To congratulate teachers on their creative report writing.

[PaxAeterna]

Youngest report; X is a vivacious, fun-loving child. She likes to make her classmates laugh.

Middle: X has showed a willingness to be calm and do his work.

The eldest is actually an angel. So no need for creative report wording there. She’s pretty much proof that my parenting cannot be to blame for the other two!

Any gems from your reports?

They don't seem particularly creative 🤷🏻‍♀️
Would you say that they have described your dc accurately?

I always found this bizarre. When I was a teacher, if your DC was poorly behaved, that's what I wrote. I don't think any of my colleagues sugar-coated either - DH certainly doesn't sugarcoat his.

If your youngest is primary school age, I'd take that at face-value. I wouldn't read that as anything other than a confident, fun child with good social skills.

Your middle child honestly I would read as "shows a willingness to be calm and do his work [despite the other fuckers bouncing around like deranged imps]".

You can probably thank teachmate AI for that 😉

Really? I’ve never heard of a child getting negative language in their report. I thought it was a nice few positive words at the end of the year. With any real issues having been dealt with earlier on.

I was reading “willingness” as some future potential that my livewire might be calm at some point. He has ADHD and we have had many meetings with the school but the report put a very positive spin on everything.

If a child behaves poorly, they'd have that written in their report. Parents will almost certainly already know that's coming. You'd never be entirely negative but sometimes you would think "Emily has successfully identified where her desk is and has sat in it without much complaint at least once... for at least four seconds... I think..."

I'd imagine your children are simply better behaved than you think they are... and other parents aren't going to tell you if their child's report says something negative.

If you're having meetings with the school about ADHD then there's a difference. A well-intentioned child trying to manage a disruptive disability isn't the same as a child with ADHD who uses that to behave poorly. The school would have meetings either way (because they can't have a whole class disrupted) but only one is your child being a problem.

When I first started teaching you told the truth. X finds concentrating hard and constantly has to be reminded to complete a task.
Now you wrap it up in so many layers every parent thinks they've bred a genius.

@ConfusedSloth absolutely and he is very well intentioned in fairness. They aren’t awful by any means. I obviously think my kids are lovely. But I had a little chuckle at the positive spin on things. My little never shuts up and the middle does genuinely show a willingness to be calm but never reaches an actual state of calm.

I am under no such illusions. Reading through the lines…

Anyway was really meant to be quite lighthearted.

Secondary school reports are a bit more practical I think, terms like not meeting full potential and improving focus - aka your child doesnt bloody pay attention on class
No need to be harsh in primary school.

Probably mostly written by chatgpt these days. Same as the kids homework

"Keen sense of justice" was my favourite phrase.
There's been no actual definite negative statement allowed in any report since I first hand wrote my first ones in the 1990's.
Primary. Wish I had AI.
There were tons of report writing tools over time but I never had enough money to pay.
14 different sections all requiring a short paragraph for each of 30 children.

And then the killer personal bit.

You've nearly died of exhaustion writing all the other bits to please SLT and government stuff..
That last bit, where it's actually about the actual child. It's the only bit that really matters!

I actually loved writing that bit.

Back when we wrote reports, I was always clear about what the child's issue was. I never made any attempt to sugar coat anything, what would be the point in that?

That said, I basically had three templates: one for not good, one for meeting expectations and one for amazing, and just copied and pasted.