School vetoed chats about crushes!

[Franny1]

Interested to know what people think about this… my DD’s year group (year 3) have been told they are no longer allowed to talk about who they have crushes on etc. DD said the teacher said something about secrets so I’m guessing someone has got upset after someone else told their secret and there’s been some teasing or embarrassment or something.
I totally get that this sort of thing can lead to people getting upset. And I also don’t care much for the silly crushes chat myself! But I feel really strongly that they can’t tell kids what they can or can’t talk about in their own private conversations, and that this is a terrible precedent/lesson to teach young people about free speech! Is my DD really supposed to stop herself if she’s just chatting quietly to a friend in the playground because the subject matter has been vetoed?? And surely in any case they need to teach them HOW to handle these types of conversations without upsetting people, ie the importance of not betraying confidences, not embarrassing people or teasing, and so on…

Thoughts?

Agree with you! It's very wrong to censor private speech. I'd hope they haven't realised this is what they're doing - definitely raise it.

I’m in a couple of minds about this. On the one hand, it does seem a bit extreme to tell children what they are allowed to talk about.

On the other hand, perhaps the crush talk has got out of hand and the children’s “relationships” are becoming disruptive. I’ve known times when Sarah is going out with Mike but then splits up with him and goes out with Jeff (so Mike is upset and cross with Jeff and Sarah). Michelle had a crush on Jeff so is upset. Adam and Rachel have been “going out” for ages so the children decide to have a mock wedding until Rachel’s mum says No, that’s a bit weird. And all of this is before the age of ten.

I wouldn't start a free speech campaign about this. Hopefully the children will learn to be discreet about any future discussions on the topic. Presumably there have been problems in the class around this topic but it will blow over and in a few weeks it will be something else.

"Crushes" in Year THREE?

Goodness me, times have changed since I was 8/9!

Maybe talk of crushes etc has been used to bully or belittle children.

Has the school explained to parents, or are you just hearing this via your dc

Sometimes these things go beyond what 2 or three friends want to chat about and become really trendy and a thing. They go from a topic of conversation to the only conversation. There is no way for the teacher to moderate the level, I think this is the right call.

I agree I think it’s ridiculous. If a child gets upset about these kind of things then they need to learn how to deal with that. That’s a part of life I’m afraid…

I think it's a totally different situation depending on whether they are talking about themselves having a crush, or someone else. If it's about someone else, it can lead to something getting spread about and that child feeling embarrassed and getting teased, so that's probably what's happened.
I don't think it's a huge topic of conversation with 7/8 year olds, unless they're making stuff up and spreading it around.

Year 3, so 7 & 8 year olds chatting about crushes to the extent to the teacher has had to address it! Context is key here - banning such chat in the classroom and addressing 'teasing' which can amount to low level bullying, then I'm with the teacher.

There’s lots of things children in year 3 at school wouldn’t be allowed to talk about so I’m not sure free speech applies. E.g. it’s not appropriate to talk about certain news items in the playground. That you don’t like someone because they’re not good at maths. I think crushes could fall into this category. It’s not the same as children talking to their parents or playing at home. Also, children that age don’t have real crushes so not the same as older children sharing with their friends.

This obviously stems from the crush chat causing an issue in the classroom. I think talking about that Momo thing that was a YouTube trend was banned in my nieces classroom for a bit as it was scaring and hyping up the kids too much.

I’m guessing your don’t want your kids talking about sex and murder in the playground either, so some things are out of bounds. And in a workplace it would be absolutely inappropriate to go around talking about your crushes at every break as it would largely amount to sexual harassment so I don’t think this is that bad to ban. They’re also 7, they’re not real crushes in the sense of actual attraction… so it is all a bit of a made up fad too.

I wouldn’t have an issue.

Imagine you are hosted a kids birthday party and they all started teasing each other about a topic and several got upset. You would probably say to them that you didn’t want to hear any more on the topic as it was making others feel unhappy. It is hardly a violation of their human rights.

I think they are trying to teach them that children that they shouldn’t be confiding secrets in ‘friends’ because friends come and go and because they can’t be trusted. It’s a lesson we have all had to learn. Maybe they could have gone about it a different way .

