School journey night terrors

[FedupFederer]

DD8 has just returned from her first school journey, which lasted for 3 days overnight. They shared randomly assigned bunk rooms of 8, and she ended up in a room with a nice girl from the other class, A.

A had constant, shrieking night terrors through the three nights. Not a few screams, which are completely understandable for their first time away from home, but eyes open, shrieking, flailing at other children. DD ended up sharing a bed with a friend as she was scared, she hasn’t experienced anything like that before. After the second night, the kids made the teachers aware but no spare bunks were available. DD found the experience really distressing, and was shattered when she got home. As you can imagine, none of the 8 girls were rested and so fought quite a lot towards the end of the trip.

On their return, a few parents were chatting about the kids’ experiences and A’s parents blithely laughed and said ‘oh yes, she always gets terrifying night terrors away from home’.

im stunned. I don’t think A should have been left out, but I think it was incredibly rude to just send her along to disrupt 7 other children. AiBU or should A’s parents have been proactive? I don’t know enough about night terrors to suggest solutions, but perhaps if they had told the school, teachers could have spoken to the kids about night terrors beforehand or assigned A to a smaller group, maybe rotated her between rooms? Honestly, as an adult, if I knew I suffered from incredibly disruptive night terrors, I wouldn’t arrange to sleep in a dormitory out of politeness.

Absolutely not unreasonable to expect the parents to talk to the school before the trip about how to handle this.

How it was managed depends on loads of factors but there are certainly things that could be done to minimise the impact.

Agree the parents should have had the decency to pre-warn the school.

I don't think I'd have been able to stay silent after that comment.

That wasn’t fair on anyone including A, and her parents are ridiculously thoughtless.

They were so unconcerned as they said it, it genuinely made me doubt myself! I might mention to the class teacher before next years school journey (if A and my DD both plan to go)

Do you know that they didn't warn the school? We had been telling the school for months about DS's insomnia, mainly due to other issues in school which they also glossed over. They minimised it and the potential disruption. Still very keen for him to come but not to bring any aids such as audible on a phone which usually worked. Ds was still keen to go, we knew he could survive on very little sleep, instructed him not to keep classmates up but to go and find a teacher, as agreed with the school(he would get distressed due to insomnia) so waved him off happily.

Had a call on the penultimate evening asking us to collect him, he was apparently happy as Larry but he had been up until 3am every night chatting with the teachers and they were shattered. As it was just tidying up time the next morning and they were leaving at 10am we went to get him. I would tackle the school not the parents.

*penultimate day to pick up that evening.

The school couldn't share A's medical information without permission but they could have arranged for her to be in a separate room and probably should plan around that next year. All you can do though is bring up how distressed your child was both now and before the next trip and ask not to be in the same room on the next trip.

thank you for another perspectiv, and I appreciate the school can’t always understand the extent of the issue. It might be that the parents were being blasé out of embarrassment, and they had in fact spoken to the school. I’ve had limited interaction with them, they’re perfectly nice but they’re definitely all ‘main characters’, so it would be in keeping with their behaviours to focus on their own DD and not anyone else. Either way, I definitely won’t mention it to her parents - our kids aren’t friends so won’t have sleepovers etc outside of school journeys.

Definitely, I would absolutely not be expected to be told a child’s medical information (or any other private information, even just fears or struggles away from home). In honestly, the school are very well intentioned but overstretched, so it’s entirely possible that they were told and didn’t act, and I do agree that I should raise directly with the school next year if necessary.

My DD has some ADHD related sleeping issues for which she is medicated. We, obviously, discussed this with the staff before any residential trips at primary and they made adjustments including one time having to change her room.

Another child, with poorly controlled type 1 diabetes, attended the trips during the day but stayed in separate accommodation with her mum.

If the school had done nothing or our DD had disturbed other kids we'd have a) collected her if necessary and b) not sent her again!

You should approach this with the school from the pov of your own child - that she was upset, underslept etc. Not from the pov of how they didn't meet the other child's needs.