pandemic world, that the OP would be pleased that a teacher cut short a conversation that could have led to her son being ostracised and bullied for the misconception that he has an infectious disease.

But it would appear not.
A case of can't argue with stupid I guess.

Exactly. We also have a flow chart for one of the conditions explaining to hospital staff what to do if we present in an emergency as it’s a condition even a lot of a and e staff don’t understand.

the reality is there are lots of medical conditions that can be life threatening, that same condition can present differently in different people. Nobody can be an expert in all of those conditions or individual presentations.

i think often people expect way too much from people in terms of understanding.

My son was diagnosed in summer, in a warm climate, no recent illness, was breastfed for over a year, and ate solid food earlier not later. No one on my side of the family or on my husband’s side of the family had T1, going back as far as possible. Not one person. So I doubt it is inherited. Usually when something runs in the family there will be more than one instance of it. More likely a bunch of instances.

Of course, when T1 ‘develops’ is earlier than when diagnosed, and viruses may indeed ‘trigger’ the underlying potential for it that was latent up to that point. The onset of puberty can play a significant part. My son’s drs said basically no one knows exactly what causes a child to have the potential for getting T1 but it could be that a virus may trigger it (he did have a bad cold a few months before and was at the age of onset of puberty so I consider those two things possible triggers in my son’s case) but the drs said scientists simply don’t know, just theories or ideas, and it is absolutely nothing to do with what the child eats, it’s not ‘eating too much sugar’. My son didn’t even eat sugar. He has never had a sweet tooth, always slim, he doesn’t even care for ice cream. So to have people tell me that my son caused this by what he ate or that they were afraid their own children might ‘catch’ it from him—yes both scenarios happened several times, the ignorance is breathtaking and infuriating.

So I empathize with the op very much. Op, do t pay any attention to any of the posters who have never been through what you and your son have been through. They don’t know anything about it, and they don’t know how you feel. They automatically lecture you. They have no ability to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. And I can tell they know nothing about it yet act like experts. People like the Op and I and our children are intimately acquainted with the subject 24/7 for years and years and have researched everything about it and also keep up with possible cures and new treatments. So, if you don’t have it, or someone in your immediate household doesn’t have it, and you aren’t supportive of the op, kindly shut up.

Absolutely this, well put. Earlier in thread nightmare example of a poster explaining that a teacher tried to make an unwell child having a hypoglycemic attack self-administer insulin...

Not always?
DH is type 1, developed it in his 20s, presumably following a virus.

He's had a test looking at genetic markers and was told that DD is no more at risk of developing it than the general population.

Very informative, thanks for sharing

Yeah YABU op. I’m not as educated as a teacher but I am smart enough to know

A - type 1 diabetes is generally not the type you have just because you’re fat and unhealthy

B - What ever the reason why, it’s probably just shit luck or in your genetics.

I’m sure the teacher is smart enough to know this too, & was simply saying you can’t catch diabetes (as in it’s not contagious) which it isn’t. I do understand being protective of your child and a condition they have but please don’t make nothing, something.

My son was able to help an older fellow who had come into his workplace and acted strangely then collapsed. Because my son has T1, he recognized the behavior, was able to make sure when the guy regained consciousness briefly to say, do you have diabetes and got him to tell him he hadn’t eaten all day, so my son held him and helped him drink something w fast carbs and of course fed him and had someone call an ambulance. Very proud of him. Also, he came home and said, mom, I realized that could happen to me. So he showed some of his coworkers how to administer his glucagon pen in case he went unconscious from extremely low blood sugar. While at school, he had nurses and teachers and school receptionist who I informed of what to do, gave them instructions, everything they needed, so he hadn’t had to think of telling other people (besides his friends).

I think, OP, that you ought to seek some help to come to terms with your son's diagnosis. You're not handling it well, and you're not in the right frame of mind to be educating people for good reasons- you just seem angry.

You need to process the diagnosis and how you're coping with it better, so when people make mistakes or misunderstand you can effectively educate them.

You CANNOT 'catch' disbetes. You can 'get' it, but to say you can catch it is wildly misleading. Please don't try educating the teacher, if you're going to use incorrect terms like this you'll just make a massive tit of yourself.

I'm a science teacher with a T1D daughter. I don't teach about diabetes in the context of inheritance, and it is certainly not on any spec I have taught. I'm surprised that a PP does, as GCSE deals with much simpler examples. I do teach about it in the context of homeotasis.

IME (and that of my daughter), many teachers, particularly in secondary, are not very familiar with the condition and its impact on their students. There are misconceptions around diet and hypos/high BG levels.

I think the issue here is that there was a partial explanation, and that's where misconceptions start. "Can anybody get it" is not a simple question, as has been made clear on this thread. It's assumed that the child was asking if it was contagious, but we don't know that. They might have meant "would you know if you are going to get it?" In fact that seems quite likely to me. A better answer would have been "its not contagious" rather than just no.

My daughter would have done the explanation herself, mind you. Teacher would not have got a word in.

Ok listen. I don’t think the op meant someone could catch it like a thimg something contagious. What she clearly meant was that someone could ‘get’ it (‘catch’ it), not by eating too much sugar but oftentimes randomly through different causes like viruses triggering a latent potentiality.

The op is upset and may not have phrased everything perfectly. How obtuse so many are.

Just because no one in your family suffers from it doesn't mean it's not genetically inherited.