I also think it might be partly about keeping secrets e.g. "I've got a crush on X but it's a secret".
It's related to safeguarding, I think DCs nowadays are all taught some variation of "we don't keep secrets, only surprises etc".

I would feel the same way, OP.

When my son was year 3, scary stories were temporarily very popular playground talk (Bloody Mary) This led to some having nightmares. The school said no talk about it any more and as it was pre social media, the craze finished quickly. (I know year 3s who have messaging on their tablets) I think that the school was right.

If the crush stuff is leading to too much conflict then they aren’t unreasonable to say no to it. I can see situations like kids equating crush talk to being considered good looking/ugly or teasing about who they picked and telling the object of the crushes who liked them. Imagine being told that your crush doesn’t like you back!

The whole crush thing has gotten really out of hand before in our school. Declaring marriages and people having multiple crushes. One girl was vilified for bringing in sweets and convincing various boys to be hers but they’d only last a day. I bcwas Bert fed up hearing sbout it tbh.

My 8yo declared herself a lesbian and ended her on / off crush from nursery with a very nice letter thst he’d make someone a lovely husband but not her. Her twin who he also had a crush on kicked him in the balls.

He rather magnanimously said that was fair enough and they are all fairly good friends age 10.

🤣🤣🤣. Yes it’s similar at our school. Don’t get me wrong everyone, I don’t LIKE the crushes chat, I think it’s very silly and yes I think it can lead to upset. I would feel entirely differently if they’d said something along the lines of: “when you talk about it like this it’s upsetting, instead how about we talk about it like this?”

This sort of stuff IS going to happen though , are they going to ban all chats that cause tension, everytime it happens? That’s a strange whack a mole approach I think, and also doesn’t give kids the tools to cope with it moving forward.

I remember in primary school at one point the teacher got exasperated by us all and stated that she was banning us from 'falling in love with eachother'!

DS's school did similar back around that same age but more specifically banned the kids from being being boyfriends/girlfriends as it was causing issues and becoming a distraction. I had no problem with it. Let's face it, at that age, there's no need for it.

I don't see it as significantly different from teachers banning other fads like Pokémon or twerking. Or whatever the kids are into these days. If it's causing problems in the classroom, it gets banned. I'd also argue that discouraging certain types of conversations/terminology, actually is teaching kids about boundaries/appropriateness etc rather than infringing on free speech.

I think it was taking up an inordinate amount of time (imagine how the poor teacher feels hearing about xyz after every break) and leading to bullying. I can understand why they’d want to draw a line under it. I was sort of glad when the whole thing imploded and no one talks about it anymore, a few years later snd it’s really not a thing atall. I’m hoping it doesn’t come back in high school.

My daughter is 6 years old and last week I had a whole drama over her confiding in a friend about a crush, said friend then broke her confidence and told the boy. It was all innocent and DD found it funny, but come on, they are 6!!

It is out of hand. And I don't actually agree with op's central argument about free speech, we don't all have free rein in all our conversations (certainly not in formal settings like the workplace or school, and often not in our personal conversations either, most of us carefully moderate what we say) and these are children who need to be taught what is appropriate.

I agree we shouldn’t really be controlling what kids can speak about BUT

maybe the crushes talk is less innocent in content than we’d like to think in year 3, and maybe they’re trying to stop the objectification of the their class mates
Or maybe it’s causing upset and being used to bully, “no one would have a crush on Sadie because she’s fat” etc

Would you have the same thoughts if they said they're not allowed to have racist conversations, or bullying conversations, or conversations where they belittle other people? That's still policing what they can talk about, but they would be absolutely right to stop it if it was happening.
If they have to send messages like this, then there is clearly a problem and you should be supporting them.

Is the secrets thing about the idea about preventing sexual abuse where we say surprises (revealed eventually) are fine but secrets (always kept private) are not? I do understand the logic of that argument, but there is another layer in that it's fine to say 'I have a crush on Adam, but it's a secret'. Kids do need to learn about privacy and mean gossip. And that's a separate thing from preventing sexual abuse.

However you choose to frame things the fact is we have to teach children the difference between private stuff and stuff that you must tell a trusted adult about.