Mother's Day - should school do more?

[inquisitiveinga]

Disclaimer: I am absolutely not going to complain regarding this matter, I understand that teachers may have completely valid reasons for the below. My child's teacher is also FANTASTIC, she doesn't have children, and I can't help but think that due to this she perhaps doesn't understand the value of a handmade card?

My child has come home from school today and it's very clear that nothing has been prepared for Mother's Day, at least where their class is concerned. Usually a "beautiful" card comes home and it really makes my day.

Personally, I'm not bothered. I'm fortunate enough to have a husband who will not doubt ensure I have something from my 7 year old, and 1 year old (although I'm not really sure anything from her is warranted!). However, I can't help but think about single mothers in the class who may not receive anything (and who absolutely should).

AIBU to even be having this thought process?

I can’t really imagine a situation where making Mother’s Day cards at school leads to a child crying wondering where their mother is to be honest. If this happens then there’s a serious lack of care and communication happening from other adults in the child’s life.

but my comment wasn’t aimed at teachers necessarily no, just the general theme of the thread being that we should ignore the elephants in the room (whatever they may be)

Why are you placing a higher burden on the school to care for the happiness of your family than you do on your own husband who’s primarily responsibility it is to actually care about the happiness of your family?! If your husband knows a Mother’s Day card is particularly important to you, why hasn’t he taken it upon himself to have a 5 second conversation with your child and ask her to make you a card?

The irony being, single mothers may not have a present father who is capable of directing/reminding their child to do this but you do actually have a present father and husband and he still can’t manage to ask/direct his child to do it. You’re expecting the school to care about a particular whim of yours when your own husband doesn’t seem to care about it.

A teacher will have a lot more information than you at hand about whether it’s in good judgement to do Mothers Day cards that year. They may have a disproportionate number of children in that class who have lost mothers, they may have a child who has lost a mother very recently, they may have been asked by other parents or guardians to refrain from doing cards this year, they may have been directed not to by their superiors, they may have run out of time in the day, they may have forgot, they may have had to use the time to catch up or consolidate some curriculum work the class was behind on, they may have not fancied spending Friday afternoon having the headache of kids running about noisily with glue and glitter and scissors making cards. Literally anything.

@Waitingforthecold

The theme of the thread is about making cards in school. Your comments show a lack of empathy and I'm out.

Seriously? I think that’s unfair. My whole point has been about the opportunity to teach empathy. Actually having conversations with our children that in-still thoughtfulness and compassion. If they are never presented with opportunities to be those things, they won’t be those things as adults. That’s my point here.

we can disagree without you suggesting that I’m an awful person.

I have enough faith in teachers that something like this would be sensitively handled, and I think it’s a activity that has the added benefit of been a good opportunity to teach and practice social and emotional skills!

i don’t have an opinion on whether or not teachers time should be taken up with activities like this, I don’t know - I’m not a teacher. But I do know my 4 year old comes home with a book bag stuffed full with colouring and cutting and sticking so I’m sure it wouldn’t be a hardship!

It's really lovely to receive a homemade card, but it isn't something I'd be bothered about if one hasn't been made in school. Some children will make them at home, others will be taken to buy them and others won't at all. For me, simply being with my children (ideally) on mother's day is enough. I think schools are just very mindful of a) squeezing everything in the curriculum in, b) having sufficient resources and c)(most importantly in my view) being sensitive to the varying home environments in which their children come from. In my youngest's class one has lost their mother, another has an absentee mother and another has two dads. Life isn't entirely straightforward.

Agreed. Schools should ignore Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day.

Imagine there was an international son/daughter day and on Friday afternoon your workplace told everyone that they would be spending the last hour of the day making a card for their son or daughter. What if you had had to bury your child? What if you had had to bury your child recently? What if you were no-contact with your child not by choice? Can you not see how that would be incredibly painful for some parents in that office and insensitive for a workplace not to consider that? We are not talking about the casual mentioning of an event but the actually immersion in an activity requiring you to think about what you have lost. These are small children.

