To think the school were neglectful?

[frogshead]

Dd (8) went on a school trip yesterday in a heat wave, 40 minutes each way walking to and from a museum.

I sent dd with 2 bottles of water and she didn’t drink either of them and a hat which she didn’t wear.
She arrived home with a headache and has had diarrhoea since.

I know this was partly down to her but she is juts a child and nobody encouraged her to wear her hat or drink anything all day.
I applied sun cream before she went so at least she had that.

Of she had come back sunburnt I would have said the school have been neglectful as even age 8 they have a duty to repeatedly prompt and remind of application... they should also prompt or have stops to have water as children will forget with excitement. I do think that schools need to be more mindful of school trips in heatwaves and ensure there is plenty of cover.

What a ridiculous load of responses.

Of course they should have cancelled the trip. Of course some 8 year olds cannot be trusted to stay safe while walking for the best part of 2 hours in hot sun. If the teachers do not have the capacity to police the children's behaviour during a heatwave, they cannot keep them safe. So they keep them out of the sun.

It is not comparable to children living in hot countries who are used to / better adjusted to the heat and have grown up taking precautions.

I wouldn't have gone out for a 2 hour walk in the sun yesterday, so I find it baffling that the school did it. It's no wonder melanoma continues to sharply increase in the UK given the replies on threads like this.

She must have felt thirsty. Have you asked her why she didn’t drink anything. Makes no sense!

You seem incapable of differentiating between unforeseeable events and the duty of care to make sure all children are kept safe in a known heatwave. Not just assume: make sure.

If the teachers knew she deliberately wasn't drinking and didn't mention it, that's a problem.
If they just weren't aware, then that's also a problem and yeah, policy should be changed - clearly general reminders / assuming 8-year-olds will drink didn't work this time. And the adults on the trip were seemingly oblivious to it. That needs rectifying.

Of course they weren't. You need to talk to your daughter not the school. You should have made sure she knew the importance of staying hydrated in this heat and remind her that this is what happens when you don't drink water.

"nobody encouraged her to wear her hat or drink anything all day".

How do you know this?

Could she be restricting her water intake to avoid needing a pee?

A friend's child did this, they
had an utter horror of using toilets other than at home.

clearly general reminders / assuming 8-year-olds will drink didn't work this time. And the adults on the trip were seemingly oblivious to it. That needs rectifying

Out of curiosity how would you rectify this? If you remind children often, give specific children individual reminders and yet they still don't drink what's the alternative it's not really a situation you can rectify.

The school are in no way neglectful. She's plenty old enough to drink when she needs to, and it's vanishingly unlikely the whole group weren't reminded to regularly.

Absolute ridiculous attitude to risk on a walk on a hot day.

The child was safe. She got a headache and diarrhea.

Lesson learned.

I explain to my 9 year old every day that she needs to put suncream on at lunch and drink more water. She does neither. I'm not sure what else I can do, kids just don't listen. I'm going to show her horrific sunburn pictures later in the hope of scaring her.

Maybe go on a little trip and check she can manage bag, lunch box and bottle etc. I’m surprised how many parents send kids with things they can’t easily access or open.
In school hols get her to make packed lunch with you, put lunch and water in your own bags. Go to park. Is she drinking without prompting? Say let’s have lunch, get yours out. Does she get hers out or need telling.
On a brownie pack holiday lots had never poured own orange juice, poured cereal in bowl or own milk on cereal, buttered a pre cut roll and put a filling on, set table, washed and dried up. All things they loved doing.

Yes. Because schools should not do things that make children ill if they can help it. By the way I was a teacher for many years, of 8 year olds. We also tell kids not to wonder off, cross the roads without looking etc but still have plans in place that recognise that they might.
It's not a biggie, no one needs to told off, but yeah they should have cancelled it and next time hopefully they'll know that.

Do you ever take your child on holiday to a hot place and let her play on the beach for 40 minutes?

@frogshead

You seem more angry about the fact that they went in the 1st place & have side-stepped the point that your daughter had both plentiful water & a hat with her but chose not to use either - that's on her! They would have sat & eaten lunch at some point - why didn't she have a drink then??

If she has a headache and diarrhoea, maybe she was already getting a bug and so didn’t feel like drinking? This makes most sense to me, children don’t always feel like eating or drinking when they feel unwell. I doubt being out in the hot weather helped if she was already feeling unwell.

I don’t think the school were being neglectful. Perhaps they should have postponed the trip until cooler weather, but I’m sure like other PPs mention teachers will have repeatedly reminded the kids to wear hats and drink water. It’s probably tricky to effectively police that many children constantly though.

