son left with trousers on wrong way and unfastened all day

[Joyx2boys]

Hi I received a letter from my child's school which said he would be starting a outdoors activities block with the dates for commencement, ans stated "to help your child successfully participate in sessions can you send them to school with the following items on each of these dates" a list of outdoor clothing followed. there was no time mentioned or if he needed a change of clothing. I dressed him in warm clothes with wellies & put his school clothes in his school bag in case he needed them and took him to school. at 3pm I went to collect him, he came out wearing his school clothes which were filthy and his trousers were on backwards! his head was hung low and he said look and turned around to show me that his trousers were not fastened and his underwear was clearly visible, he said the outdoor learning was after lunch so they told him to get changed when he arrived. he'd put his trousers on the wrong way, but instead of his teacher telling him to go sort them she left him to sit in class all morning like that, and he went to lunch and play like that as well. after lunch when the class was told to change into there outdoor clothing another teacher told him just to put his jacket on and his scarf & gloves, so he spent the entire out door activities trying to stop his trousers falling down. I asked my son how he felt about it and he said he was sad :( I went into school and asked to talk to his teacher who said we assumed you'd know the activities are always in the afternoon, (I don't attend them and have never had a letter saying there in the afternoon) then she said I'm not here to dress your child, she was quite abrupt about this. which made me really angry but I'm not good at confrontation. I phoned and asked the assistant head about it and she said "you spoke to his teacher, i'm not sure what more I can add?". I'm not sure what to do? my child was degraded and he was left at risk of being injured, because he struggled all day to hold his trousers up. he also comes home a lot with his shoes on the wrong feet, i'd spoke to his teacher about that last yr and she say's we like them to have independence. I will not leave it like this but not sure what to do about it? they are still being independent if the teacher say's you have your shoes/trousers on the wrong way swap/turn them around, children's feet are growing having shoes on the wrong feet for long periods of time is surely damaging?

A sen dc changes things, get pull up trousers and perhaps put a discreet red stitch on the front or something to help aid your dc know which way round they are.
The more independence you can give your ds as he goes through the school system the more confidence he’ll gain through it. He’ll lose confidence if you completely rely on an overstretched system helping him.
I think you should come from an angle of if the teacher isn’t going to help him how can I help him achieve what he needs to.

You can of course still make complaints etc but your attitude appears to be one to blame anyone that doesn’t do what you expect them to. Even if you’re right it doesn’t help your ds in the long term.

Use this experience to help him realise that he needs to figure a way to put his trousers on correctly and buy a new easier to get on pair to help him achieve this.

This is definitely drip fed info and feel there's more to it..... what exactly did you say to the teacher when you approached her?

The thing is your child himself knew the trousers were on wrong? He showed you when he got out of school. Would there not have been a point during the day where he could have fixed this? Lunch or break. If he knew himself then I'm not sure what big difference it would make if the teacher pointed it out and told him to change unless expected her to physically fix it for him.

Like other posters have said elesticated waist trousers sound like the way forward. My oldest had a lot of issues dressing himself and wore elasticated trousers till he was about 10. He came home in all states. Probably best not pursuing it any further. If your son sees its had a big impact on you it might make him feel bad about it.

I wore shoes not matching with one another for half a day during professional training. I also get my home clothes (mainly t shirts) the wrong way round reasonably often. It’s ok, just practice.

It is the child's responsibly to fasten his trousers

Matalan do elasticated trousers upto age 11. My son has additional needs and we use them as they have no buttons and they won’t fall down.

I'd put some form of visible indicator inside his trousers (I use name tapes ordered which say "back" on them but my child's younger) like a couple of stitches in bright coloured thread or similar and start training him to look for that and make sure that's at the back when he's getting dressed. I found with DD2 that I could talk about labels at the back (not always the case particularly with girls' clothes), pictures at the front, bows at the front, buttons at the front or whatever till the cows came home - but when I started labelling all her clothes and drilling it that "this is the back" it started to sink in a lot more and she became so much more able to function independently - obviously with me making sure we picked the easiest-dressing type clothing in the first place to give her a head start.

We still do things like tack the fabric that goes behind zips out of the way to make it easier for her to do zips independently, and I put a little loop at the base of zips for her to grab with her free hand and hold the coat down in the right place to pull the zip up with the other - but if you've got a child you need to over-learn dressing with it did help a lot just visually indicating the back of every single item of clothing! (Knackered my fingers doing it mind)

I've made sure it's written into DD2's provision at school that she DOES struggle with dressing independently and just needs a closer eye keeping on her and prompting when required - school are fine with this, but they know that I scaffold it as much as possible to let her be as independent as possible and it's just they need to be aware as well that she has these issues and might need bailing out when she's managed to turn her trousers into some kind of impromptu strait-jacket (I have no fucking idea how she manages to do this).