Even all us adults get sent emails by companies now asking us if we’d like to opt out of receiving Mother’s Day emails as they recognise it might be tough for some people. Some people will be fine with it, some won’t regardless if they have mothers in their life or not. The difference is, the teachers priority is the collective wellbeing and safeguarding of the children in her class, not the preference of a parent with regards to a non-curriculum, unnecessary activity.

Can you really not understand that some children might find it difficult or be sensitive about making these cards? It’s nothing to do with pandering or accepting people have different situations. These are small children who haven’t had a long lifespan yet so any loss they have had relating to a mother would most likely either be recent or have taken up a significant portion of their life.

It’s understandable that you would like a lovely card but this could EASILY be made at home by your child in 90 seconds and the bigger issue is this slippery slope of parents chastising schools for not doing things that really don’t have to be in under the remit of schools in the first place. Schools have done things like this as a gesture of goodwill, not because they should be the ones primarily responsible for it.

Your child is young, don’t worry about the card. It doesn’t mean anything essentially. Hug her, enjoy the day with her. One day she will be old enough to remember and independently do stuff for you for Mothers day if she wants.

I am a primary school teacher and usually we do Mothers' Day cards - in fact I reminded children to take them home today.
There have been occasions when I haven't done it because of children's circumstances (e.g. the year 2 class where there were 2 children whose mothers had died.)
I never tend to do anything for Fathers' Day - far too many children who have absent fathers. I was a child with an absent father myself so that probably influences me to ignore Fathers' Day too.

What is it with these threads today. No one is being angry, they're just pointing out YABU which is the question you asked.

You can't imagine a scenario where a young child might be upset if the class is making a Mother's Day card if their own mother has died for example? And that would be the fault of other people in that child's life that the child was upset? Wow. You must know some very resilient 6 year olds. I'm not even sure how an adult would fare in that situation 😕

I get your perspective OP. I’m a single Mum (of a 3 year old who is starting pre school soon) and am quite looking forward to my first Mother’s Day card from him. So I’m hoping the school might still encourage them to do this. As he doesn’t have a Dad (he is donor conceived) he’ll have to do one for his Grandad or Uncle or Cousin instead for Father’s Day, it’s no big deal imo. So many kids have different types of families these days, I don’t think it’s insensitive to mention Mothers/Fathers Day anymore than it is to do Christmas/Easter activities in school when many kids aren’t Christian 🤷‍♀️

But maybe by 7 years old they assume the kids will draw one at home on their own initiative? My DC currently hates drawing 🤣 so I doubt that would happen for me but I’m still hoping to get a few years of hand drawn cards/ “art” while he’s at school and will maybe be inspired in that regard by what the other kids are doing.

ETA: I assume if a parent has died then the teacher would be aware of that and be sensitive to it. But that’s a very specific situation.

I can’t really imagine a situation where making Mother’s Day cards at school leads to a child crying wondering where their mother is to be honest

You must be seriously lacking in imagination then.

My adopted daughter's birth mother died this week - it's extremely hard to navigate this anyway, and would have been extraordinarily challenging for us, had school highlighted Mother's Day and spent curriculum time making something

So many pupils at my school have complicated family relationships that I just don't go there these days. It feels coercive when I know that many of the children in my class simply don't have the experience of loving, kind and caring mothers but rather of absent, dysregulated and ill-equipped mums.

It's not schools' job to do this kind of thing. Make a card together with your own child, or get their father to make some effort.

In fairness there is a lot of emotional distance to travel between being 7 and being an adult.

Moreover, plenty of businesses send “opt out” emails ahead of Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day advertising, and these are aimed at adult customers, so I’m not sure that kind of sensitivity is totally “ wild.”

It’s less refusing to acknowledge the existence of mums and more just trying not to rub things in someone’s face. Sensitivity to other people’s circumstances isn’t a wholly redundant sentiment.

I can’t really even fathom what is so touching about getting a card they have only made because they had to do it in class. It’s not really any different from if they presented you with their maths worksheet.

