To create a fuss about my son not having access to water today in school

[Icantfeelmyface]

Hello .
My 8 year old son is a bit of a fidgeter, and has difficulty with keeping still . He has a replacement teacher for the past 6 weeks and he has struggled with various issues relating to her " shouting at him all the time " and him feeling picked on everyday no matter what he does .. won't get into the detail but meeting was held and she reassured me that this wasn't the case and she works on praise as well .. .. he told me after the meeting the teacher said in front of the class " why you telling your mum that I'm picking on you "?... Decided to leave things and move on... However today he comes home from school and tells me he had no water the whole day as the teacher said he was fidgeting too much with his bottle and told him to put it away from the table . All the other kids had their bottles on their table . He has said he had a few sips at lunch time and then nothing until after school club at 4 pm 😳
Am I being unreasonable to email the head teacher ?

Op, has his behaviour been highlighted as a concern previously, by other teachers? Or is he generally good, but a bit fidgety? How do you deal with him fidgeting at home?

I can see how a child fidgeting with a water bottle would be distracting. But I'm also of the view that some teachers' behaviour management strategies are ineffective and needlessly punitive for low level things like this. As someone else has said, how about putting the water bottle under his desk instead? If fidgeting is a more persistent problem, then op and the teacher need to speak about how they manage it longer term. Some kids are higher energy, so getting them to help hand equipment out gives them a movement break and reduces disruption.

I also think that although the vast majority of teachers are doing a great job in difficult circumstances, and that yes, children can be a bit liberal with the truth, bad teachers do exist. I had one at secondary. He was a total bully, all the children knew he picked on the weaker ones and he had multiple complaints against him which eventually saw him fired. Another one was an alcoholic who likewise definitely picked on kids (I wasn't one of them, but I witnessed it on many occasions). My dd had one in Y1 - again, not just my perception, many others felt the same.

We don't know what the situation is here. But I don't think we should be so quick to assume the teacher is always right and the child is always a lying pain in the arse.

This is an 8 year olds version of events, you don’t think it may have been exaggerated or embellished in some way?
op said the water bottle was not allowed on his table as he constantly fiddled with it, why should the kids that act sensibly lose access to their water bottles cos of one child.
i highly doubt the teacher is shouting him all the time, more likely he is talking or distracting the class and has to be constantly reminded-this version wouldn’t get him the sympathetic response from his mum.
Child by his own admission only had a few sips at lunchtime, does that sound like a child gasping for a drink

@SendBooksAndTea where

I’m sorry OP but I would not have left it if the teacher call him out in class for speaking with his mum about an issue he had, I would be straight back in there. They are undermining him and his safety arrangements to talk to mum if he is worried about anything, that’s disgusting. And the water thing, I would have caused a fuss about. That’s ridiculous. Get in there and stick up for your child for god’s sake.

Did you not have water fountains in the playground? Schools usually did

Exactly this ^^ It sounds like this child is aggrieved at the teacher telling him off, so he’s telling his own story in an effort to get his mum to tell the teacher off. It’s a pretty common reaction to being told off at this age.

However today he comes home from school and tells me he had no water the whole day as the teacher said he was fidgeting too much with his bottle and told him to put it away from the table . All the other kids had their bottles on their table . He has said he had a few sips at lunch time and then nothing until after school club at 4 pm 😳

And this is a major part of the story reframing (above). The child chose to not have water at break and to only have a few sips at lunch and is now trying to blame the teacher for this. Ridiculous! I’d also add that it’s quite possible this ‘few sips’ isn’t actually true. Our students are allowed to refill their water bottles during the day so it’s more than possible that this boy drank lots of water then refilled it and only had a few sips from the refilled bottle, having already had a whole bottle. Any questions about this would allow him an opportunity to blame the teacher for not letting him keep his bottle on the table, with the convenient ‘evidence’ of an almost full bottle.

Even if children don’t have their water bottle on their desk, they’re allowed to ask to get a drink. I’d love to hear the teacher’s side of this!

Maybe, don’t remember any so perhaps I just didn’t use them.

YABU. This sounds like Little Prince Syndrome.

Me neither and I'm in my 50s

Eh? I work outside - I walk about 5/6 miles through wheat field a day at the moment. I don’t carry water, I have it at break and lunch! I’m fairly sure he’ll be fine in a classroom without constant access to water and maybe he’ll learn not to muck about with his water bottle in class!

I’m afraid, OP, that you are in danger of becoming ‘that’ parent. Any teacher will recognise children like your son, continually indulging in low level disruption. Even the alleged comment by the teacher is open to interpretation depending on the way it was said.Try supporting the school.

I only remember having the water fountain at primary school (80s), kind of think there must have been a cup of water or squash at lunch though too. But we're always wondering why our kids have to take water with them, lunch would be enough for me. There seems to be a big preoccupation with water on you at all times.

You are being very unreasonable. Your son sounds like a PITA.

@Willyoujust are you the teacher?

Because no school aged child has ever died of thirst during a class.

Adults do more physical jobs without a sippy bottle within reach at all time.

Wait, you haven't been told you're unreasonable yet!

I honestly wonder about the delicate flowers some Mums are raising.

@naffusername I'd like to think we could set the bar for treatment of school children a little higher than 'as long as they don't die'.

I think it was probably when adults started drinking from water bottles.

As a kid we would go to France on holiday and I loved being able to order water instead of coke in a bar / café. It just wasn't on sale in the UK, or at least where I lived.

We used to buy plastic cartons of squash after school.

I remember water fountains being well used in hot weather at primary school.

Why are people proud of not drinking much water. It's not really an achievement is it?

They’re not. It’s an indisputable fact that the human race survived for millennia without constant access to water. Including everyone who went to school up to about 2010.

If he was actually thirsty, a) he could easily have asked to get up and go and have a drink from his water bottle and b) he would have had more than 'a few sips' at lunch time. It sounds like the teacher was completely reasonable to remove his bottle from his table. I seriously doubt she'd have refused him the right to actually go and drink from it if he'd asked.

I was at school in the 70s and 80s. If someone had been thirsty or needed the loo in lesson time they'd have been allowed out to get a drink from a water fountain or go to the loo. There were also water fountains for use at break times and jugs of water on the table at lunchtime. I even once remember us being all given a drink in lesson time during a 70s heatwave at about age 6.
Some people are naturally thirstier than others and we weren't banned from water for hours in the past.

Not having water bottles on tables at all times is not the same as 'not having access to drinking water'. Having a bottle at break and lunch, and being able to ask to get a drink if you need to during lessons is having access to drinking water. I'm not anti bottles in the classroom, but I also don't think it's really a problem not to have them on tables.