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 ?

The teacher is reasonable to tell your son to leave his bottle further away as he’s prone to fiddling with it. If he concentrates more then it’s a good thing.

If he only had a few sips at lunchtime then I’m guessing that he wasn’t very thirsty ? Is like more annoyed about the “unfairness” of it rather than the thirst angle ?

Her questioning him the day after you went in is very unprofessional and could be a form of bullying because it could make him less likely to tell you stuff in future which isn’t good.

Yes I used to volunteer to collect for our class. Tip one down the drain and pretend to be finishing it of as I headed back into the class. Mind you I still don't drink milk on its own years later

But the poster is saying they drank at set times, not all day long in lessons. Nothing to do with who provided it.

There is a massive difference between being told to put his bottle away and being denied a drink all day.
My class keep their bottles in a box. They can have drinks when we come in or out of the classroom or during movement breaks. As yet no one had died of thirst. I still get parents complaining that I have refused their child a drink all day.

My 9 year olds teacher makes them keep their pencil cases in their school bags. They only have a pencil, a rubber and a sharpener on their desks. This is due to constant opening and closing of the case, distracting other kids.
The same child had a teacher that didn’t want them having water bottles on their desks, big drinks at specific times and put the water away. Obviously if someone is thirsty you can have some.
Same as going to the bathroom, they all survived. My son was under the care of a urologist at the time and I mentioned it to the teacher, she let him go when he wanted as he wasn’t messing.
Your child will be fine.

Are you joking?! It was nearly 30 degrees today!

Yes, exactly, thank you. It's so nice when a response is read accurately, instead of the responder reading it as what they think it should be.

I'm sure that if my mother had been told that she had to provide a water bottle for use at school, she would have done so and she would have told me to jolly well make sure that I used it at the specified times and refilled it, if necessary.

She certainly wouldn't have said, 'Here, darling, glug on this all day long and then demand the loo constantly.'

I, too, have been that teacher who has had to deal with a barrage of, 'Please miss, can I refill my bottle?' and 'Please miss, can I go to the toilet?' (Maybe, if they had spent a little longer in class, they would know it's 'May I ...?') It's infuriating.

Didn't even come from the teacher, we had water fountains to use at breaks and jugs fofwater in the dinner hall. Nobody had drinks, be they from a fountain, beaker or bottle during class. We all lived and class didn't get disrupted. Nothing to do with martyrdom.

Are you sure?

Oh yuk yes ! And in the winter when it was cold outside at my school they used to put the crate on top of a warm boiler thing to warm it 🤢 I have always loved really cold milk!

Yes , I agree, other than the luke warm milk we had to drink at break the teacher didn’t hand out drinks to us !

Mmm, the milk in the summer was not so good but when it was ice-cold, it was fantastic!

My DC don’t take a water bottle to school at all. They have a juice box at lunch usually.

They have never asked to or been required to take a water bottle or have one on their desks.

I have kidney problems but the only allowances I ever needed at school 80’s & 90’s was being allowed to go to the toilet when needed, I drank plenty of fluids before/after school and at lunch & breaks - never during lessons!!!

That still doesn’t mean you have to intake water in a continuous all day stream. I don’t know where this idea that you have to be constantly taking little sips has come from, it’s not necessary and it seems to cause people so much anxiety. Drinking a decent amount in one go will happily carry you over till the next drink two or three hours later. (And I used to live somewhere where the temperature reached forty degrees).

He was being disruptive with his water bottle. Support the teacher and tell precious one not to be annoying to other students.

Agree . I guess it’s the bottled water manufacturers.

Make contact with the teacher first to get the two sides of the story.

You could get a drink from the tap in the classroom if you asked but the water was vile. It tasted and smelled like when you leave a glass of water sitting too long and was lukewarm. I think it was stored in a water tank.

by law he needs to be able to access water if he needs it. A couple of sips on a hot day which reached 32 degrees centigrade is not enough. I’d ask him not to fidget with his water and the teacher to ensure he has water access. Explain he had non today.

I babysat my DGC tonight - all 5 of them and the faff at bedtime of the waterbottle lugging and tiny sip faffing - also the sound of the plastic on the teeth of the two little ones drove me potty.
I took the bottles away and brought up a mug of water each and told them to have a proper drink and then go to sleep and then removed the mugs.
Bloody bottles were more of a distraction than anything discouraging actually quenching their thirst property before laying down thirst satiated and going to sleep!

Even ‘few sips’ irritates me lol
Have a bloody drink fgs - down a blinking cupful , wipe your mouth on back of sleeve and crack on for a few hours! Xx

Sorry but the teacher has 20+ other kids to educate and sounds like your DS is being disruptive. A couple of hours without water won't do him any harm and will maybe teach him there are consequences.

You are being melodramatic. Presumably he could have had another sip between the afternoon lessons if he was thirsty.

God people banging on about what they used to do forty years ago is boring. We've moved on.

6 years olds fidget, it's normal. He should have had more access to water during the day like every other child. It's not a reward for not fidgeting.

The end.