Type 1 diabetes (T1D),2 a multifactorial disease with a strong genetic component.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4874193/

• There’s no single gene that, if inherited from your parents, means you’re going to develop Type 1 diabetes. In fact, there are a number of genes involved in Type 1 diabetes. These genes don’t ‘give’ you Type 1 diabetes, but increase the chances of you developing it.*

www.diabetes.org.uk/research/research-round-up/research-spotlight/research-spotlight-what-causes-type-1-diabetes

The genes are inherited from parents. You may have an entire generation or two without diabetes but you have the genes which have been passed on, so there is indeed a strong genetic factor at play.

Now it doesn't mean you will develop diabetes, but are are predisposed to developing it if 'environment' is right- by environment I mean all other factors (which isn't quite understood).

You are being overly sensitive and are refusing to see how most people perceived the questions about catching it.

And your own wording can easily be misunderstood by you saying you 'can catch it'. Catching something as others have stayed means something is contagious. So give the teacher the benefit of doubt that he understood what the child meant.

Finally an informed post. Thank you. My son also has T1.

YABU.

The boy asked if anyone could 'get' it as was clearly referring to whether it was contagious and the teacher corrected him and said no as diabetes is not contagious.

You should correct your son as he has clearly misunderstood the context here.

I am sorry that you son is unwell and hope that you are able to manage his condition moving forwards.

It is hard to know from the OP whether the teacher concerned was a science teacher or another subject specialist and this just happened in their lesson.

As a science teacher, I would refer to diabetes as a non-communicable disease. Type 2 diabetes is mentioned as an example of a non-communicable disease where lifestyle is a risk factor. Covid-19, flu and chicken pox as communicable diseases which are caused by pathogens. It helps to give concrete examples to cement these definitions.

In my experience, students are often very inquisitive in biology and often ask questions based on personal experience. This can be because they are naturally curious but in other instances because students are deliberately trying to delay the lesson or upset students.

We also have to be very mindful that this can be very sensitive for some students particularly as cancer is another example of a non-communicable disease we have to teach and one linked to lifestyle factors. It is a very difficult balance and personally, I would have deflected with it is non-communicable disease and suggested we could perhaps discuss it at the end of the lesson with that student individually.

Thankfully, we no longer use Huntingdon’s disease as an example of an disease caused by a dominant gene instead using polydactyly and I don’t think we teach how haemophilia is inherited any more. We do our best to highlight positives with cancer for example the impact of the HPV vaccine on rates of cervical cancer.

We all want to make the very best start with our classes and students but please bear in mind the number of new students we teach. Often around 200-300 at secondary and there is a lot of information to retain about their individual needs. We all need time to get to know everyone at the start of the year.

I am sorry your son has Type 1 diabetes. However, I do think you are being very unreasonable. The teacher was clearly explaining that it wasn't contagious and you are just refusing to accept that obvious fact. Your 'educating' sounds very like bullying to me.

A lot of obtuse bullies on this thread.

Why not Huntington's??

I've just been looking at BBC Bitesize and the 9 revision slides about Genetic Inheritance, happy to recommend it for anyone interested in a refresher of how genetic probability actually works. Some PPs might find it enlightening.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zg8f4qt/revision/1

I'm a parent of a T1 daughter and a teacher.
We have had health care professionals say the actual stupid things about T1D - 'Did you eat too many sweets?'
My daughter just rolls her eyes and explains that there are many causes of T1D, (never eating sugar) and that hers was due to an autoimmune reaction that has attacked her healthy pancreas and so it no longer works. Simple and stating the facts.
I wouldn't be angry or upset at the teacher.
The reason my daughter's autoimmune system chose to attack her pancreas may have been triggered as a result of a virus., that she 'caught'. Ultimately, her T1D was caused by both her autoimmune system malfunctioning (genetic) AND the virus (caught) that triggered it.
Other people in our family caught the same virus but it didn't trigger T1D as their genetic codes are different or they just happened not to be triggered on that occasion.
We do have a distant great, great uncle who had T1D so in our case we do seem to have the inherited gene.
Why get angry? Your child will encounter so much misinformation, ignorance and prejudice about T1D as they get older - show them how to deal with it calmly and without getting wound up, as this will help your child the most in the long run. You don't want your child to become an adult who spends their life angrily correcting people - your child is way more than just their condition and will be happier living with it if they can brush off questions quickly rather than reacting emotionally.
Perhaps 'help' your teacher by giving them a simple answer 'statement' that they can say - one that you are happy with and that your child can learn to use too in the future to deflect a question or 'wrong' supposition.

It's not clear at all, from those words, that that was what was meant. Clarity in questioning and answering questions is so important in teaching. I don't expect teachers to be experts. I expected them to treat my daughter as the expert in fact. If they are going to engage on the subject, I would expect them to be very clear and clarify the question they were answering as in a PP's answer re non communicable diseases. I also expected them to be aware of the impact of fluctuating blood glucose on her mood and engagement, as well as the emergency action for a hypo. There is a lot of focus, of course, on the emergency aspect, but for my daughter the day to day management, especially in the early days, was extremely tough. Her response was to become a fierce advocate for herself, but other children respond differently.

How has anyone bullied the OP?

They have explained how they believed the questions from the student was asked. Even OP cannot say as she heard it from her child.

So it is all about perception/ inference of the question.

They have also corrected or pointed out that the OPs wording itself was incorrect which means she is just as guilty of giving out misinformation.

I don’t think you can tell someone kindly to shut up. Another post claims bullying but you are just as bad. The OP didn’t ask for advice on diabetes but on whether she should confront the teacher and people have given their verdicts on that. There is some poor understanding of diabetes on this thread but your understanding isn’t fully informed either.

“You can’t catch it from sitting next to someone who has it, but anyone could develop it at any point in life, through nobody’s fault, now please get on with your work”

is how you deal with that question without othering the child with T1.