Having said that - as mums we all know it’s rotten seeing your DC suffering. OP posted after seeing her little girl come home feeling poorly, so no wonder she’s upset. It’s okay to have a bit of a vent in private, it’s not like she’s gone into the school shouting. How is DD now, OP?

Your daughter didn't drink any water at all over the entire school day? And a day where's there's a heatwave and 2 40 minute walks, that's very strange OP. Are you certain the bottles weren't refilled at some point? Or did she leave her hat and bottles behind her or something
Tbh if you as her parent haven't managed to instill in her the importance of drinking and the simple think of putting her hat on her head in this weather I'm not sure what you expect the teaching staff with an entire class of kids to get to and from the trip safely to do.

Your last paragraph is the crux of the problem.

Parents are sending their children out into the world without the most basic skills.

Absolutely you can't force water down a child's throat. But that's not what's happened here - if it were the case that OP's daughter had deliberately refused to drink despite specific requests from an adult then that would have been mentioned as an incident. As it was, it seems the adults were just not aware of the situation.

That's the problem.

If we are to believe that 1 teacher had full responsibility for 30 children, as has been offered as the reason it went unnoticed, then that's a problem.

If they were just too busy to be able to make sure everyone had a hat on or was drinking when directed then that's needs review.

Absolutely this!
I don’t think that people who don’t work in a school, have any idea how bloody stressful all the planning/risk assessments/medication/ etc etc etc, goes into a school trip.
But hey, the staff have got time to babysit 30+ 8 year olds and help them on with their hats and get their water bottles out of the bags for them. Jeez.
Or how about the parents teach their children how to behave in hot weather.
Infant school children, fair enough, they need a lot of reminders but year 3/4? Not so much!

I'm not sure what you expect the teaching staff with an entire class of kids to get to and from the trip safely to do.

I'd expect them to get the children there safely. All of them. That didn't happen here.

Nobody necessarily needs to be strung up for this but lessons do need to be learned. PPs complete refusal to acknowledge that there were cracks here that allowed this to happen is absurd.

Just thinking outside the box- are you certain her bottle wasn’t refilled? I have led numerous trips with overall responsibility for 60 4-5 year olds and 10 adults. Water bottles are often re-filled. Also, if her bottle was left behind/temporarily lost then I would pour bottled water into plastic cups for anyone without a bottle, which a parent wouldn’t see.

We always reminded children to drink regularly and provided spare sun hats for anyone who forgot. We reminded as much as possible.

I’ve actually been out on 2 trips myself this week as a parent helper. Staff did remind regularly about water. However, the trip we did earlier in the week would have been far too long, open and hot if it had been on the day of the second trip in my opinion, and I would have considered cancelling or adapting it, as happens with Sports Days with heat. Risk assessments are very thorough for trips, so moving forwards I do think schools will need to consider and be open to adapting to increasingly hot weather.

Sorry to hear your child is ill, that’s never nice.

@KittyPup .Exactly this.

” Listen up everyone [waits for silence] we’ve got a long walk and it’s very hot today , so I want to check some things before we start. Has everyone got a bottle of water? Well done . I want everyone to have a drink now before we set off. Good, if you need more we can fill up the bottles at the museum so don’t worry about running out. And has everyone brought a hat? I’ve got some spares if anyone has forgotten theirs. Excellent. Now, stay with your partner, keep up and keep together, we’re going to have a lovely day.”
………..
”Have you got a hat Littlefrogs head? Well it won’t do you much good in your back pack will it! Put it on please.”
……………
”Has everyone had a good drink? It’s important to drink lots of water on a hot day like today. If you need to fill up your water bottle before we set off back to school then the water tap is over there. Keep your hats ON please, I noticed a few people on the way here who weren’t wearing their hats. So I’d don’t want to have to remind you all again.”

Of course I wasn’t there, but I am willing to bet that the teachers/ helpers all said something similar to the class during the day.

Unfortunately, making sure kids are safe in extreme temperatures is absolutely part of the job. Citing other stressful things doesn't negate that requirement.

It doesn't matter whether you think 8-year-olds should be doing x y or z - you have to be aware when they're not.

I’m really struggling to believe she didn’t drink any of those two water bottles all day.

Maybe neglectful about the hat if they didn’t have all the children put them on their head. Which I’m also struggling to believe they didn’t line the children up and ask them to go to the toilet and have them put hat on before they left the classroom.

Feel free to ask your child’s room teacher about a run down of the day, but make sure you have a chat with your daughter about drinking the appropriate amount of water a day.