Would you/have you secretly filmed at your child's Nativity?

[Dramatic]

So our school has a policy that you aren't allowed to film/take photos at all, total blanket ban. They don't take photos or film themselves either.

My husband works away and never gets to see the plays so I secretly film them/take photos (just my child's part but there are others in the background) and I show the videos to him.

I don't put them on any social media or send them to anyone else, even Grandparents etc.

Aibu?

You are being so unreasonable I have no words and incredibly selfish. I’m a primary school teacher and have seen a child have to be moved from their foster family of four years because of one parent breaking these rules. Yes it’s unusual but sadly not as unusual as you would think. No filming means no filming, it’s not a joke or an inconvenience it’s child protection.

You might only show your pictures to your DH but the person next to you who sees you sneaky filming and decides to do the same might put their video on TikTok, where a friend of the violent addict birth parent of the adopted child in the background sees it and lets them know. The person next to her sees you filming and takes a sneaky pic and posts to FB - turns out she’s got a public page and the violent ex husband of the DV victim who’s kids are on stage and who has been trawling the internet trying to find them for months now knows what school they go to.

But you're only taking HER word for that. Really we have no idea where it's going. And let's face it she clearly can't be trusted if she covertly filming in a school.

Did the parent post the video on SM?

In my workplace school we take pics of kids in costume in the classroom and on stage after dress rehearsal and upload to the communication app so everyone can only see their own child. Works perfectly well.

Standing on something you aren't supposed to is a risk to you though. Not a potential risk to someone else.

Consent is consent. Everyone has the right to give or not as the case may be, that consent and have it respected. The end result of violation of said consent obviously has varying levels of seriousness, however as Taz said, it’s a slippery slope. You can’t say it’s ok to violate consent in one situation but not in another.

And stop with the hyperbole - no one called you a rapist. All that has been pointed out is that no one has the right to violate someone’s consent. No matter the circumstances. Which is why the “cup of tea” consent analogy is so good. No one thinks making someone drink a cup of tea is on the same scale as sexual assault. But it’s all about consent. And you seem to have no respect for it. Which as I said earlier, doesn’t surprise me.

@Dramatic you have videoed your child on your phone.

that video is on your phone.

have you set it so that it doesn’t keep things in the cloud?

or is that video in the cloud?

once you show your husband do you delete the video?

or does it stay on your phone?

Thank you for getting it.

I love the cup of tea video.

It will be because there are children at risk from domestic violence or something similar that are in the class so you recording them puts their life at risk!!

I take things on face value on threads and give advice/opinions based on that alone. There is literally no point speculating on all of the possible motives or we’d be here all day.
If it is as op says, then there is no risk.

Consent to take photos of any person is not required and cannot be imposed by a parent. Where this nonsense about consent came from is a mystery.

The consent is imposed, quite legally, by the school.

Safeguarding rules are to stop the unlikely thing from happening.

What a ridiculous comparison. You are an adult putting yourself in a situation which might be risky but nobody in the same room at the same time has specifically said no don't do that and you've gone nah it's fine and done it anyway.
She is an adult who is not just disrespectful but potentially putting children at risk and completely unable to see why this is wrong.

No in the foster family case she sent it to a relative who sent it to a family friend who posted it on their SM and commented how cute the kids singing was. It was three times removed from the original source of the video when it was seen by a friend of the birth father, who was in prison, and within a month the foster mother was confronted at the school gate by a “friend” of his and the child was sadly moved for everyone’s safety. I 100% acknowledge that’s a very unusual story, I’ve been teaching twelve years and something like that has only happened once. But for that child who was settled and happy, once was enough. I just wouldn’t take any risks and would never do it. My SIL does though and we argue about it every year so it’s a very familiar problem to me!

I work with children who would fall into this category and if we ever go to events where there will be media like this we contact the photographers before to highlight the concerns and arrange to meet them after to go through the pictures to ensure the kids aren't in the images. We also let them know where we will be sitting so they know where we are. We also often will use a donated box or sit further back to avoid being in a very visible location. There is more work that goes into these things than a lot of people realise because it's done very quietly.

Of course I have respect for it, you can't rape someone without massively hurting them, you can film without hurting anyone though.

Ok so again, not relevant.

But schools don't have the luxury of taking people's word for it. Not where children's safety is concerned. We all know people who over share either on social media or among friends. It's just not a risk with taking and again, if you were told no then that means NO.

I had to tell a photographer at a conference that I couldn’t be photographed.

I talked about it before on here.

its fucking mortifying but everyone was asked not to video at all during the conference and that the only photos would be the official ones.

I very nearly didn’t attend at all but my SMT wanted to support me to attend and get some normality back.

and the idea that I would have to share my reasons with every Tom dick and Harry in the room is just ridiculous.

What I’ve seen happen numerous times…
Person A starts to film to show mum/dad/granny who can’t make it
Person B/C/D also start filming because ‘they’re filming too what harm can it do’

One of those people posts on social media because they’re selfish.

So no, don’t film for whatever reason.

It would never have occurred to me to film it. It's not just your child on the stage.

Do you really not see any reason why you would not want someone like that having video or images of your child? Especially with the ease of ai to manipulate images into harmful content? A man was done in the UK in 2024 for taking normal photos of children and then using ai to turn those into iioc and then circulating them to other predators online. With the development of tech this is now absolutely rife.

Let’s hope you are never in a situation where you rely on others to obey safeguarding rules in order to keep you and your children safe.

If the man who raped me, strangled me, and assaulted me finds my daughter’s school he is highly likely to try to do the same to her.

and she’s a bloody teacher. Not a child. But the same thing could easily happen to a child.