What is this thread?? I'm expected to care about a grown woman not getting a card but not children coming from tragic or a complicated home life? Would someone please think of the children make it make sense.

Yup

It seems to me that on MN Mother’s Day is the new Bridezilla event.

It’s actually a tacky way of approaching it.

@inquisitiveinga you are absolutely ridiculous

Exactly. You don’t need this whole palava. When children are that small and that young, they can’t independently remember or need to necessarily do anything off their own backs for Mothers Day. Most mums just want a hug and to spend a bit of time with their kids.

Just give her £5. Walk to the shops and she can pick out a small bunch of daffodils and a bar of chocolate for you. Have some cake and hot chocolate in a cafe and then when you get home, get her to draw you a pretty picture of a ladybug or something for you that you can stick on your fridge. That’s all there is to it.

Dear lord why on earth is this the responsibility of the school? Don’t they have enough going on! How utterly silly.

YABU

… and then you can put it all over your SM.

Actually, come to think if it, mums could make it themselves so it says exactly what they’d like it to say … which is probably even better than the teacher telling them to make it and what to put.

I've read the entire thread with growing anger and disbelief. OP, YABVU - you original post was bad and your subsequent ones much worse.

My father died when I was 8. It was rough. I have in my head a long series of memories of times I was very upset by circumstances and people in ways that were really entirely unnecessary had people give things a bit more thought. But time passed and I used to think I was 'OK now' in my early adulthood; much later I have recognised I am not OK, and never was (though luckily for me, the ways in which it has affected me haven't really held me back much). I had a couple of years of wishing away Father's Day and being very upset by it, and then when my mum got together with somebody else who ultimately was the most fantastic stepfather, I agonised each year over finding a card for him that said 'Happy Father's Day' without mentioning 'Dad' or 'Daddy' (the 80s were not a great time for inclusivity, things are different today).

I would've found it awful to be forced to make cards in school at either of those times. It's great that you feel you wouldn't have had a problem with it, OP - I respectfully submit you're probably looking back with rose tinted spectacles but even if I accept your words on face value, let me tell you that if this is the case you would've been in a tiny minority of bereaved children.

And I also have a different perspective. As an adoptive parent, I can now say to you that despite my own early life experience - actually, there are ('even') worse things to experience as a child than having lost a parent through death by natural causes as I did. My child has experienced much, much worse and is still living that trauma daily. This will be my first mother's day as a mum and all I wish is that it didn't exist at all, let alone being featured heavily in school. I have always loved celebrating my own mum but now I just wish my child didn't have go through the complexity of emotions it evokes in her.

And to the well meaning but frankly (and ironically) entirely unempathetic other poster who writes of using this as a learning opportunity to develop empathy - there is absolutely no comparison between this and discussions about different religions and there are many, many opportunities within the school curriculum already to learn about different types of families without anywhere near the level of unhelpful emotional charge generated by something like this, and also to speak sensitively and in appropriate forum about the nature of difficult life events. The PHSRE curriculum covers it fully and in an age-appropriate way for each year, but of course these subjects can also come up through literature, history and many other areas in the curriculum. ALL of these are much less painful, and much more easy to handle for those children directly affected, than forcing them through an activity seemingly solely designed to let them marinate in their painful feelings at an age and stage, and in a setting (in 'public' in front of their peers) where they are entirely ill-equipped to cope with it. And the reason I know about all these curriculum opportunities is because they are an active part of the ongoing dialogue I have with school about my child's needs and how they best support my child through getting an education with as little inadvertent harm being done to them as possible.

Only recently, we agreed it was better for me to take my child out of school for the day rather than they attended on the day when 1/3rd of the day would be spent learning about neglect and abuse via the NSPCC visiting (curriculum content I applaud for the other children but which would be actively harmful for my child at this stage in their life). So that was how we handled one circumstance and there are a variety of approaches schools can take to managing the needs of 'the minority' as you so charmingly put it. If they've made the judgement that on this occasion, not making cards during school time is the right answer, maybe you might like to try trusting their professional judgement and accepting you don't know everything and you certainly have a failure in imagination, basic empathy or both.